Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick stood near the deep waters of the central fountain of Benevolence Itself. The ground was hexagonal white stone, just like it was everywhere else, but there was a lot more greenery growing around here. That greenery formed a carpet of moss and grass and mushrooms and small trees all around the fountain.

Erick quietly asked, “Rozeta? I want to clean up Veird, now.”

Rozeta appeared, looking a little worse for wear than when Erick had last seen her. “What is the goal for today, Erick?”

“Stability, solidity, and a foundation on which to counter Nothanganathor.”

Rozeta nodded. “Okay. How?”

Erick held up a hand and produced a copy of his [Infinite Imaging] spell.

Rozeta stilled, her eyes going wide.

Erick said, “I based my Ascension on the stuff that the Script gave me.” He let go, and the Benevolence crystal hovered there. He pulled out a copy of [Spellsurge Weave] next. It looked almost the same as the first one, but Rozeta instantly noticed the difference, her countenance going from quietly elated to strongly worried. She glanced between Erick and the [Spellsurge Weave]. Erick said, “Can you use these?”

“They could end all life on this planet.”

“Yes. If the wrong spell is attached.”

“No. I mean—” Rozeta said, “It’ll open up rifts everywhere, and the Red will spill forth like an Ending. This is the other half of your Valkyrie magic, isn’t it.”

“Ah. That. Yes. That is true, too. I’m aware of the Red in the side dimensions. This spell will save all life on this planet, though, because I’m going to use it with this.” Erick produced a copy of [Benevolent Cleanse]. “This balances out the world, heavily decreasing Malevolence while leaving Benevolence alone, which means that the Benevolence is free to act upon the Malevolence as is its nature, which should put it ahead of Malevolence by a lot. It worked on the Nothor Beasts I pulled out of my own spellwork, after I Ascended. It should work here. The valkyries don’t come in till later.” Erick said, “What I need from you is to know if this will disrupt anything on Veird, or in the Core. I imagine it will break a lot. I wasn’t able to do this on Margleknot but I am going to do this here, when the world is ready for it.” Erick asked, “Are there any experiments out there that can be killed, for now? Or can we do this?”

Rozeta took a moment.

Erick added to her worries, saying, “And then I’d like to put a [Hasted Shelter] across all of Veird, to give us months and months between attacks.”

Rozeta allowed herself to be distracted with the topic of a [Hasted Shelter]. “We tried that Shelter idea already. It gave us a month of calm, and then Nothanganathor broke through the dilation in pieces without us knowing. He twisted Veird’s [Haste] into a [Slow] for us and a Haste for him. Solomon and Destiny had to do some Wizardry to get us out of that. That’s why Quintlan is missing its center; Nothanganathor won over the liches and we had to purge them all.”

“That’s the first war we have to win, then; a war of Time.” Erick said, “We’re going to get there after [Benevolent Cleanse]ing Veird.”

“… Okay. What’s your full plan?”

Erick breathed out, relaxing some. “Eventually, I want your help figuring out how to put manaminers into normal people to make them ‘False Ascended’, or whatever you want to call it, so that they can operate independently and protected from Malevolence or other dangerous magics. They will become our ingress into Nothanganathor’s domain. That’s for the future, though. Step Three, if you want to call it that.

“Step One is probably the most complicated with the most moving parts, because this step is us reaching across the nearby slices of this Layer of infinity to clean them up with Weavers auto-cleansing Malevolence. From there, we begin actively killing a lot of things that are immune to the [Cleanse]s.

“Step Two is a [Hasted Shelter] for all of Veird. Glad to know you all tried that some. That is probably what accounts for much of the missing time between when I left and when I came back. We can fix whatever systems broke and then re-do that.

“With those steps complete, we should have more time to do a lot of things. I would call this the intermediary stage, when we’re fighting against Nothanganathor’s attempts to fuck up our defenses.

“During this time, I will be cleaning up Kirginatharp’s Dragon Curse, freeing him and Veird of that plot from so long ago, while also ending a few other problems, like the Forever War. If the angels and demons won’t listen to reason I will simply Valkyrie them all into new lives, and End their rivalries in a combination of Exalted and Vile at the same time.

“Eventually, we’ll be defended enough so that we can move on to Step Three, which is real Ascended and however many False Ascended we can make, that all have untouchable mini-Scripts implanted in them, like how I did for myself.

“When Step Three is achieved, we move to Step Four; the counter offensive.

“That’s when the war really starts; when we’re on FENRIR and fighting multiversal enemies, because by then Nothanganathor will take us seriously, if he hasn’t already.” Erick said, “That’s probably when he’ll start pulling out all the big shit that he has told me he ‘does not want to use’, but like I fucking believe that!” Erick’s anger ran away with him and he let it. “Fucking asshole bastard is a complete fucking liar-by-halves. Told me he’d give me a week before he started fighting me! A week! But he’s been picking off SO MANY PEOPLE WHILE I WAS GONE.” Lightning flickered from Erick’s skin and clothes to dance across the ground, leaving black trails— And then Erick dashed his anger and quietly said, “I’m going to annihilate him, Rozeta. Help me do that.”

Rozeta had been rapidly calculating things as Erick spoke, her worry multiplying a great deal at the mention of her son, Kirginatharp. At Erick’s anger, Rozeta turned fearful. But then Erick asked for her help, all her worries were laid to rest. At realizing that Erick wasn’t going to make a move on Kirginatharp except to help him, a great deal of Rozeta’s worries fell to the side and she let out an anger to mirror Erick’s own.

There was so much that had happened to Veird while Erick was away. He had seen a hundredth of it, or less; he had no idea. But Rozeta had seen it all. Since the Sundering, until now. Her son made a pawn, her other son made a different sort of pawn. Her very work on the Script undermined. Not everything since the Sundering had been Nothanganathor’s fault; that was giving him too much credit. But a lot had been his fault.

Erick had a rage within him, but Rozeta’s rage was so deep that no mortal could ever hope to know its depths.

The Goddess of the Script quietly said, “We’re going to do worse than annihilate him.” And then she reined in her anger, like the closing of blinds on house windows. She still raged inside, but it was impossible to see when she didn’t want it seen. With grace, she said, “There are some things to know before we start.”

Erick contained his anger, too. He nodded.

“The Old [Cleanse] and a bunch of other spells were sources of Nothor Beasts, as you know, most of them appearing when people came in for Status Resets and those old spells were purged from their souls. It wasn’t till later that these purges collected into the truly smart Nothor Beasts; the sources of the Claws and otherwise.

“We gods cannot make our own magics for the Script. Long ago, we decided to disallow that. It’s not actually a choice of ours that we must use mortals to make magic; we specifically cannot fix anything ourselves. It’s a part of the God Pact, too. Melemizargo has been an exception, of course, but not through any fault of mine trying to stop him all the time.

“Mortals, like you, have to make magic that we then share with the world.

“But while we cannot make magic, we can certainly disallow it, and that is what we had to do for certain spells.

“[Cleanse] is one of these spells.

“We disallowed that when things got bad and we figured out what was wrong.

“This broke a great many systems, like the [World Cleanse] that we used at the end of Forgotten Campaigns and in the beginning, when the Script needed it to clean up monumental problems, like widespread poisons. More recently, there were the Particle Magic mistakes.

“Idyrvamikor made that original spell, you know? My son—” Rozeta wiped away a tear, then moved on, “That [Cleanse] Archmage over in the Warlord Clans of Ooloraptoor made a new version that she used herself for a long while; for years and years. I believe you knew her. Koori Pale Cow. I got her to donate her spell to the Script, and then I instructed her how to make a much better one.

“She was Erased an hour later, before she could give me the proper version. You are among the very few who remember her.”

Erick felt a touch of cold hate pass through him at knowing that Koori Pale Cow was gone forever.

Rozeta continued, “Koori’s [Cleanse] only cleans off surface grime, while balancing the mana among the primary 6. It does nothing against anything else.

“[World Cleanse] is gone; I had to rip out that system completely. The Core… A lot has been damaged, Erick, and I’m in the middle of finally being able to repair it with those manaminers you brought me. I would like time to repair things before you go doing Wizard Magics, please, but I can see I won’t get the time I need. This is fine. We can start slow, I assume.

“And yet, we cannot start slow.

“The second you start attacking him there will be a massive counterattack, and probably from every side-dimension that your Weaver punches through and a whole lot more besides. So I won’t do this plan without full assurances that it will work well.” Rozeta asked, “I need to know your full plan, and then I will be pairing that plan with giving [Benevolent Cleanse] to the world and remaking [World Cleanse]. I will not be using [World Cleanse] at all, though, because… I ripped out that power thoroughly. It will take a month to remake that magic, and we don’t have a month.

“I tore out so much of the Script, Erick. So very much.

“It was so infected with Red. It was like looking at a Red Core.

“So I would like to start small before we bring out the Wizard Magics.”

Erick’s rage had already turned to planning, which seemed like a good thing in retrospect. Erick nodded. “Okay. How stable are the world’s node networks? With the great loss of life we’ve had, as well as the increase from the other people?”

Almost darkly, Rozeta said, “The Lighter’s Guild is making miracles every day, keeping the lights on and the defenses of cities high, but don’t expect to do anything big with the mana collected from any city. Nothanganathor is targeting the people, primarily. This has had ripple effects everywhere, and the loss of node network integrity is high on the list. Whole Lighter Guilds have been Erased, too.

“We gained several billion people when Solomon Genesis’d the angels and demons to life along with many people from a few side realities.” Rozeta chuckled darkly. “You’d think that would solve some problems, right? But no. The Script is still barely mana positive. I think Nothanganathor just does that, but I can’t figure out how.”

Erick felt another hollow in his heart. He decided, “I’ll make my own mana, then.”

Phagar stepped into the conversation, saying, “Let’s make some time-dilated dungeons like you wrote down in your reports.”

Rozeta easily said, “Now that, I can make work.”

Erick smiled a little. It was strained.

They got to work.

- - - -

The Splinter Mountains of Nergal were covered in ice and snow, as far as the mortal eyes could see.

This particular part of the Splinter Mountains looked rather the same as the last time Erick was here, if you ignored the missing mountain that had been the Orrery of Rozeta. The great flowing spheres of brass and tracks of magic and all the people who lived here and worked here, observing the universe and the solar system of Veird, were gone. It had all vanished in a Claw attack several months ago, all of the people therein Erased. The giant brass orbs that made up the Orrery were nowhere to be found; even with eyes that pierced the clouds below the mountain tops, those spheres of the planets were nowhere to be seen. The side mountains, with their supportive cities and villages, were all gone, but for reasons other than Erasure. The people had moved on because their central reason for being had been Erased. Erick wondered what sorts of excuses those people told themselves about their lives; their reasons for being here in this frozen land of nowhere.

All was ice and snow and dark clouds, this close to Frozen Nergal, at the southern side of Veird.

Without the Orrery, the world here seemed even colder than before.

The snow stopped falling, and then a portal of white lightning opened.

Erick, Rozeta, and Phagar, stepped onto an observation platform far away from the canyon that used to be the Orrery. Erick stepped to the edge of the platform, casting his gaze down into a cloud-covered land.

It was a ruin, but only to those with the eyes to see the giant claw marks that could have been valleys, and who had known what had come before.

Rozeta spoke on the still air, “I was hoping this space would get used for something good.”

Erick said, “And so it shall.”

Erick brushed aside time-frozen clouds and snowstorms with casual extensions of his aura, like sweeping snow off of a driveway, but on a size comparable to mountains and all at once. Next came a [Hasted Shelter], which Phagar would bless once Erick was done with these ‘mortal’ magics. With a tug, Erick elicited eternal stonewood trees from the ground, filling in the canyons and the mountain tops with a forest of trees, each kilometers tall.

Erick rose into the sky with a single step, and then he let the dragon out.

His perspective shifted, everything looking much more small and manageable, while his aura multiplied sizes several times over. With expert crafts, Erick created multiple sets of dungeon towers, 50 in total, across a large portion of the Splinter Mountains, linking them all with covered sky bridges and waterways and movement systems for what would come next; for the slimes and plants. Actual dungeons —spaces into the Dark— would come later, or maybe erupt from the ground between his dungeons, for there were a few of those down there already. Erick poked his senses into those Dark holes in the ground and saw simple places; unmanned and non-dangerous, and not a problem.

Erick turned on the [Terraforming] and strung the whole place with [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] before enveloping the whole thing in [Weather Ward]s and heat magics. Weather was crazy right now on Veird and there was no easy way to change all of that, though it was certainly possible once Rozeta managed to fix the major issues of the Script, so Erick simply made the place weather-proof.

As Erick worked, time passed for him but not for anyone else. [Terraforming] was a simple grey cloud with frozen white lightning therein. The node networks and the Draining magics of the [Undertow Star]s were still, their shadow tendrils not moving at all. [Grow] made plants that were simple green buds on churned loam; they would grow later. [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] made lights of many colors that did not move at all; not like they should, not like they would.

When Erick was done with the main thrust of the building, he turned back into a person and did some final touches; leveling a floor here, securing a wall of the new lake there, poking into the dungeons and seeing that one of them had some horrors inside so he eradicated that one. Normal stuff.

And then Erick stepped back, to stand with Rozeta and Phagar on a mountain further from where they had started.

Rozeta casually said, “You’re bigger than last time.”

Erick chuckled. “A bit.”

Phagar smiled, and then he waved his hand, and Time shifted, tiny fractals spreading out from the white walls of the new dungeon city.

Erick wondered about that presentation of godly power, and not for the first time.

Phagar, wearing Erick’s own face and body as he usually did, smiled, and said, “I wonder, Erick. Have I always had these fractals as a part of my godly presentation? Or is that something I had forgotten that came from this Fractal Cosmology? Am I a god from this Fractal Cosmology? I’m not sure anymore. Could be that fractals are simply neat, and present in multiple lands, coming from multiple influences to arrive at the same ideas.”

“That last one has some real merit,” Erick said, huffing a laugh.

The dungeon city transformed as Phagar spoke, the [Terraforming] rapidly unfreezing and then turning absolutely chaotic in its frenzy of life-bringing rain and lightning. The first greenery caused the next greenery to come in much faster. Life died and then grew back. Moss covered white buildings like a living carpet. Trees bloomed as rivers flowed and the lake filled in the center of the land.

And then the [Terraforming] truly took off, filling the entire sky of the dungeon city with rain.

Shadows of things moved in the racing time, mere afterimages of slimes and some small monsters running fast lives here and there. Trees grew to be a hundred years old in an instant and then they died to a hurricane cleaning up the land.

The hurricane was not a continual thing; the [Terraforming] fluctuated its power. It killed periodically, and then rested for an age, becoming a simple rain cloud filled with lightning sparks and shadow tendrils that hovered over the lake in the center of the space.

Rozeta sighed as she watched it all happen, like she was resting in a hot tub. “That’s so much Benevolence mana. It’s already clearing up problems in the Script, in the tangles of Wrongness caused by Malevolence. I don’t know what the exact difference is between your mana, Erick, and the mana of everyone else, because they’re near-qualitatively the same in several instances… Ophiel, for one. Yggdrasil for another. But your mana does very well against Malevolence. I think it might be that Reson Magic.”

In a commiserating sort of way, Erick said, “That shouldn’t be a question you have, Rozeta. You should know why things are the way they are. Phagar should know why his godly presentation looks like the magic I saw of the Fractal Fairy. But you’ve all been crushed down to Nothanganathor’s desires. He has cut away the option for you to know this stuff, for knowing the Red triggered the Red. You might have even cut out that knowledge from yourself. But we can fix that, eventually.”

Rozeta simply stared ahead, hoping.

Phagar continued to work fractal Time upon the land ahead of them, saying, “I’ve opened up all my memories that have been ‘open in case of emergency’. This conspiracy goes deep, Erick. There is hope, though.” He grinned, saying, “The overall plan of Nothanganathor’s relies on powers derived from countless small wizardries and meticulous planning, and all of our Foundations being laid upon beds of sand and shifting undercurrents. But you could open communications right to Margleknot, pulling possibility here to Veird, and if worse comes to worse, we can enact an Endtimes Plan and you can [Grand Reincarnation] everyone to new lives, in new parts of the universe.”

Erick felt a twitch of calm pleasure at that suggestion.

Even if Veird fell, and Erick and Melemizargo were trapped in the final power of Nothanganathor, the people could escape.

Erick said, “Let’s call that ‘Plan Omega’; the very last one.”

Rozeta said, “I would prefer to save Veird. This larger universe is something I wish to contend with after Nothanganathor loses, and with all of you with me.”

Phagar nodded. He pulled back his Time from the dungeon city.

The world beyond once again froze in time, due to the shared [Time Stop] of Erick, Rozeta, and Phagar.

The white land had changed into one of green and blue and flowers and mushrooms and brilliance and shadow.

Erick said to Rozeta, “I need the space released from the Script, so that the mana is fully usable, and not taken by the Script. I plan on helping Solomon and Destiny Ascend here, too.”

Rozeta flinched. “Do you have to request that?”

“I do,” Erick said, “Right now the system is probably only pulling out a tenth of what it should. For instance: I made almost 200 Benevolence dungeon towers on Margleknot. The mana coming from those was visible in the air as a white thickness, and my [Reson Gatherer]s started turning the excess into currency and true power. I see no excess here. I need all of the mana here to clean up Veird.”

Rozeta bargained, “Then how about I invert the Authority of the Script, and give every living thing here a lot more mana than they normally have, and thus the excess spills out and I can regather that, and you can use that vastly increased node network to send your [Benevolent Grand Cleanse] all across the rest of Veird.” Rozeta looked to Erick. “How about that?”

“… Huh. Well damn. Yes. I’ll take that option and also the area over the lake, free of the Script.” Erick said, “On the island I built there.”

Phagar smirked. “That island wasn’t for statues?”

Erick went, “Ha!”

Rozeta forced herself to say, “If you can promise me that you won’t blow up anything from here, then… I agree.”

“I will definitely be blowing things up from here, Rozeta.”

“Oh you know what I mean.” Rozeta looked to the right and up, took a moment, and then she turned back toward Erick. “Done.” She added, “Mostly. There’s a 10 meter sphere of space on that island that’s Script-free. That’s the maximum size I’ll allow. The Script-given mana of every living thing in the rest of the space and a kilometer beyond the walls is highly artificially boosted.”

“Thank you.” Erick said to Phagar, “Time dilation?”

“Of course,” Phagar said, as the land beyond began to move again, and rapidly. Not as fast as before, but still fast. Soon, the air began to fill with a thickness of mana. “Nothanganathor will be able to notice this space, now, if he is looking. Let’s go inside.”

Erick stepped forward, vanishing from the frozen-snow mountaintop far outside of the city to land on a bare island in the center—

Erick sighed in some kinda relief. The air in here was warm and humid and lovely. The lights of many Radiances filled the world with light, birds chirped in the trees, bugs buzzed in the grasses and wild places, and slimes troddled all over everywhere. The lake was clear of slimes, but there were plenty of fish in the lake, and even some monsters.

… There were monsters kinda everywhere, actually. Only small ones, and some stranger big ones. None that bothered to come out this far to the island in the center of the lake, for Erick had cordoned this place off with a [Force Wall] before he left, and the [Force Wall] remained strong due to the line of the node network that Erick had dropped down into this space.

The land was growing and plentiful, and though Erick had grown past such things as the need of air or warmth, air and warmth still felt good.

The Script being not-here felt kinda bad, though. It was an uneasy sort of feeling.

Phagar and Rozeta appeared next to him. Rozeta looked worried. Phagar looked ready for something bad to happen.

Erick said to them, “Here we go. The first real cast of this magic, and what will probably poke a great big hole in the dimensional fabric and call forth Nothanganathor. The spell might not even work past this space, though, what with the Script. But this is an act of Wizardry, so it might work anyway. This first cast is going to target—” Erick glanced around with his senses, and spotted some shadowolves out there in the depths of the dungeon city. Those things and the birds and the bugs must have gotten in from the dungeons. Erick said, “—All the shadowolves in this space.”

Phagar asked, “How about starting with targeting Malevolence in this small space under this [Force Wall] dome?”

“Sure. We can start there.”

Rozeta was calm, but worried.

Erick cast [Spellsurge Weave] and [Benevolent Cleanse] at the same time, marrying the spells together and targeting Malevolence here in this small space under the Force dome, to get everything started. Just one cast, though! He tied the spell off to the node network line up ahead, giving the magic all the mana it would ever need, a billion times over. Thick air rapidly misted out of the space and then flash-transformed into a map of the nearby area —a kilometer out— as a white Weaver cascaded light up above. The map turned iridescent—

Red Sparks suddenly crawled out of the map—

And the Weaver banished those Red Sparks with a flash of a [Benevolent Cleanse].

Red turned to thick air, becoming a sudden rush of a whole bunch of different types of mana and other powers that did not really exist on Veird, but which the Script would be able to clean up a lot easier than how it handled Malevolence. Erick categorized what he saw as Carnage and Vile and a few others… And he also saw twists of something that was hard on the eyes, which were invisible to his mana senses, and which he thought were spent resons, but which kinda looked… corruptive? Maybe? Maybe they were remnants of spent abilities that were not mana-based, turned to something Erick simply could not understand. There was a lot of that up on Margleknot, after all.

Erick hit the motes of weirdness with another [Benevolent Cleanse] and the weirdness remained, but it did spread out, like a stain diluting.

If it was corruption, then Benevolence might be good against it?

Erick hit it with a jolt of Benevolence lightning… Which did jack shit. Well okay then.

Not corruption—

Nothanganthor wouldn’t use corruption this early in the fight, anyway. He would be called a Corrupter and then dealt with by the Fae Council… Maybe.

So what could he be looking at?

Erick began, “Do you two know what—”

And then he looked at Rozeta, and knew several things at once.

Erick frowned. “The Script is still here and those are Banned elements, aren’t they. It’s the same thing I saw in the Vaults with those spaceships. It’s almost the same thing I see every time I look at a Mind Mage or see a person use Mental Magic; those tendrils of thought. Ah, dammit. Yup. That all makes sense now.”

Rozeta frowned. “I can’t actually make this space 100% Script free. It’s 99.9999% free. And yes, those are Banned Elements. Specifically Elemental Tyranny and Elemental Corruption and Contract and a whole bunch of other tiny things. Looks like some abilities from other power sources, too, which is very weird for me to see, Erick.

“Malevolence is its own thing, but your [Benevolent Cleanse] seems to smash it to whatever pieces it can smash it into. As for the Mind Mage stuff, yeah; those are resons, too, but those aren’t Banned. I tried Banning Mind Magic; it simply didn’t work, so I hid it behind the same obfuscation that the Banned stuff goes behind. We can talk about all that later, at length, if you want. You deserve to know everything.

“But for now!” She put away her frown, saying, “This is going to work.” She added, “Deploy it on a larger scale. Target Malevolence in the nearest kilometer.”

Erick put away his objections to an imperfect world and slightly-untrusting-allies (Because Rozeta probably knew things he did not know, and he trusted her anyway), and said, “Sure. This works at the speed of a Weaver, which is fast, but not instant. I can make it work larger than just the nearest kilometer. Here: just follow it.” And then he set the Weaver to find all Malevolence within the dungeon city and [Benevolent Cleanse] it away.

The entire Cleanse Map turned blue with targets.

Erick winced at that, saying, “Welp. It does Image here and also in a side reality, for it goes through a side reality to scan from here to there.”

The Weaver was already off, heading outward and rapidly splashing the world around it with a [Benevolent Cleanse], turning the air around itself into a thick white mist that rapidly dispersed. Strangely enough, the Weaver flew on a mere half-meter before it carved out another 10-meter-diameter sphere out of the air, turning all of that space briefly Red before it flashed over with white thickness. The Weaver went another half meter and did the same thing.

It kept going, showcasing Red in the air before turning that Red into a bunch of different manas, some of which were Banned.

It was kinda like a constantly flowing firework, actually.

Erick said, “So a few things.” Erick and company watched the firework lazily drift across the lake’s surface, heading into the water for some reason, and then back up and out for some other reason. “I think every Weaver is in a different side-reality of this slice of Infinity, so that space will need to be cleaned multiple times. And I think I restricted the size of my [Cleanse] too much.” Erick asked Rozeta, “Can I cast a full-sized [Benevolent Cleanse]? Is the Script handling this?”

Rozeta was looking at the ‘Red firework’ and its trail of mana mist, and also at something else Beyond here and now. Her face was an absolute mask of something profound. Then she looked to Erick, and Erick knew he was looking at a Goddess. She intoned, “You’re opening up windows to armies of Beasts, Erick. Make more Weavers. Make them as big as you can. As many as you need. You’re killing the ones over there and their way into this world.” She breathed deep, her Sight moving back to Beyond. “This is the army we feared, Phagar. Right there on the other side and everywhere. And the [Benevolent Cleanse] is breaking them.”

Phagar was also looking Beyond. “The timetable that I spoke of earlier for the next Claw descent is moving up. It’s not in 2 more real-time hours. It’s in 20 minutes, our speedy-time, and in 1,200 locations. 1,200 would have been the end for Veird, but not with you here. Not with this. Deploy Erick’s [Cleanse] to our captains, Rozeta. To all the people. Erick. We need more of these Weavers. A lot. And then my Champion Nirzir is going to join you and help you going forward.”

Erick was not panicking; he was too solid for that. He was worried, though. Bigger Weavers meant briefly bigger holes into the Other Side. Erick asked, “Could something get through if I make the Weavers truly large?”

“Yes,” Rozeta said, “And then the Weaver would kill them here, and if not, then you will kill them here. Or the Blue Corps will.”

Erick had no objections to that. His fingers almost itched to kill something of Nothanganathor’s. But for now, Erick canceled the Weaver-combo magic in front of him and cast another [Spellsurge Weave]+[Benevolent Cleanse], and this time he didn’t restrict his Cleanse Magic’s size at all.

White mist did not coalesce into a flat map. This time, the mist floated in the air, forming a sphere of many layers; a half-formed map of Veird. And then a cascading Weaver took form high, high above the map, in the sky of the dungeon city.

It was a dot of white like a miniature sun hanging high above the dungeon rooftops; high above the [Terraforming] clouds.

The globe of Veird was barely formed at all, and yet it was already turning blue with recognized Malevolence—

The Weaver pulsed in the sky.

All of the entire dungeon city turned Red and then instantly white as thick white air filled the world, all around Erick. His Sight was clear because he did not see fully with his eyes, but to his mortal-shaped eyes everything was a cloud.

And then the entire dungeon city pulsed Red and then white again.

Rozeta threw her head back and laughed an echoing laugh in the clouds, and suddenly her mortal-shaped body was gone. Phagar excused himself for the coming war effort. Erick was alone, as Rozeta appeared in the clearing sky overhead. She was brilliant white and iridescent and kilometers long. Erick had no idea where she began or ended.

“More, Erick! Break him! Rip it all asunder!”

Erick obliged.

More Weavers went out.

Some of them even managed to get more than half a meter before pulsing again and again—

A tall, busty woman appeared on the edge of the lake, wearing purple robes in the Songli style. It took Erick a quick moment to recognize Nirzir. But those were Nirzir’s deep purple eyes, pale white skin and hair, and brilliant smile. She was 29 these days and still hitting on Erick occasionally, but it was 90% normal flirting that didn’t mean anything. Erick ignored the remaining 10%.

Nirzir called out through the Red-white flashes, “Helloooo, True Wizard!”

Erick smiled. “Come on over, Champion Nirzir.”

—Nirzir stepped to Erick’s side, grinning, moving without moving to get here, saying, “I heard you’re killing armies these days!”

“As much as I can, Little Nirzir.”

Nirzir scoffed in false-injury. “I gained at least 10 centimeters of height when I got my Championship! You’re just too damned tall!”

Erick continued to put more Weavers out into the world, asking Nirzir, “Can you read the future well as a Champion of Phagar? That’s what I always wondered when I gave that up; the exactitude of the nature of the time-telling of Phagar.”

Nirzir smiled softly and a tear fell. She rapidly opened her arms and rushed Erick with a hug, burying her head against his stomach, saying, “I see so much, but we’ll get to that soon. We have some moments.”

Erick put his arms around Nirzir’s back. “I missed you, too.”

Nirzir chuckled against Erick’s stomach. And then she breathed in, and pulled back. She rapidly pointed at the map and 1,450 bright purple dots appeared among the entirely-blue Image. “Malevolence is everywhere but those are the foreseen eruption points. How many Weavers do you have up and running right now?”

“Not enough.” Erick looked up at the fog all around, and at the strobe-light of Red-then-white that continued to happen. “This mist is too much— Rozeta! I don’t have the capability to use environmental mana yet, and neither can my Siphons or the Drains. Can you clear this up?”

Rozeta’s voice was all around, “I’m working on a solution larger than this space. Send out more Weavers, all across the world, and be ready to target Claws. Make more of these Weaver spells, too.” And then she said, “I am now increasing the Script-granted mana of everything in your area.”

Nirzir was studying the strobing air and also the Image in front of her, but then she jerked, and so did every living thing within the entire dungeon city.

High ahead, Erick saw the shadowy tendrils of [Undertow Star] and all of the shadows of the node network turn absolutely radiant in the center of each tendril, like they were pulling light out of people, through straws of gloom. The Image turned deeply intricate as Erick sent Weavers out all across the world—

Nirzir held up a light image. “This is a Claw. They’re coming out. Target them at those locations.”

Erick had heard that Claws were, well, claws. It was still weird to see Nirzir hold up a lightward shaped like a literal dragon claw made of Red Lightning.

Erick had the Weavers target those.

Rapidly, the strobe of Red and misty white all around Erick simply stopped. There was no Claw here, so the Weaver overhead moved on.

The cloud of white remained behind for a while, before it soaked into the ground and into Elsewhere.

The Weaver Image transformed, slowly and then surely, the complete-blue beginning to fade, to be replaced with blue dots. Erick, Nirzir, and the Image, were behind a deep layer of dilated time, but the world out there and the scanning capabilities of the Weaver were in normal, much slower time. It took a minute for the absolute blue of the entire Image to transform into a few blue pinpricks here and there, almost all of them at every single spot where Nirzir had indicated.

Nirzir said, “Looks like I was off a little!” She chuckled, trying not to be absolutely terrified as she recognized what the map meant— And then she paused as she looked upon Eralis, her home. “Uh.”

Erick was already sending out more and more Weavers to every single spot on the map, as he said, “There is no travel time between the Weaver being made and casting at the target, because I can create the Weavers at the target.” As Erick spoke, the map was already depopulating of blue dots. “See? The Claws are already evaporating. Eralis is safe.”

Nirzir watched as the blue dots near Eralis, deep inside the map under many layers, began to vanish.

More dots appeared all over the world, though.

Erick had Nirzir focus, asking, “Any Leviathans out there?”

Nirzir’s purple eyes shimmered with fractals as she gazed upon the map, her words coming easy, “No. Thank Phagar and all the gods. No leviathans. We think he needs a real image to make one of those, and there are no more leviathan-shaped images in the world that we know of.” She breathed out. “Can you make a second map for Nothor Beasts?”

“Yes,” Erick added, “And then a third map for just Malevolence.”

And that is what Erick did.

The three maps of Veird each showed different problems. The Claw map was sometimes populated here and there, but not really. Erick still kept up on those Weaver alterations as needed.

The Nothor Beast map was 90% blue.

The Malevolence Itself map was 100% blue.

An hour of dilated time passed quickly inside the dungeon city, with Erick and Nirzir working together to direct the Weavers, when they needed directing. Only ten minutes of time passed in the rest of the world. And in those ten minutes, the only thing that had really changed was that the number of Claws were decreasing and then rapidly increasing as more and more Claws came out of hiding. The Nothor Beasts were bad news, but the Claws did the real damage. That was the Map that Nirzir focused on the most. That was the map that Erick focused on, too, rapidly deploying Weavers wherever he saw a target pop up.

And the pouring of Malevolence into Veird continued unabated, only seeming to get stronger, and yet…

“And yet no one is dying?” Erick asked himself again, finding it hard to believe, as he gazed through portals to see a few battlefields.

A Claw stepped out of Elsewhere into the skies of Candlepoint and then was instantly obliterated by a [Benevolent Cleanse]. It screamed. It died. It accomplished nothing.

It didn’t look like an actual attack, though. More like Erick had unearthed a hidden enemy that had been sleeping and then he killed it before it had fully awoken.

“No one is dying,” Nirzir said, still slightly surprised at that. “The Blue Corps is out in force with Kiri making portals and Phagar is moving people around fast, too. Mostly, the Cleanses are doing the work. The problem doesn’t look to be getting better though… Why isn’t it getting better? You said something about side realities but… each Weaver is only targeting this reality, right? I know there’s something going on with infinity, but… We’re just working on the nearby infinity, right? It should be smaller than this?” Nirzir hoped, “Right?”

Erick had covered some of the world with Weavers, but not all; not by a long shot. He was still putting more and more out there. Even the Core had Weavers in it; that’s where Rozeta was working the most right now, fixing the many problems that Erick was unearthing there. She was having a grand time; like an engineer in the throes of figuring out why their code wasn’t working and then fixing it all with perfect solutions.

Erick said, “I’m guessing here, but… The Weavers are poking holes in Infinity and disturbing an army we did not know the true size of, Nirzir. It’s a big army.”

Nirzir steeled herself. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“I’m casting more and more Weavers, but…” Erick asked the air, “Is the ambient mana fix up and running yet, Rozeta?”

Rozeta’s voice was everywhere, and she was happy, “I’m working on it! The absolute flow of mana to the core is way too large right now! I have to increase ten thousand systems to match and I have to get it right. Don’t worry about anything. People are just getting Red flashes and living in mist for a while. It’s fine! I already sent out blue boxes. Put out more Weavers!”

Erick was already putting out more Weavers. He had long since moved on from actual targets, and was now just working in a grid pattern, filling out every layer with more and more weavers, mostly on the Malevolence-clearing map, targeting ‘people under the effect of Malevolence, not already being targeted by another Weaver or pulse of [Benevolent Cleanse]’. That map was overfull of Weavers, but it needed even more—

“Ah ha!” Rozeta said, from elsewhere, “Got it!”

The mist of the world rapidly cleared, rising into the sky, revealing the land and the people and everything else. Clouds of white, thick air rose into the heavens, turning into streamers that then moseyed through the world on white rivers. Erick watched as the thick mana streamers that were common around the Core of Veird appeared in the sky.

Nirzir breathed a sigh of relief, saying, “Thank Rozeta for that; I can finally see this neat dungeon city.”

The world flashed Red with another pulse of Cleanse.

Nirzir added, “I could do without the Red pulses, though.”

Erick laughed. “It’ll get worse once I finally reach saturation.” He pointed up at the Weaver high overhead. “That thing is actually moving a meter around each time it flashes. When we reach saturation it won’t move at all and instead it will be a rapid [Benevolent Cleanse] that—” Erick raised his voice to the air, “—That will Drain this entire node network and also fill the world with ambient mana! Might take a while to reach that, though! It’s going to break the Script Second, too, and by a lot.”

Rozeta stepped to Erick’s side. “I now realize why you didn’t just put out ten million Weavers at once. I must admit I was a bit mad at you for not just filling the world with Weavers instantly. Thank you for that. I will be adjusting things. Will we know when saturation is reached?”

Phagar stepped back into the conversation. “Four or five hours from now.”

“It’ll be like a Red-and-white storm, I imagine; constant and unending and terribly destructive to all currently-cast magic.” Erick said, “I’m sure that Nothanganathor recognizes what is happening right now, but when the Cleansing really starts it’ll be a qualitative difference from what we’re seeing now.”

Rozeta breathed deep, and then she stepped away, her voice trailing after her, “I have work.”

Phagar nodded.

Erick cast more Weavers.

[Cleanse] didn’t work on spellwork, but when Erick made [Benevolent Cleanse] out of the original, he had surely made it to kill everything Malevolence-based, and Elemental Destruction was very good at destroying what it was targeted to destroy.

- - -

Erick reached something close to saturation on the Malevolence-clearing map four hours later.

All of the maps looked almost the same as they had been before, but none of the Claws were killing anyone, or even appearing anymore. The same went for the Nothor Beasts. Erick was exterminating them long before they appeared; cleansing away their connection to this land and almost all of their hidden physical forms, too.

The Weaver overhead wasn’t moving much at all before triggering another city-wide [Benevolent Cleanse]. In every direction other Weavers hung, flashing their [Benevolent Cleanse], filling the world with Red-then-white. The Weavers were bunching up on each other now, forming what Erick thought of as a slowly-filling-in Venn Diagram of the world.

And the sky was a river of thick, white air, trailing off to the south, to the downways hole near the southern pole. There were other holes in other places, and each of them held rivers of thick, white air, too.

Erick was probably a few thousand Weaver casts away from full saturation, or maybe another hour or two. It was hard to tell. Whatever the case, he said, “We’re getting close, Rozeta.”

Rozeta’s voice came to him, “We’re ready to increase the mana production of everything around you. Nirzir; you need to leave now. This increase will kill everything connected to the Script in that area. Erick will be fine.”

Nirzir and Erick had spoken about a lot as the both of them worked.

It had not been enough.

A lot had happened during Erick’s absence.

Nirzir gave Erick one final hug, then pulled away, saying, “We’ll talk about the Valkyries later. The entire world missed you. I missed you. Glad to have you back.”

Erick smiled softly. “I missed the entire world. I also missed you, Nirzir. Glad to be back.”

Nirzir sniffled once, and then she stepped away; vanishing like a fae, or a god, or just like a [Teleport] that wasn’t a [Teleport] at all.

Twenty minutes later, Erick achieved full-world saturation.

In his tests, when Erick was shooting stone pillars with Bolts, when he had 20 Weavers on 20 pillars, the Weavers did not need to reposition constantly to hit the pillars, so they were already on target to drop their payload wherever they were, so they sent streams of Bolts at those pillars.

That happened now, with city-wide [Benevolent Cleanse]s.

The air absolutely thrummed with Red Lightning that was only visible because it was being destroyed by cleansing Elemental Destruction; the true power behind [Cleanse]. All the world was Red with breaking Malevolence and then white with the remnants of Erick’s [Benevolent Cleanse]. It sounded like breaking magic. It felt like the breaking of a world, but softer. The clouds in the air were so thick that even Erick couldn’t see beyond them—

And then Rozeta and the Script took control of the ambient mana.

Tsunamis of clouds raced through the world, and all was simply breaking Red and probably a lot of people freaking out and also trying not to freak out. Rozeta’s messages were clear that this was a good thing happening.

If Erick were a normal person out there, would he believe her?

He’d probably try to go to sleep and ignore the Red breaking all around him.

Probably have PTSD about it, though.

Nothanganathor was a selfish bastard, for sure.

Erick just wanted people to have nice lives, and here Nothanganathor was taking those nice lives and twisting them into his own personal gain.

There were no people here in this dungeon city, though, and that was a good thing.

In the white dungeon city Erick had created and that Phagar had slipped through time to fill it with life, everything that was living, was dying. Erick watched as the fish in the waters began to grow mana crystals from their bodies, iridescent shards growing out of their gills. Eyes crusted over. And then the fish stopped moving as the water itself turned thick with mana, and then into mana crystal. The buildings crusted over with crystal. The little rads at the center of the cores of each slime were like seed crystals for mana crystal formation. Soon, the slimes were little colorful balls of crystal. The shadowolves hiding out in the dark spaces of the city were all crusting outward from the inside, their own rads killing them as it turned them into crystal. They didn’t have much time to panic before they were locked under solidity, like flies in white amber. Everything in the city shared the same fate, except for Erick, here at the center.

A sustained sort of injury knocked a few hundred points of damage against his Status. It was nothing he couldn’t handle.

Every single thing was still alive underneath that crystal, though, still feeding the magic here, at the center, still erupting the world in a continual splash of breaking Red and flowing white air.

Erick watched the entire procedure.

Time passed.

A lot of time passed.

Erick spent that time adjusting the maps, but mostly looking through tiny portals into the rest of the world, checking up on everything, and even talking with his family. Those portals had to remain small, though, or else the massive amount of mana in this space would kill anyone else, and even then the portals had to be shielded hard.

Cleaning the world took 26 real-hours. By then, all of the Malevolence on the map was gone; the blue targeting was no more. Even the little Malevolence that should have remained after being ‘balanced’ was gone; washed away by the Benevolence in the air that remained unbalanced and strong.

Cleaning the world took Erick 7 days, inside the [Hasted Shelter] of the dungeon city.

When it was over, Erick sat on a prominence of crystal that had grown out of the water’s edge and made a nice bench.

Within a city of white crystal, Erick looked up at the clear night sky, and the false stars of the false heavens. Erick’s own Weavers were still up there, still cascading their white glows, but without anything to target. They looked like pretty amazing stars to Erick.

And the city was ‘dead’ all around him.

It seemed he had made his own Ar’Kendrithyst.

Erick breathed in the warm air, kept warm by the various enchantments in the air which all remained strong. He glanced to the brilliant [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]s within the crystals here and there, and at the absolute strength of the node networks hanging in the air. This place had survived well, for the power of the entire Script was focused upon this space, focused on keeping it together.

And then the Script switched, and normal operating procedure resumed.

Mana crystals were not allowed under the Script, and thus the land began to break under that Authority.

It was only fair, Erick said to himself, to see this land destroy itself as it had cast Destruction out into the rest of the world. [Cleanse] balanced mana, and though it didn’t do much against active spellwork, the absolute tsunamis of mana pouring through the land in the wake of the worldwide cleaning had broken most active spellwork out there.

Enough grains of sand thrown against a mountain would destroy that mountain.

Erick’s [Benevolence Cleanse] had ruined node networks and all defensive and even offensive spellwork the world over. Anything non-instant had been swept away under a white ocean. This, then, was what Margleknot was truly afraid of when he spoke of not using this power on that land up there. Would this action, taken up there, have broken all of the Spatial Magic that kept that place together? Yes, absolutely. How about all the individual magics that kept that place running, like air-to-land containment magics that held breathable atmosphere to the various lands, and otherwise? For sure.

As it was, the Gate Network was down, completely. Even some of the Gate Spaces out there were broken, for Nothanganathor had infiltrated those spaces with his Malevolence. Erick had gotten to talk with Kiri about all of that, but he would be spending more time with her as he spent some time at the House and got all of that back up and running.

This whole thing had been a disaster. Technically.

And yet...

The Core of Veird was running better than it ever had before, for Rozeta had done miracles, to hear her talk of it. She hadn’t left Erick completely alone during this time. She checked on him and told him what was happening out there, when Erick wasn’t talking to people through portals. She had put those manaminers Erick had given her to work.

Ten million ‘people’ were gone from this world for this reason or that reason, but mostly because the ‘Day of Clouds’ had evaporated them into clouds. Some of Nothanganathor’s tricks seemed to be face stealing, with Nothor Beasts living inside people, like demons.

A lot had happened.

Erick had caught most of it. The Mind Mages had caught a lot more, and yet, the Crossing was gone. Erick’s Day of Clouds had washed away even that magic which kept [Telepathy] running across the entire world. The Mind Mages had saved most everything they needed to save, but they’d be rebuilding the Crossing for years. Preliminary Crossing magics would be up and running in a few days, though.

Almost all magical items the entire world over were slagged.

All node networks outside of Erick’s crystal dungeon city were gone; they’d need to be rebuilt, too.

This place needed to be rebuilt as well.

Erick looked all around at his crystal dungeon city, at the animals and otherwise trapped in slowly-evaporating mana stones. The crystal kept them all alive until that crystal evaporated enough to expose flesh or bark or otherwise, and then those bodies also began to break like so much broken magic, evaporating right alongside the crystal. They were still alive when they began to disintegrate. Rozeta had told Erick that their mental capacities were all gone anyway, so it wasn’t nearly as horrific as it could have been.

Still seemed pretty horrific after hearing that, but in a different sort of way.

In an hour, the dungeon city would be completely gone—

Phagar stepped to Erick’s side. “That was the single greatest defensive action we’ve been able to take against the Red. All of Nothanganathor’s current influence seems gone. It’s great to have you back.”

Erick chuckled as his emotions did a 180. Yes, there had been destruction on a grand scale, but on the whole, this was a clear and total win. Stuff had been destroyed, but stuff was just stuff; they could rebuild.

“It’s great to be back.” Erick added, “I’m going to rebuild this dungeon city in preparation for the next time, and then, after some time of peace and setting the worlds to rights and the walls to strength, I want to talk to you about Paths and settling the way to good futures through Grand Fate Magics.”

Phagar nodded. “I’m already doing those Grand Fate Magics. You can watch, and we can discuss what you see. We’re going slow, though, and not doing much. Fate Magic is not like other magic at all.”

Erick’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. Then yes; let’s do that.” He added, “And we can talk about Solomon’s Genesis, and bringing people back from Erasure?”

Phagar gave a hard look, saying, “You should lower your hopes with regard to that solution, Erick.”

Erick hadn’t spoken with Solomon about his Elemental Genesis yet because the man had looked kinda sad whenever the topic went that way, and everyone else had moved on to other subjects because they all knew something Erick didn’t, so Phagar’s warning away from hope wasn’t unexpected.

But Erick smiled anyway, saying, “I like my hopes right where they are, for if current possibilities don't allow for perfect solutions then I will find better possibilities, and help others find those better possibilities, too.”

Phagar softened. “It’s great to have you back.”

Erick grinned.