Ar'Kendrithyst

The island nation and the arcanaeum of Oceanside were named the same, because to call them differently was only something that natives did. To all the world, Oceanside was Oceanside. To Erick, Oceanside was the home of a friend, and, in a way, his alma mater, though he had only ever spent a semester here. That semester had been enough to teach him everything he wanted to know at the time, and it had been enough to be awarded an honorary diploma years after that attendance, well after Erick had become the Apparent King, during one of the calmer years.

Everyone had attended that award ceremony, and it had been a great time, though apparently Erick had been ‘not all there’ for he had been stuck in an [Onward] for a while. Erick still recalled that time fondly. The Headmaster had decorated the tall off-white pillar towers of the arcanaeum and the lightward roadways in the air with lines of black and white, but mostly white, in honor of the Apparent King.

But privately, Kirginatharp had told Erick that he wanted Melemizargo and his Shades nowhere near the Arcanaeum for that celebration, and so Erick had sent Goldie away, and told the rest to leave. Healing from wounds 1450 years in the making was not an easy thing.

And now there were new wounds, added just last week.

The wounds of the truth of Idyrvamikor as an agent of Nothanganathor, and of how the Erased One had used Kirginatharp to shape the world to his liking, through the Dragon Curse. Because of that, Kirginatharp was already stepping down from many of his responsibilities, but he was still the Second of Rozeta. He still had pull, and especially here, at his arcanaeum, at this center of learning for all of Veird.

The sun set in the sky to the west, beyond the ocean, and yet that wasn’t the sun and that wasn’t the sky at all. It was an illusion with a weaker sort of light. The sky was not nearly as orange and gold as it used to be.

It was not how it looked that one time, long ago, when Erick had met Kirginatharp for dinner with Jane, here at the Azure Room, and discussed [Duplicate]. The sky might have been different, but the crescent harbor of Oceanside looked the same, and the restaurant hadn’t changed at all, here on the northern side of the main city.

Erick stepped into a foyer where everything was blue opulence. Sapphire chandeliers adorned with white wardlights, blue vases sitting atop cream-colored plinths. Lifelike paintings of ocean life occupied central positions on the walls, and a large staircase of blue stone led up from the foyer to the blue-crystal double doors to the restaurant. The doors were already open. Soft music flowed into the foyer, along with the scent of good food to come. It was bready and spicy and meaty, and wonderful.

A pair of Cooks stood to the left, at the top of the staircase, wearing immaculate white uniforms, while the host for the evening wore a brilliant blue uniform and stood to the other side of the entrance. Erick had [Reincarnation]ed the Cooks into their current forms 8 years ago, and the host had a request on file for the same treatment. He’d probably get that treatment fulfilled, as soon as Erick set up the automatic [Reincarnation] machines at the House.

Erick’s white and silver glowthread clothes swished around him like a proper wizard’s robes, matching the décor of the room but with a different sort of opulence, almost alien in nature. It was the best thing that Erick owned, and so he decided to wear it for the night.

Erick strode forward, up the blue stone staircase.

The goldscale waiter bowed, saying, “Welcome, Wizard Flatt. The Headmaster awaits your arrival.”

Erick smiled a little at that, and then he walked down the stairs into the next room, where almost every table had been cleared away, save one. A 200 degree span of windows showed the western sky and the northern wing of the crescent harbor of Oceanside, while blue gems encrusted the ceiling and chandeliers dripped with sparkle, and a nice, comfortable table and chair set held in the middle of the room.

Kirginatharp sat on the left chair, though he stood upon seeing Erick. He was wearing the gold and white glowthread robes that Erick had brought him; they were like his normal robes, but made of otherworldly material. His expression was one of quiet concern, hidden behind a larger joy. He was every bit the image of a Chinese emperor greeting an old friend.

Despite being a dragon, the Headmaster did not wear his horns openly, and he was only his normal 170 centimeter height. Erick had chosen to put away his own horns and height for the night, so he was only a little bit taller than Kirginatharp right now.

Kirginatharp said, “Hello, Erick. Power looks good on you.”

Erick chuckled at the ice breaker. They hadn’t seen each other in two years, and a whole lot had happened in that amount of time. More than should have happened, really.

Erick easily said, “Looks good on you, too! If you want more of those clothes I think my daughters and son are having some success weaving glowthread. The wild spiders won’t be making anything for a good century, though.”

Kirginatharp grinned softly, touching the voluminous sleeve of his robes, the glowthread moving like water before settling back down to gravity’s draw. “It is a rather marvelous thread.”

The two friends sat without one of them needing to invite the other to do so, and conversation came easier than Erick thought it would. There was lots to talk about. The food was fantastic.

Halfway through the dinner, Kirginatharp changed the subject to deeper matters, casually saying, “I can’t be [Reincarnation]ed right now, Erick, to eliminate the Dragon Curse. I would lose all of my power. My longstanding denouncement of the Forever War has angered too many of the angels and demons, and there are certain elements of their nations which have already threatened to murder me if I am weakened. There’s 4 billion of them, too. The only thing stopping them from taking over the world is their own war with each other, and the threat of Nothanganathor out there.”

Erick nodded. “That’s fine. I do want to eliminate the Dragon Curse soon, though. Whenever we can. The elimination of that Curse would eliminate one of the longstanding ways in which Nothanganathor can threaten this world, and we could use those Free dragons in Ar’Cosmos as warriors against the Red, once they are able to move around freely without desiring to kill each other on sight.” Erick added, “Whenever this can be done, I want to do it, and I will protect you afterward, Kirginatharp.”

Kirginatharp chuckled. “There’s no protecting me if I were to lose power.”

Those small words had said a great deal.

“There’s a different option we could try rather than the direct fight against the Dragon Curse,” Erick said, “You could pick an ally to become Second to Rozeta and the Dragon Curse could spread to them instead, and then I could cure it from them.”

Kirginatharp shook his head a little, saying, “There are no True Dragons out there which could threaten my hold as Second to Rozeta. You’re completely immune and outside of the running for Second because of too many ways to list. This ‘Shadow’ person is right out for a different list of reasons, with only partial overlap as your own. The only one close to Second is Solomon, and he’s half-Paradoxed, so he’s out of the running, too. I have no allies among the Free dragons of Ar’Cosmos.”

“How about someone you could take a dive for?” Erick offered, “Or someone you can raise up to Second? Anyone would do, Kirginatharp.”

Kirginatharp shook his head a little, though he was thinking…

“Something to think about, anyway,” Erick moved on, “So what’s this about the Angels and Demons threatening you?”

The topic was easy enough to slide into, for Kirginatharp readily began, “They’ve usurped the entire religious underpinning of Veird in multiple ways. The Erasure of half of our original population is a small part of the problem. Mostly, the issues stem from the introduction of a million or more thousand-year-old monsters of dubious morality, all of them with a heavy penchant for psychological, proxy warfare that they have honed through the Quiet War over their long afterlives. The basic soldiers on both sides are pretty much just people, but the ones in charge… Well you know the Viridian King of Greensoil, Darundi Raivo. They’re all like him. The current Crown of the Host was from Greensoil. Almost all of those in power among the Angels were from there, too.” Kirginatharp said, “I appreciate what Solomon did for us a lot more than the average person, but he also caused a great deal of problems in saving those afterlives.”

Erick nodded. “I hear he’s annihilated several warfronts, alongside Avandrasolaro.”

“They do what they can but it simply isn’t enough when it comes to the self-reviving Angels and Demons.” Kirginatharp said, “Solomon and Avandrasolaro haven’t engaged in any soul sundering, but the Angels and Demons are doing enough of that to each other when they can, and anyone else who steps into those wars with those weapons are rapidly cut down by both sides. I’d call the Angelic/Demonic cooperation a miracle if they didn’t go right back to trying to kill each other, sometimes right on the battlefields that they had cooperated in to kill the outsiders.”

A server dished out more wine, and brought another course. This one was braised monstrous cow ribs, each a meter long and thick with meat. They were delicious, and heavily spiced with bluebell. Erick had missed that common spice; those tiny blue flowers were kinda wonderful, giving the meat an outdoorsy, wild-ish sort of taste, that was so distinctly ‘bluebell’, and hard to put into other sorts of terms. Also kinda floral and sweet.

After finishing off a rib, thinking all the while, Erick said, “I’m attempting to get some peace treaties signed, but I have met some significant blocks. Can you get the Demon King or the Crown of the Host to actually answer your requests to talk?”

Kirginatharp shook his head. “Haven’t been able to do that in a very long time. They’re Prime Gods now, you know. 2 billion followers will do that, and then you have the other 2 billion followers of the other god, polluting the divine waters with levels of hate that inspire true zealotry. As large as this world is, it is too small for the both of them. Many of the others have gotten some power back as well, for every angel and demon was originally a person— That’s probably why Sininindi survived at all…”

The conversation moved to nuance and intrigue, and the dinner continued well on into the night.

Erick still occasionally worked as he and Kirginatharp shared a meal and conversation, but it was magic done through tiny portals to the left of the dinner and not out in the open at all. House Benevolence was rather good about bringing things to his attention without needing to actually talk to him; Zolan would just set reports onto a desk and Erick would get done whatever needed to be done. Usually it was just signing paperwork, or porting a threatening letter directly onto someone’s desk to get them to stop whatever it was they were doing. Little things.

At the end of the dinner, Erick said, “Sorry for needing to work as we spoke.”

Kirginatharp smiled softly. “You’ve come a long way, Erick. Far beyond me. I’m just some administrator, now, who is mostly retired, and by necessity. You’ve earned the right to work while relaxing, if you want.” Kirginatharp said, “When this is all over, and if you were a normal person, I would wish you luck in finding some time to actually relax, but that’s just not you.”

Erick chuckled.

Kirginatharp nodded, glad his tease had landed properly.

Erick said, “It was great to see you again, Kirginatharp. Thanks for the dinner.”

“Least I could do for all you have done,” Kirginatharp said, “And when I can give you some good news on the Dragon Curse business, I will do so.”

“It’s not your fault. You were used. I was used, too.”

Kirginatharp let out an exhausted chuckle. “That’s putting it lightly.”

- - - -

“So what is Genesis?” Solomon rhetorically asked. “It’s the solidification of possibility into reality.”

Erick looked at the man. “That tells me nothing.”

Solomon laughed in a happy sort of way. He was looking pretty good these days. With a grey beard and hair and the body of a fit 50 year old man, and yet the face of a much older man, Solomon looked older than he was by far. The stress of the changing world was getting to him. It was getting to Erick, too, but Erick was Ascended, and Solomon was not. Not really.

He was doing some sort of ‘cooperative cultivation thing’ with a bunch of side realities, but even he didn’t really understand that; he didn’t really know what he had done that Day of Genesis, over 2 years ago, when he made Fenrir and the shells of Veird. Or at least that’s what Erick had been able to piece together since he had come back to Veird.

Erick didn’t push that line of inquiry just yet. Maybe he would, soon.

Erick was finally able to sit down with Solomon a little over a week after the Shelter went around Veird and the sky stopped spinning. It was not a calm sort of meeting. Even this little bit of time would need to be taken quickly, for as soon as something resembling peace had returned to Veird there had been emergency after emergency, from ten thousand different corners of the world. Everyone had stuff that they needed done right now, because everything was falling apart. From food supplies to hospitals in need of healers to 2-year-old tragedies that no one had been able to work on until now, the world was healing just a little, and in that healing, problems appeared.

Erick’s meeting with Kirginatharp the other day had been about the only calm time Erick had had since the Shelter went up, and even that hadn’t been too calm.

Solomon was similarly busy. He was on the Worldly Path, too, and had been for a while. Solomon’s Wizardly apotheosis had certainly happened on that Day of Genesis, and he was a Wizard in truth, but then the world had clawed at him in so many different ways…

Erick was still understanding all of those different ways.

Erick was here at the Black Castle of Solomon to talk with his brother about Genesis, and probably other topics. This meeting was kinda tense. It had started off okay, but then it sort of… got here, to Solomon giving Erick a non-answer about Genesis.

It was a sensitive topic, apparently.

Erick pulled back. “I don’t think I’ve asked you how you’re doing yet, Solomon. Not truly. I’ve been busy. Sorry about that.”

Solomon huffed a laugh as he shook his head a little. “Thank you for the concern, but I am doing fine. Destiny and I married six months ago, you know?”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “No, I did not know that!” He smiled wide. “That’s great! Congrat—” Erick’s brief happiness for the man faltered hard. “No one knows except for you two and Poi.”

Solomon laughed a bit more freely, that time. “I’m sure a few others know. Poi officiated. The wedding was small and private, but it wasn’t meant to be as small as it ended up being. We sent out a few invites, but every single one was lost in the mail and somehow all the people spying on me all the time didn’t get the memo that way, either. It wasn’t until a week later with me being furious at… at a lot of people, that we went investigating. The mail room at the House was attacked by the Red, and the letters never made it out.” Solomon waved a dismissive hand. “Destiny and I decided that we’ll have a bigger wedding when this war is over, and this time the letters won’t get lost. You’re invited, of course.”

“I will be there with the best gifts I can possibly make. I have to figure out those gifts first, but I look forward to the wedding!”

Solomon smiled softly. “Thank you… Anyway! You are asking about Genesis...”

He held up a hand. Glittering silver mana flowed like a river out of his palm, shaping itself into countless small things, from a tiny sword to a snow globe to a mirror to a thousand little items and even faces and arms and eyes, and none of that at all. The silver mana flowed over those images, briefly showing it as those things, before it flowed away into the air, to spread images and lost intent into the manasphere.

It sounded like the joy of Christmas without any of the normal sounds Erick would have associated with that time of the year, back on Earth. Maybe the tiny chime of a bell? Hard to say. It was more of a feeling than any real sound, anyway.

Solomon said, “Genesis is possibility. I have yet to find Debby in the possibility, but I had a small talk with Fairy Moon the other day.” Solomon closed his palm, and the chiming sound of Genesis winked out in the shaping of a fist. “She had some small words for me that almost sparked something... It felt so familiar, like coming back to a house and finding other people have moved stuff around and the light switch wasn’t where it had been for 15 years. I’m walking a Path I already walked, but differently.”

Erick felt his own Lightning Path moving erratically.

Many paths lay ahead.

Erick chose to simply acknowledge the surreality happening to Solomon. “Yup. You are.”

Solomon raised an eyebrow, and then he laughed. He smiled, and said, “Yup.” And then he breathed deep, and asked, “Can you touch Genesis at all, not being connected to the Script? I’d imagine not actually being passively exposed to the mana would fuck up any attempts to copy what you’ve never touched before.”

Erick raised an eyebrow.

He had tried, in a halfhearted manner, to use Genesis. Nothing had happened back in those attempts, and so Erick was here.

“Genesis is difficult,” Erick said, as he held up a hand and brought forth the lightning crackle of Benevolence. He moved his fingers, trying to Alter the Element into something else. He rapidly moved through almost every Element he knew. “As in Genesis seems beyond me.” He said, “Maybe I do need to actually be exposed to it, like you said, and Mana Siphon wouldn’t work for that, due to the conversion aspects of that Ability… I suppose I should try ambient mana gathering, too. Have you done anything with ambient mana?”

“I tried it.” Solomon nodded. “Ended up poorly. There’s been Malevolence in the air, but that is only half of the problem. The only person who actually uses atmospheric mana well is Syllea Wyrmrest, and only when she’s Raging. She and I had a discussion about this a while ago, when there were some attacks here and there and both of us needed more mana. Apparently it kills her to use atmospheric mana, but she survives because she is Raging and nigh-unkillable. There were a few others that could use atmospheric mana, and they were either all orcols who did it only as a last resort, or they only used atmospheric mana once and then never again… also as a last resort.”

Erick nodded. “Whelp. Let’s try it! Can you flood the room with Genesis?”

Solomon smirked. “Let’s start with this.”

Solomon held up his hands in front of him as though gripping a steering wheel, and then he released mana in a controlled ring of power that flowed out from one hand like silver charms, clinking and chiming as they went, before falling into the grip of his other hand, where those charms became the lightning-light flow of Benevolence. Solomon continued the circuit around the wheel, where Benevolence rejoined Genesis, and the crackling path of lightning became the flow of tinkling chimes.

The real show was happening in Solomon’s aura, at the juncture of his palms and the tube.

Erick watched as Solomon let mana out of himself, into a controlled ring of aura, where it became ambient mana, and then he absorbed that mana back into himself, before spitting it out again. Whatever was happening at the points of his hands was…

“Remarkable,” Erick said, studying what he was seeing. “This is a neat method of training how to reabsorb spent mana, too.”

Solomon breathed easy, but he looked like he was holding up a weight of some measure as he continued to cycle the mana like this. And then some shards of mana formed in his hands, inside of his flesh, like crystallized needles. Where he had released the Benevolence and absorbed the Genesis, there were tiny silver needles, like asbestos filaments. Where he had released the Genesis and absorbed the Benevolence, there were larger needles made of white crystal. He shook out his hands, pushing the crystals out of his skin. Only the largest crystals clinked to the floor. Most of the fragments merely dissipated, as mana crystals often did.

Solomon said, “That’s a lot more tiring than it looks and there’s more to it than what I appear to be doing, but that’s most of it.”

“You’re better at reabsorbing Genesis than you are at reabsorbing Benevolence.”

“I might have started off as Benevolence flavored, but that changed a lot. My dragon coloring is still black—” He brought his black horns out and tapped them. And then he put them away. “But all my mana is silver colored. Destiny likes to call it ‘platinum’. I think she heard that I like that color better than ‘silver’ once, and now she uses ‘platinum’ everywhere.”

Erick smiled. “Rather charming of her.”

Solomon laughed. “I’m not sure where the charms came from. They sort of just happened. I think they’re the focuses of all the side-Ericks who ‘collectively cultivated’ with me during the Day of Genesis. They’re the things they want the most, or even just passing fancies. Or the things they want back. Most of the charms are people. Only a few of them look like Jane. Vanishingly few, really.”

Erick nodded slowly, hearing the hidden concern in Solomon’s voice.

Erick thought for a moment.

He rapidly decided he couldn’t help Solomon with Debby, because that would be the wrong thing to do, for Fairy Moon was good at this and Erick… Well. He could try. But a lot of things were telling him that he didn’t need to help in this way, and to try to help was to test Fate too much...

Erick simply asked Solomon, “Are you happy with what Fairy Moon is doing to help guide you?”

Solomon flinched. “… Mostly. It’s concerning, of course, for a lot of reasons I am still digesting. Your curated manual cleared up a lot of weirdness with what Wizardry is, or could be, and the Day of Clouds made Wizardry available again, which has helped even more than that… But let’s move on.” Solomon said, “I assume, with billions of mana to your name, that you need to do a much bigger circle of cycling than I did in order to actually see your numbers shift in any meaningful way.”

“Oh yeah. Let’s see...”

Erick dove into himself, switched a few things around in his Status, and brought up his actual, full mana numbers. He was currently at 7,198,342,189 mana, and that number was going up by 1,505 per second. He was going to need to do a great big expulsion/re-absorption in order to see any change in those numbers at all.

Erick came back to himself, saying, “7 billion mana, so yeah. I would need to make a very large… Hmm. Have you tried absorbing with just your aura? Why do you use your flesh and the surface of Health to reabsorb the ambient mana?”

“So that the mana shards don’t go all the way into my soul. Health makes a nice barrier to add to mana.” Solomon shrugged. “But if you’re using Health as mana, it’s easier to use Blood Mana and some Healing Magics to restore extra mana. Ambient mana absorption is only really useful when you have no Health left and you can easily heal the damage.”

Erick said, “Can you do the cycling again? Explaining the whole thing?”

Solomon held his hands like he was holding a steering wheel again, and then he created a circular, solid wheel of controlled aura. He widened the center of that circle, to make it a tube, releasing mana from both of his hands to do so, creating a space of ambient mana that was already his own mana.

Solomon said, “That’s the easy part, and it looks like you got it.”

“Tube of aura that you fill with your own mana, thus removing the complication of using actual ambient mana, while still providing a difficulty of ‘intent-dead’ mana to reabsorb.”

“Yup.” Solomon said, “And now, I expel Genesis with one hand and Altered Benevolence with the other, flowing them through the tube in a circle, using Elemental Mystical at the edges of my palm, inside of my body, to direct the flow, and to absorb the flow. The Mystical is there to bridge gaps and to ‘induct’ the now-ambient mana back into my body, convincing the ambient that it is real. You can do it with some [Renew] framework if you wish, and I suggest you try that first, and concentrate only on the Benevolence in the air, but that is only useful for throwing out your own mana and bringing it back to you.

“Doing it that way is just as hard as doing it this way, though.

“Much of the Benevolence of this world is not actually yours anymore, anyway; it is what we seeded here among the other people. In a complete mana vacuum, maybe such a ‘recycled mana ability’ would be useful, and it is; like on the various low-mana-density floors of Atunir’s Glittering Depths in Greendale in the Greensoil Republic, or in space. But we’re not in a mana vacuum, and Malevolence hides everywhere.

“Maybe you can make an Ability that allows you to throw out spellwork and then reabsorb that mana you threw out there, at the cost of… resons? Or something? I’m not sure.”

There was a lot there.

Solomon continued, “Anyway, you can try to make the Renew-shape with your hand and a tube, because gods know I tried that the first time and it worked okay, but it doesn’t actually help. Or at least it doesn’t help me. Perhaps, if I was still Benevolence, it would, but I’m not Benevolence anymore.

“And you’re not trying to reabsorb Benevolence; you’re trying to get some Genesis and use that, which requires you to have experienced Genesis from taking it from the environment.”

Solomon stopped.

Erick had a long think.

Solomon watched. “Want to just Mana Siphon some Genesis from me?”

“No,” Erick said, “I want to solve this problem in a much deeper way. Not like Mana Siphon —as it is—allowed me to suck in any of the extra abilities that were littered around Margleknot.”

Solomon nodded, asking, “You didn’t even try though, did you? Didn’t you say that Margleknot gave you a vein of power in your house to draw from, and you didn’t draw from that vein?”

Erick winced… And then he relaxed. “Well. There were other powers in the air. Lots and lots of them. Pretty sure I got some experience with Elemental Fate from a friend I made, but…” Erick held up a hand and tried channeling Elemental Fate… And promptly got nowhere. Benevolence came out of his hand and then fluttered around. “Fate is Banned, so if I got Fate then I don’t know how to use it.” Erick said, “I certainly don’t think the problem is that Benevolence cannot be Fate or Genesis, but this is all very new to me, and yeah, I probably do need to take in some ambient Fate and Genesis and all the rest that I might find later, littered around the world.”

“You Siphoned Malevolence, right?” Solomon asked, “Can you do Malevolence?”

“Ha!” Erick smiled. “You know? I never even tried, and I’m going to keep it that way.”

Solomon smiled. “Yeah. Me, too. Try the ambient collection solution.”

Erick made a tube of ambient Benevolence in the air, holding it at the bottom with his gripped hand. It was an upside-down [Renew] ring, with Erick’s gripped hand at the opening.

Erick flooded the tube toward the right with Benevolence. White lightning-light rushed out in that direction, rapidly becoming nothing more than invisible, ‘dead’ mana, as it swam around the tube toward the top and then around the other side. This caused an increase in mana pressure in the tube, because Erick was both in complete control of the tube and he had a lot of mana to push.

He tried opening his soul on the other side of the tube.

… And nothing happened as the tube filled with denser and denser mana. Only a few seconds passed, and the tube rapidly crystallized, all at once, in complete defiance of the Script’s control over the land and this space. Too much mana from Wizards kinda did that. Erick released the space and the mana crystal rapidly vanished, for the Script had taken over again, though it never really stopped.

So there were some problems.

Erick suggested, “Let’s go into the dungeon? You can turn down the ambient mana in there?”

Solomon said, “Sure. It won’t help, though. You did everything correctly, just not the re-absorption part.” Solomon stood, asking, “Want to see the Black Gate anyway? I was wondering if you could help me bring some stuff out of it that was too big for me, but we don’t have to do that now, either.”

Erick remained seated, because now he really Looked at Solomon. “You’re not okay. What’s wrong?”

Solomon was about to play it off as nothing was wrong.

Erick waited.

And then Solomon sighed. He sat back down. “My first fuckup which caused the whole world to turn against me was the loss of the Lifeblood Heart. That giant mana heart left me, zipped away through all the adamantium shells overhead, avoiding every single person who should have caught it, and then went sailing into the void. Rozeta kinda hated me for that. She wasn’t the only one. It was… tough.” He sighed, then said, “Gods, it’s so weird to be talking like this— I lost track of gravity! I swear I did, but the mana history showed my inner ears telling me where gravity was, but I aimed in the opposite direction for some stupid fucking reason. I’d blame Malevolence, since that’s so fashionable these days, but I fucked up somehow and I have no idea how. But! Even the worst case scenario was that that stupid fucking Heart should have still been in the sky doubling everyone’s mana generation for years, no matter where it went… But Nothanganathor ate it, obviously. He had to have. Pretty much confirmed-without-confirming.”

A lot of people when they poured their hearts out only wanted someone to vent to; someone to listen.

Solomon wanted solutions, and he wanted Erick to have those solutions.

“Want to make a new Heart?” Erick asked, completely serious.

Solomon’s bad mood evaporated. “Yes. I do want to make a new Heart. I was hoping that with you here, that you and I can work together to pluck it out of the Dark, even though it’s already gone. I tried for a long while to find it again on my own, but… You know how you suspected that we were only ever going to get one chance with a lot of things we take from there? That turned out to be true, and the Heart was one of those.”

Erick said, “I was thinking we could do something with the Awakening Machine stuff, actually; we can leave the old solutions in the past. You know how the Lifeblood Heart doubled everyone’s mana production within several light years of distance? The Awakening Machine turns a 1-mana-per-day person into a 50-MPD person. Whatever is going on there is some of the same sort of thing, but the scale is obviously completely different. Perhaps too different? I don’t know. The Awakening Machine is great for low-level people, but the Heart is fantastic for high levels and on a vastly increased scale.”

Erick let his words hang out there.

And Solomon had a lot of sudden thoughts, chaining off of each other. Erick couldn’t read his mind, but he could see Solomon thinking deeply. Something flickered in the man’s body, in his very soul, like a wave of invisibility sweeping through the clouds of Solomon’s being. Erick doubted that Solomon noticed, because the Script obscured that sort of thing. Erick noticed it. It was the flow of resons in a person; a golden light that was obscured.

Erick realized something himself, in that moment, about Truths and purpose and the multiplication of mana production due to better futures, and wondered if Solomon would share in his realization.

The Awakening Machine was an act of Authority demanding the waking of possibilities of a better future. This act caused mana production to rise. It did more than that, though. The Awakening Machine also helped increase reson production. All magic was linked, after all; even the magics of different universes.

That was why the people at the Awakening Machine Research Center were having such difficulty understanding it.

Erick was starting to suspect that there was no understanding it. It was magic. Yes, people would be devoting a lot of time and effort into studying it all, and there were likely some underlying principles they could discover aside from the nebulous thing that the Awakening Machine ‘awakened someone to the possibilities of More’. But it was like a fundamental principle of the universe; past a certain point, things just worked that way.

Erick grinned at that thought.

… And then he thought more.

Perhaps the underlying truth of the Awakening Machine and the Lifeblood Heart was truly rooted in Wizardry and Authority; that things worked how they worked because people decided they worked that way—

Ah.

… Was the Lifeblood Heart, perhaps, the failed Ascension of a Creation Wizard?

Maybe a dead god?

Or rather, was the original Lifeblood Heart any of those things?

Melemizargo had spoken about the nature of the Lifeblood Heart before, but it was the sort of explanation that Shadow had given about ‘what is the Dark Mark’; ‘It’s a thing that does a thing, Erick. What more do you need to know?’ Obviously neither of them had spoken exactly like that, but that was the gist of it all. Melemizargo never bullshitted anything, but he was a god, and he preferred giving people hints about deep truths, so that they would discover those truths on their own. Shadow did the same.

The fact was that the Lifeblood Heart had been a part of the Dark and Melemizargo until it had been liberated from the Black Gate, in the dungeon down at the bottom of Solomon’s Black Castle. Everything that had come out of the dungeons was like that. Were all those things taken from the Dark the original thing? Not really, and yet they were. Did they function the same as they ‘used to function’? Also yes.

How?

Well.

That’s where Wizardry happened.

Erick was reminded of the infinite density mana crystals of the Glittering Depths, upon which he had based his own Ascension to Wizardry.

When the people of Greensoil were making that Grand Dungeon, and replicating those dense crystals, they were piggybacking off of the idea of infinite depth crystals that were first made in the Old Cosmology. On that original world where the mana-diamonds came to be, the creation of the infinitely dense crystal had first required that someone have that idea, and then make that idea happen. Literally make it happen, too. Once the original idea had occurred, there was a shift in the local manasphere which made it easier to replicate the ‘impossibility’ of the original creation.

Like the world had learned something new.

Like the introduction of Renew to Veird, or Particle Physics to Earth, or any number of other large creative events. ‘The world’ had learned something new.

Solomon was learning something new right now.

Erick felt like he was learning something new, too, but it wasn’t about the Lifeblood Heart, or mana creation. It was about Paradox, and Benevolence, and Renew, and Genesis. But mostly about this ambient-mana-thing that his Genesis-conversation had turned into.

Erick wasn’t sure when it had happened, but suddenly—

Erick spoke, “I’m—”

“I need—” Solomon started right with Erick.

“Go ahead.”

“You first.”

Erick rapidly said, “I need to go play around with some spellwork, now.”

“Me, too.” Solomon asked, “Catch you around in an hour?”

“Maybe a little longer.”