Ar'Kendrithyst

From Fenrir, Veird hung in the sky like a silver, blue, and white illuminated marble. It was one of many such marbles, but only Veird was an actual planet. All the other spots in the sky were light sources to shine down upon Fenrir.

From Veird, Fenrir appeared like half of the universe; a land that stretched out to infinity in every single direction. Due to the size difference, Veird was a drop of a world hovering above an ocean of a much larger world.

Surrounding them all was the star-filled universe.

They couldn’t be more physically different, and yet, both lands held the same people. Veird held all of those who were originally from Veird, while Fenrir’s patchwork-lands were also from Veird, stolen from their original world and then planted down on the one below. It appeared, in some places, like Nothanganathor had scraped away the lands of Veird with a giant palette knife and then spread them out over the adamantium shell, like rough peanut butter on bread.

Veird was organized, and prepared for battle, but it was not prepared for battle against so many of its own people. To Veird, the surface of Fenrir had filled with people from the side realities of Veird a little over a week ago. Veird had made plans to fight against esoteric Wizard-defenses and to penetrate Fenrir, to take it over, and then to fight Nothanganathor on the surface of the sun.

They were not prepared to fight their own people.

Fenrir was likely prepared to fight against its own people.

“Because Malevolence likely picked out the people it needed to pick out for Nothanaganthor to win this war,” Erick said, in the command center of the Blue Corps, and then he lightened his tone, “Or at least that’s the most logical course of action for him! But we don’t really know yet. Not until we actually do it; until we make our moves, and see what happens. Things are going to get very confusing for some of you, but that’s fine. Let’s open with Plan Surround and Consume.” Erick asked the technicians, “How is that plan coming along?”

Killzone, with senses spread wide, said, “Looks about 75% of the way to ignition.”

Erick glanced over to the Spellsurge Mountain readouts, and saw that yeah, the northern one was just about ready.

Erick nodded, leaving the organization up to Killzone. He turned and looked to Shivraa, who was on standby as the main contact of the Valkyries, in the back of the room. The 3-meter-tall, pale-violet ice-queen of Carnage-Death-and-Blood, was looking at Erick with a particularly strange sort of look. Her head was tilted a little, her eyes focused on Erick, but also in the far, far distance.

Erick asked her, “Valkyries on standby?”

Shivraa came back to herself. “Yes.” And then she stared again, and this time it was directly at Erick. “You’re different.”

Rozeta, Jane, Evan, and a few curious technicians and other people in the command center had similar questions on their minds, though they did not voice them a second and third time. Shivraa had only asked the once, though, and she probably felt Erick’s change the most of anyone in the meeting. Erick judged that withholding knowledge from her would impact her ability to do her job correctly, since it was likely true that every single Valkyrie was now feeling what Shivraa was feeling, and probably none of them understood that uneasiness.

It had taken Erick a while to understand that uneasiness, too, but he had experienced it enough back when he spent 30 years on Earth, retreading his own history over and over again to get things right.

Erick said, “One of the side effects of True Paradox magic is that a True Time Mage interacts a lot with the side slices of the Layers of Infinity of the Fractal Universe in an attempt to remain on the one they are trying to remain on. That is the real weirdness most of you are likely feeling. Right now, as the Node Networks for the various spell cannons warm up, and the [Seeds of Atunir] are loaded into the chutes, I am probably somewhere, at one of them, at this very moment in time, doing a few different things. A future version of me, anyway. Phagar is probably pissed at me, but he’s likely dealing with the version of me elsewhere; the one that actually committed the sin of doubling in time, telling me to do less of th—”

The world was thin, and then it was not.

Reality snapped solid into place, and a certain kind of growing unease in the room was suddenly once again taut.

Rozeta said, “Phagar is stabilizing it.”

“Excellent!” Erick said—

“Sirs!” called out one of the technicians, responsible for what appeared to be one of the [Infinite Imaging]s that targeted the airspace of Veird. “There’s something out there!”

Among the room there were many differently-sized screens, showing off this or that information.

Killzone saw what the guy had seen. His eyes glanced at Erick, even as he said, “Big screen it.”

The technician pressed some buttons and his working screen showed on the main screen, where everyone could see.

At the north pole of Veird, just to the side of Yggdrasil’s body up there, a black dragon took off from the Silver Surface of the Silver Forest and launched into the sky. It was Erick, and right below that takeoff was the Spellsurge Mountains—

Phagar stepped into the command center, the world fracturing and then coming back together. He looked like Erick, since that’s who he was dealing with right now. He said, “Erick. Please don’t thin the Godpact like that. I stabilized it, and can do so more easily in the future, but keep that to a minimum. Also, you need to be there for the spell castings. They get corrupted by Malevolence once they reach the Edge.”

Erick nodded, then he said, “I’ll try to keep the real Paradox work off of Veird, but it’s going to happen here and there, Phagar.”

“I know and accept this. Now get going, fae.”

There were gasps around the room. Rozeta just frowned a little, though, as if confirming what she already knew. Jane exclaimed, ‘What!’ while Evan went, ‘The fuck?’. Killzone snorted. Shivraa went, ‘Ahhh. Yes.’

… So maybe they were sensing that weirdness, and not his time-doubling weirdness? Well then.

“Already?!” Jane exclaimed.

“Took about 30 years, or maybe more. Not sure about that,” Erick said, and then he went and hugged his daughter again, saying, “I love you.” He grabbed Evan and hugged him, too, ignoring the tears in his own eyes as Evan squeezed once more, and then let go. With a smile, Erick said, “Surprisingly enough, when the fae say to ‘cultivate Elemental Life’ to Ascend to Fae, they don’t mean literally, and yet they mean very literally. I’m just glad I didn’t copy Fairy Moon’s alliteration compulsion, or whatever is going on there. She’s the only one that does that, you know— Well. There are probably others, I’m sure. Not many!”

And then Erick Stepped away, and it felt awful to drop that on his family, but it also felt amazing to actually be inside a proper manasphere again. It was like living in the desert, and finally the rains had come. As Erick stepped through time, he began to hum.

“I bless the rains down in aaaafricaaa...”

… Maybe he had one compulsion. To sing? Yeah.

That seemed about right.

- - - -

As Erick Stepped to the base of the Spellsurge Mountains, he watched his dragon self fly to the Edge of the Script alongside a massive payload of magic that dwarfed his own body. It was like watching a black bird flying next to a bright gold car.

Erick turned his gaze back to Veird… and the mountains would keep. He turned to the right and looked at Yggdrasil’s tree body. Erick’s largest son was as massive as usual, looking like an entire set of mountains himself, all green and white and rainbow-crowned.

Yggdrasil’s orcol-sized avatar stepped to Erick’s side, looking him up and down, and then looking up into the air, at Erick’s dragon self up above with that spellwork, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He turned back to Erick-on-the-ground… he paused, as his thoughts fully formed. “Ah. I was wondering what that weirdness was. It’s like that, eh?”

Erick smiled. “Are you multidimensional and non-linear, too?”

“I’m not, but I can recognize it easily enough. I was more focused on the fae-thing, though. Congrats, Father.” Yggdrasil smiled a little— And then he frowned. He looked to Erick. “You don’t know how this war is going to go, do you? You didn’t study up before you came back?”

“I did not. I didn’t want to give it any weight. How does Margleknot react to time wars like this? Phagar didn’t seem to like it.”

Yggdrasil judged that an acceptable answer, then said, “We don’t deal with time travel on Margleknot because there’s only one way to deal with time traveling shenanigans, and that is to not support them, so they end up going elsewhere. People get warnings, though, and then if they violate those warnings we stop assisting them. They get blackballed. That means that they’re fair game to steal from and kill and sunder, though only the truly unfortunate ones ever have that happen to them. We do, of course, have some time travelers on Margleknot, but they know not to show off or do anything like that, because then they get blackballed. It’s a whole… a whole thing, really, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of how that all works out.

“Usually time travelers get employed by people so that they can live luxurious lives on Margleknot but employ their powers outside of our protected space, and that’s allowed. Since the people who employ them aren’t actually time travelers themselves they aren’t blackballed, either. It’s… It’s a whole subculture and an honor system.” Yggdrasil looked up at the sky with Erick, as dragon Erick closed in on the Edge of the Script, alongside the payload from the Spellsurge Mountains. “Nothanganathor’s Establishment-based magic is one of the reasons that Nothanganathor got in good with Eldraki and the Council; he didn’t do this sort of time magic at all. Now did he do this sort of Time Magic outside of Margleknot? I honestly don’t know, father.” He added, “But you’re doing this sort of Time Magic a lot, and that’s… Well. You’re fae, too, so they’ll probably trust you with this stuff.”

“Ah…” Erick said, “I did a lot of Time Magic outside of here. I spent about ten years working on corruption cleansing out there in the universe, for Margleknot and the Fae Council. Most of it during this time or before. I was a Hidden Asset.”

“Oh! Well.” Yggdrasil looked a little embarrassed for a moment. “That would be one of the ways that Margleknot would trust you to have this sort of power, then. Are you going to close this loop, or are you going to rip the loop?”

“Since I didn’t research this war for Reasons, and therefore I have no idea how it’s going to go, I’m probably going to rip the loop.”

Yggdrasil breathed deep. “Ah. Damn. Not a great prognosis, then?”

Erick smiled wide, and said, “What do you mean? The war is going to happen perfectly in our favor!”

At that very same moment Erick’s future self broke through the Edge of the Script, ahead of the spell payload coming in right behind him, right into a sea of Red, hovering invisibly out there. The Red ripped at Future Erick’s draconic body, but Future Erick ripped the Red sky right back, a great ring of white lightning surrounding his body, spreading out wide and deep into the Red before flashing across everything.

It was like the universe had been briefly parted by White, and then the White spread into the Red, consuming and multiplying, the White continually ripping until all the Red was gone. And then Erick opened his mouth and swallowed the power he had spat out there, like a glutton eating a prepared meal, or the opening at the bottom of a whirlpool. Pink sparks flowed into him, becoming White before they got too close, and then disappearing into his maw and into his black scales, like power becoming one with a void.

Future Erick pulsed once more with white, sending out a dome of power that kept going, and going, and going, and encountering nothing, like a roar into an endless void that held no echo at all.

The spellwork payload crested out of the Edge of the Script, into the void that Future Erick had prepared, and then it kept going, without Red interruption.

Current Erick watched with Yggdrasil on the Silver Surface, as the spellwork crashed into its targeting point; one of the glowing spheres of artificial sunlight about three hours away as-normality-flies, but only about 2 seconds away as Future Erick flew. In a single blink, Future Erick flew with that magic, and was suddenly at the artificial light.

Future Erick was a single dot of black against a radiant ‘Sunlight Ward’ the size of a moon.

Moon-sized entities were fine to battle, though.

Future Erick blasted a cone of Benevolence at that artificial sun, eradicating a small ocean of Red within the center of the thing, and then weaving a spell that allowed the payload that had come from Veird to implant itself into that ‘sunlight’. Within a second of reaching the middle of that dissipating light, the payload detonated, and an actual moon formed.

And then the moon blossomed.

Iridescent white light swirled into a planetoid that rapidly sprouted into a land of solid gravity, tower after tower of half-kilometer-wide bamboo stretching far into the illuminated sky, and branches that acted almost as sky bridges. Water spilled out everywhere and slimes bloomed into life as light-filled branches shone out light into the void. The [Seed of Atunir] started producing mana almost instantly.

So that worked out well.

Erick cast his senses into the Spellsurge Mountains, to see what was happening on this end.

The Spellsurge Mountains were one of several launch sites around the world that Erick and others had raised from the Silver Surface and adapted into great gathering spots for spellwork. The mountains themselves looked like mountains from the outside —in that they were craggy and kinda green with plants here and there— but if one were to fly over them, they would see that those mountains were a facade. A great, big, hundred-kilometer-wide-and-long facade.

Behind that facade lay massive tunnels, tens of kilometers wide at the largest, and only a kilometer wide at the smallest. Each tube was primed to hold different kinds of magic, while the whole organization was overseen by an archmage, to ensure that the node networks and payloads were all working as they should. This particular location was overseen by Archmage Tenebrae, and his wife, Palodia, both of whom Erick had [Reincarnation]ed a while ago, transforming them from very old human and less old incani, respectively, into teenager orcols. They were now happily married, and Tenebrae had some new [Familiar]s, like the Rockys that had come before him, but very young.

The tube they had used to fire the [Seeds of Atunir] seemed to have acquired a melting problem, and Tenebrae’s ‘Rocklings’ were rushing around the glowing hot stone mountain, putting magma-fied walls back into place and strengthening the node network, which had overloaded. Those little rock dudes didn’t seem to mind the quartz-melting temperatures of the place, which was pretty good for them. No one else could enter the disturbed land.

The various rank and file people of this Spellsurge installation were busy in the command center or in the back end, putting node networks back into place that had blown like fuses, and restocking mana batteries of various kinds.

The actual [Spellsurge Weave] that controlled the planetoid overhead seemed to be doing just fine, even though all the tech hooked up to that floating, magic map seemed to indicate that there had been a lot of massive problems. Readouts blinked red here and there, but those red warnings were calming down, back to white. They had done tests with this stuff, but obviously not any large tests. This was the first real test of the system, and the problems encountered in the first real test of the system were rapidly being solved and becoming a memory...

Erick glanced up at the sky and watched as Future Erick wrangled with the new planetoid, bolstering it and doubling its size through the furious growth of the bamboo.

Erick nodded. He saw the work he had to do, and he would do that work later.

Between adventuring and working, Erick much preferred working. ‘Working’ was just something you did to make the world a better place. Work was easy, and most of the time Erick enjoyed his work. ‘Adventuring’ was fraught with peril and the baked-in idea that you might not survive the adventure. Like, sure. There was some danger coming up ahead in this battle with Nothanganathor, and Erick had no idea how the whole ‘Nothanganathor is already the God of Magic in the future’-thing would pan out, but he was seeing work ahead of him; not some grand adventure.

Yggdrasil spoke up, “It seems to be going well? The mountains melted a little when that much power flowed through them, but that was a normal sort of accident, and Tenebrae is already repairing them.”

“Any clue how Nothanganathor is keeping his Red out there invisible and ready? Is he really aura-controlling everything out there, or is it something simpler? Some tool?” Erick asked, “Is it the Whirlpool? Solomon prepared against that with that Ocean Calmer he pulled out of the Black Gate, but does the Whirlpool perhaps have a calmer setting besides ‘destroy everything’?”

The Whirlpool was supposed to be a multi-world destruction artifact that was responsible for the collapse of some ancient civilization and which made a small part of the Old Cosmology simply uninhabitable. The Sundering maybe could have gathered that artifact and brought it under Nothanganathor’s Sign of Power, but perhaps that wasn’t what was happening here. Nothanganathor would need to be able to turn the Whirlpool off, first of all, and Erick doubted such a thing was possible. The story of the Whirlpool wasn’t something Erick was wholly aware of, or even concerned about, but it was one of many small concerns and perhaps the easiest one to point out as the source of Nothanganathor’s ability to control his aura all the way out here, past Fenrir.

Maybe the Whirlpool didn’t work outside of a mana ocean, and worrying about the Whirlpool was just like worrying over randomly dying while eating dinner, or something? Sure, it could happen, but it wasn’t bloody likely.

Erick wanted the source of Nothanganathor’s power to be a tool that he could steal or break.

That would be nice.

Yggdrasil guessed, “He could have found a version of the Whirlpool that worked selectively instead of one that just turned on and then swept everything away?” He shrugged. “Nothanganathor used everything he ever came across and hoarded a lot more. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Erick smiled a little bit and then Erick hugged his son, saying, “I missed you. Is Ophiel around?”

Yggdrasil chuckled onto his father’s shoulder. “I’m glad to see you’re still a hugger after whatever stuff went down beyond the present.” He added, “Ophiel is at the southern Spellsurge Mountains, but mostly he’s with Teressa in Benevolence Itself.”

Erick let go, nodding. “I’ll see them soon, too. Gotta work!”

Yggdrasil smiled.

Erick Stepped over to the mountains before Stepping back in time—

Tenebrae stood right in front of him, looking slightly miffed and with papers in his hands. “He said you’d appear here, but I didn’t rightly believe it.” He shoved the papers against Erick’s chest, saying, “Dammit if I didn’t see it for myself. Get going!”

The rocklings near Tenebrae looked at the ground, speaking at the ground as they said, “Sooooorryy.”

Tenebrae took a much nicer tone with his kids, saying, “You don’t need to apologize to people appearing out of nowhere. They are very rude for doing that.” He looked to Erick. “Aren’t you.”

Erick smiled as he read the papers, saying, “See you earlier~” as he Stepped—

- - - -

Erick Stepped out onto the control chambers of Spellsurge Mountains, Northern Wing, right into the grappling arms of two suddenly-appearing Rocklings. Stone surged around Erick, and Erick let the kids grab him, for they didn’t hurt and Erick didn’t want to hurt them back.

The control center looked the same. Kinda relaxed. It was a mage’s research and control center, after all. Not a military installation; not really. Tenebrae wasn’t a crotchety old man anymore, but he still demanded to be in total control of his own facilities, and this was his facility, completely. It was also the easiest facility for people to abandon if things went wrong, so Tenebrae had gotten the honor of setting up the systems and shooting the first rounds of spells.

While Erick looked around, the rocklings on him roared,

“Halt! Unauthorized entry into a restricted space! You are being detained! Do not resist!”

Tenebrae had been sitting in a chair, watching everything happen in front of him, in various floating screens both magical and electrical, from Margleknot. But now he whipped his head around even as his kids were grappling Erick. He launched from his seat, rapidly, angrily saying, “What the fuck are you doing here? You just disappeared off the battlefield and then you come back here? Do you want to get me targeted?! You shouldn’t be anywhere near here!”

Erick laughed at that—

Phagar stepped out into the air, splitting the world with fractals. His voice was much more measured than Tenebrae’s. “You are endangering the stability of the Godpact with this sort of magic, Erick, because you are directly targeting the Godpact, and I know when the Godpact is targeted.”

Erick returned to professionalism. He said to Tenebrae. “Please relax your children.”

“Bah, you bastard dragon!” Tenebrae spat, and then he —much more softly— told his kids, “You can let the Apparent King go, kids.”

The rocklings startled as Tenebrae named Erick.

Or rather, Named, with a capital letter and all that. Erick had always wondered when the ability to be Named would happen to him, and it appeared that time was now. Tenebrae’s voice was merely the closest one to Erick, and he was rather strong as a mage, and so perhaps that’s why Erick had felt a light touch upon himself when the words ‘Apparent King’ entered the air, cast as they were from Tenebrae like the tossing of a stone into a still lake.

That was going to get terribly annoying if he had no way to shut it off.

Anyway. The kids were having a much different reaction to Erick’s Naming, or rather, to Tenebrae’s request.

Their arms rapidly dissolved and they slunk away, sobbing about not recognizing Erick. The rocklings were all about 1.5 meters tall, so like a short human, but they were all sized for orcol sensibilities, just like Tenebrae was an orcol himself these days, so they were rather darned short in that respect. Halfpints, really. Halfpints that cried tears of silver.

Tenebrae patted their heads and told them, “It’s alright. He shouldn’t be here anyway. Even the God of Time and the End says so.”

Phagar nodded, smirking.

Erick handed over Tenebrae’s own notes, saying, “It appears I need to be here to help get this payload off the ground. Please implement your own changes as fast as you can.”

“… What the f— Ah. Time shit. Yeah yeah yeah…” Tenebrae’s voice trailed off as he grabbed the notes, reading them in full though he had likely already read them with his own mana. Without looking up at Erick, he said, “Something is wrong with you, Erick. What’d you’d do to yourself?”

Phagar arched his eyebrow at Erick, as though requesting the same answers.

Erick told them both, “I’m fae. I’m also going to war out there from here, so if you could please tell me how long it would take to implement your changes to your own workings?”

Tenebrae said, “A minute. I’m already changing things out there.” He looked up at some screens. “Looks like the systems are all blue from here, but this stuff is a revert to a less-safe version of the system… But the end result is a more stable spell matrix, as long as it can be protected.” He looked to Erick. “We opted for less power and a weaker endspell in favor of more protections, but I guess you’re riding the spell to the target which is now an actual target, so you can guide the spell to power better that way? You sure you want to go out there, yourself? I thought you’d be safe, but you were just eaten by a fish.”

“Eh!” Erick said, “I’m a fae that can time travel properly.”

Phagar said, “And you need to be careful with that, Erick.”

Erick nodded. “I’ll do what needs to be done. Thank you for your allowances.”

Phagar breathed in, and then he stepped away, into fractals, saying, “Atunir is telling me she’s ready to assist with the spread of this slightly altered plan. She’ll be back later, to talk, and so will I.”

Erick nodded at that, and then he asked Tenebrae, “No questions about fae, or Time?”

“I want some Juubi cakes from Greendale in Greensoil, at a little shop on the corner of Bushings and Down. Aim for 25 years ago, before the original grandma passed on the business to their grandson and he ruined the recipe—” Tenebrae thought for a second. He added, “Might have been 35 years ago.”

Erick smiled, and then he turned to a splash of light that Stepped up into the mountains above, though his voice lingered in the command center, “I’ll think about it!”

“Do more than think!”

And then Erick was a giant fuck-off dragon, standing over the mountains, waiting for the spell to weave itself in the base of one of the ten-kilometer-wide cylinders. About 13 various alarms went off inside the command center, speaking of blockages above the spell tunnels, while many of the screens showed as much of Erick as they could. It was only on the largest overview screen that Tenebrae actually got to see all of Erick. A 15 kilometer wingspan was pretty massive, after all.

Tenebrae frowned, saying, “Oh fuck right off with that shit.”

And then he got to pressing some buttons, muttering about damned fucking dragons.

Soon, light blossomed in the bottom of the main spell launcher, and Erick wove some more magic into the working, smoothing out bumps and crystallizing spells himself, now that much of the conduits were relaxed. Power poured in fast and hot, and the temperature started to rise as crystals manifested in semi-liquid form, the very Script trying to destabilize what was happening in the tunnel.

“Ah,” Erick said, “That didn’t happen in our tests.”

Erick fixed it with an application of his own Authority, taking over the brunt of the Script’s anger at the spellwork hims—

A blue box appeared.

It appears there were some fish in the Core and they were messing with various systems, including the Weaver system.

Kirginatharp killed them.

They spawned from him, though.

This Dragon Curse plan of yours has some holes, and perhaps we should reconsider that whole thing.

~Rozeta

Erick nodded at that, and said, “We’ll speak later about that, too. Glad to hear it went well. Kirginatharp is safe?”

He’s okay.

Thank you for your concern.

Erick nodded and then dismissed the box as he finished his machinations with the spellwork at the bottom of the spellsurge tunnel. That magic glowed like ephemeral power, now, radiant with gold and iridescence and white.

The spell launched, blossoming like a nuclear bomb mushrooming into the sky.

Erick rode the giant mass of spellwork into the sky.

When he reached the Edge, he entered a Red Ocean that he promptly subdued with a massive [Fulmination Aura], Benevolence-style that shot lightning across the Red-filled void exactly as though it were actual water, which was great for getting some distance on that spellwork. One flash later, and Erick had ‘killed’ the red. And then his [Undertow Star] aura came out, and shadowy tendrils gathered the half-dead Red and drew it inside, like Erick was swallowing the ocean.

The pink turned Red here and there, but applications of Benevolence broke up the Red—

Nothanganathor’s direct attention was on the Red, through Domainwork, trying to sneak into Erick, but Erick had practiced too well against that shit to be fooled. Erick spat out flickers of Benevolence lightning even as he drew the ocean of power into himself, crashing his Domain directly against the Erased One’s.

Fighting with Domains was a bit like aura fights. The smaller, stronger aura was usually able to pierce the larger, softer aura, but when strengths met with strengths, the winner usually came down to a matter of mana-versus-mana, or desire and control versus the same qualities in the other user. That was normal combat, though.

This, right here, was also a Wizard duel.

Erick was the one physically present, though, and that made all the difference.

It was like wrestling over the remote control, to decide who got to watch what that day. Nothanganathor started off strong, his control on the Red like an iron grip, but Nothanganathor was fighting from behind the walls of Fenrir, like an older brother stuck with one arm behind his back. Erick pounced, and pried, and then he won. The Red fell out of Nothanganathor’s control, and Erick devoured it.

With the [Seed of Atunir] now protected, Erick rode the spellwork out of the Script, across the void, pulling the spellwork behind him as fast as a single Step. Once at the target, Erick devoured the Red inside the false sun that was their target. Soon, the planetoid of the [Seeds of Atunir] was growing strong, and Erick departed the battlefield to rejoin Veird, flying sedately back to—

Erick was about halfway back to Veird when a faster-than-light arc of Red Lightning was a single meter away from impacting the new planetoid.

The Red lighting hadn’t even gathered from anywhere. It had simply appeared.

And then Erick saw where it was gathering. Down below, on the Edge of Fenrir’s ‘Script’, Red Sparks were crowding out the clouds hanging above that Script.

This, then, was a Wizardry, and also a danger, because it looked like an act of corruption. Divorcing cause from effect was one of the most obvious ways that corruption happened, but small applications of such power was just what wizards did sometimes. The fact that the Red Lightning was also still gathering on that Red Edge of Fenrir, even as it almost impacted the new planetoid, was maybe corruption, or maybe not. It was an attack out of sync with time, whatever it was, causing an effect before the cause actually happened, doing everything at the same instant.

Erick saw Red Lightning just appear with the forward arc of it almost touching down onto an illuminated spire of the Seed world. That Lightning was as thick as five spires; kilometers across.

Erick watched a Future Erick in his draconic body step into the path of the Red Lightning and attempt to devour it—

The Red tore right through him and then into the planet below.

“Ouch,” Erick and his Future self both said, though Future Erick said it more like a dying man.

Which was kinda scary, really.

And then his Future Self vanished, for Erick had chosen not to take that route.

He had ripped the loop.

The universe ripped a little bit in turn, as one does when one switches slices of Infinity. In one slice of Infinity Erick got hurt, while in this one Erick chose differently. It was less an action of him stepping out of the Godpact slice, though, and more of him pushing the bad future away from his chosen battleground. Erick remained on the Godpact slice, and all failures fell away.

Such was the nature of a Wizard War, though Erick could only really see the mechanics of it all now that he was a higher existence.

Erick stepped back in time and this time, instead of standing in the way of the Red Lightning, he pulled at the Benevolence of the planetoid, rapidly drawing on the nascent gate space he had worked into the magic, allowing him to open a giant portal that would swallow the Red and spit it out the other side, neatly avoiding striking the planetoid at all.

And then the Red did something weird. This time, it did not simply appear. This time, it acted like it should have, with cause creating effect.

All across Fenrir’s local ‘Edge of the Script’ —Erick was going to need to think of a better name for it— Red Sparks gathered. From thousands upon thousands of kilometers of open sky, Red Lightning twisted into being, and then struck through the void, almost crawling now that it wasn’t moving faster than reality.

Erick watched himself from a few thousand kilometers away as the Red Lightning —Primal Lightning, no doubt— tried to curve around Erick’s current position, to strike the planetoid.

Erick simply widened the [Gate].

The Red Lightning went through, and then beyond, sparking off into the void, trailing off and never stopping, though it did unwind here and there now that it was beyond its strike-range. The spellwork scattered into so much Malevolence that then burrowed into Infinity, vanishing from sight.

Erick closed the [Gate].

He eyed Fenrir’s Edge of the… Hmm.

Erick wasn’t going to call it Fenrir’s Script.

“Fenrir’s ‘System’? … Not that either... But it was a system of spellwork that Solomon laid down to make the land make land, until Nothanganathor took it over— Oh! Fenrir’s ‘Scheme’! That’s what we’ll call it. Fenrir’s Scheme.” Erick flew through the void, toward Veird, openly thinking, “Or maybe someone else came up with a better name—”

The solidity of time suddenly shifted when Erick was halfway to Veird, for something had surrounded the nearest thousand kilometers of space and then altered the flow of time within Erick’s vicinity.

It was an application of the basic idea of Veird’s own Plan Surround and Consume, of simply acting from a higher physical position against an opponent in a lower, smaller position. The FENRIR system was Veird’s initial idea to regain the upper hand against Nothanganathor in that very same way. The Fusion Energy Nullification Radiance Impounding Relay did exactly as it said on the tin, but Nothanganathor had corrupted it to his own ends, and now he regained the upper hand, which was how he had been able to shoot that Primal Lightning at the recent Seeds of Atunir planetoid, and do all the rest of the shit he had been able to do these last years.

Nothanganathor’s entire shtick was that he was the Arbiter of Veird, and he acted from the sun, to form the heliosphere that had originally dominated Veird, to have the true upper hand through sheer size.

That was how Nothanganathor had initially fought Erick, back when he Ascended to True Wizard, and he had been trying to escape the Erased One, to escape the trap the leviathan had made for him.

So Erick wasn’t too surprised when a thousand kilometers out from his current form, the universe twisted, and Erick’s bit of reality slipped out of alignment with the massive [Hasted Shelter] that had enveloped Veird, and which Fenrir had matched. Nothanganathor hadn’t actually done anything to Erick in that action. He had removed Erick from a magic that Erick had been participating in.

It was a rather soft application of power that didn’t even come into contact with Erick’s own strength. It just undid the [Haste] around him at a vast, vast distance.

Time sped up out there.

Erick saw wars rage across the heavens in a fraction of a second, as Valkyries went out and died and the Red-infected people of Fenrir zipped in large ships up to Veird to attack—

“Well that’s enough of that.”

Erick stepped back in time, to stand directly onto the Edge of Veird, and stare at his former location up in the sky, between Veird and the new planetoid. For a long moment, he watched himself be stuck in the bubble of non-hasted time, far, far away. That Past Erick out there would be stuck out there for practically years, according to the time flow in here. But yeah. That wasn’t happening.

That bubble of non-[Hasted] time collapsed as though it had never happened, because Erick had escaped to prevent everything that Erick would have seen come to pass out there. Were the Valkyries going to fail? Were ships from Fenrir going to attack Veird? Not on his watch, and Erick was here on watch, for sure.

Standing atop the Edge of the Script, Erick faced Fenrir and openly tsk’d at Nothanganathor, saying, “Obviously I could have simply stepped over to Veird and not have left myself vulnerable out there to that trick at all, so it seems unwise that you deployed that magic. Did you simply feel the need to dominate, in any way you could? Or was it more of a ‘well he’s there, and I gotta try’ sort of situation? I’m glad to have baited out that attack, either way. Great work.”

Red sparked across the Edge of the Scheme, far, far away.

Ah.

Erick’s taunt was too much?

Ha!

Primal Lightning gathered at the Edge of the Scheme, a moon-length away, and then it twisted into direction, into force. It was like a river of Red Lightning as it lifted off of Fenrir. That Red came for Erick, and for Veird behind him.

Erick imagined that Rozeta was having a traumatic episode right now, right alongside a great deal of other immortals down below.

But on Veird, this close to Erick’s established Gate Networks…

Erick could have simply opened a [Gate] all across Veird, but… No. Erick changed his tactic at the last moment.

He did not open a [Gate]. Nothanganathor probably wanted to surprise him with a trick to use against a [Gate], but Erick had some tricks of his own. Instead, Erick began weaving a spell, and then he stepped through time, yet again, and then again and again and again and again.

A hundred Ericks stood in the skies of Veird, just beyond the Script, not impacting the Godpact at all as they spoke in unison and also in sequence.

“[Animadversion].”

It was barely a working of Wizardry, and yet, it was still Wizardry, with inspiration taken from the Lightning Shield that Erick had once held in his hands, which helped protect him while he learned the truth of the Red. He also took inspiration from his own time guarding the universe from corruption, and acting with his own selves on Earth, a few times. Erick did not discard these futures all around him; no. He empowered them through his own actions as he worked methodically, and strongly.

He paced every version of himself as he handed off spellwork to himself, weaving threads of thorny silver Elemental Reflection across the entirety of Veird, like the biggest basket that Veird had ever seen. The threads of Animadversion were thin things, like wires, with thousands of kilometers between individual threads. This allowed the people on Veird to see outward, but the thread would still protect them from the Red, because Animadversion was a proactive, mobile spell; it would move to intercept what it needed to intercept.

Primal Lightning attempted to crash against the original Erick that had started the working.

But the threads of [Animadversion] bunched up, in the sky around Erick, multiplying themselves ten thousandfold and dominating the space between Erick and the Red. The silver threads thickened and turned thorny, right as the Lightning came.

The lightning hit the silver thorns, and then did not reflect.

It was swallowed whole, and Erick smiled.

Nothanganathor wasn’t the only one that could do a trick.

The spellwork did not actually absorb the spellwork, though. It reflected it Elsewhere, through Infinity, into another land, where a leviathan coiled on the sun. Erick caught a glimpse of black things among the reflection; of Nothanganathor’s backlit body against a nuclear furnace. The Primal Lightning went all the way back to Nothanganathor himself, skipping Fenrir entirely.

And then the Lightning cut off, and Fenrir was fine, and the silver threads of [Animadversion] relaxed back around Erick, to settle back down like loose, disintegrating threads upon Veird, their power spent, the spell ended. Nothanganathor probably got a new tiny burn against his scales, which was expected. Or maybe nothing happened at all.

Erick watched his Future Selves weaving magic for a little while, to see that they had all contributed a bit toward making this present a reality. There had been a contest of wills, for sure. Current Erick barely felt that contest, now that there were so many of him working together.

It was time for Current Erick to become those Futures selves, though.

Erick Stepped through time and set up next to himself, to pull at threads of [Animadversion] and extend them out to other Future Ericks further along the Edge of the Script, and in time.

Erick watched Primal Lightning descend on Veird a thousand times that day. Mostly, he reinforced the [Animadversion] when the Red tried to corrupt it. Or rather, ‘corrupt’ it. Erick was 100% sure that Nothanganathor had only taken inspiration from corruption to make Malevolence, but Malevolence wasn’t actually corruptive though it certainly looked like it was now and then.

In a thousand ways, in the opening of the return stroke against the sun, Erick locked eyes with Nothanganathor in those fractions of a second, and he told that Red bastard,

“No.”

When Erick’s 10 hour long battle ended, he was down a few million mana and resons, which was rather acceptable. He had trillions to spend, after all, and if he needed more he could just take a break somewhere else and wait for it all to come back. Or he could Siphon resources from the [Seeds of Atunir] once they got going.

It still might not be enough.

Nothanganathor was likely harvesting all the mana from all the people on Fenrir, now that it had people, and so if Erick had waited a week to start this attack, then Nothanganathor would have recouped all his own losses to bring all these new people to life and then some. And yet, even before that, the guy probably had quadrillions of mana or more since he had been gathering that mana from Veird and infinity for a long while, so Erick was facing an uphill battle, for sure, but there was no reason to let Nothanganathor establish himself even stronger than he already was.

Erick had time, but not an infinity, even if that’s how this universe was set up. Sooner or later, something important was going to shatter and Erick wouldn’t be exchanging ‘simple’ barbs with Nothanganathor. This war would enter its endgame.

… Probably.

But for whatever reason, as Erick hovered above the Edge of the Script, singular in nature with eyes focused upon Fenrir, another sideways-attack did not come. Erick stood there, like a man guarding a wall… or perhaps like a dragon guarding his hoard. The thieves had stolen into the mountain and pilfered gold, and they had plans to pilfer even more, but now they were rethinking their attack.

Erick waited, there above the Script, for an attack that did not come.

An hour or so later, he turned his eyesight briefly to the left, to watch as the Benevolence planetoid divided into two, like a giant slime that had grown too large, or rather more like a bunch of very complicated plants and water systems and a multitude of life that had been organizing itself for the split for the last little while. Right on cue, the planetoid split, and a second, smaller Benevolence planetoid drifted away, toward another glowing lightorb in the sky. It grew larger before it reached that part of the grid of lights above Fenrir, and right as it impacted the lightorb, it flashed with brilliant Benevolence. The Red core of the second lightorb broke and faltered, dissipating into Infinity, and the new [Seed of Atunir] took its place as a sun in the sky for Fenrir.

A few hours after that, both the first planetoid and the second one split again, sending off starter colonies into other nearby lights. When the colonies touched the light, they blew away the Red in those lights and became the new mini-suns in that part of the world of Fenrir.

Plan Surround and Consume was active, and working, and it was also destroying a working of Red in those sunlights. Good work, all around.

Erick opened tiny portals into Benevolence itself now and again, to check on those mini-worlds as they grew and thrived under their own rapidly-created life. He found nothing amiss with those lands.

And so, he waited for the other shoe to drop.

He also checked his Status, to make sure he wasn’t under an attack he didn’t see.

Erick Flatt, [100-ish] [Current Location: Layer 789; Veird, year 1453]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 2.23b per day / 25,810 per second , [Mark of Benevolence Level = 2.23]

Body: 3218

Mind: 4723

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+23,487.1, -33] Basic upkeep

Mp: 351.6t/∞, ↑ [+8,001.1, -11] Basic upkeep

Hp: 349.1t/∞, ↑ [+7,743, -11] Basic upkeep

Pp: 348.9t/∞, ↑ [+7,743, -11] Basic upkeep

Resons: 98.9t [+2,322.9 = +258.1]

Yup; that looked about normal these days.

Erick sent a second glance down to Veird, back down to the northern wing of the Spellsurge Mountains, where Tenebrae and a few others were working to contain and organize the [Spellsurge Weave] map that controlled the [Seeds of Atunir]—

Ah.

And a Future Erick stepped out of the air, to help them.

Current Erick was about to go down there, but he’d keep watch up here for a while…

He looked back down.

“How long do I have to stay up here?”

- - - -

“You stay up there for a while,” Erick said to his Past, of about 20 hours ago. Erick then turned to the room with Atunir, Tenebrae, Rozeta, and Archmage Riivo of Archmage’s Rest, all concentrated on the Weave in front of them. “And I’ll take over from here. So! Guys! There’s a few different attacks coming, and we need to prepare for them all, because in that preparation, they won’t happen.”

Atunir sighed out in relief as she smiled, saying, “It is so nice to have you back as an accomplished Time Wizard, Erick. Loved that thing with the [Animadversion].” She chuckled a little, then admitted, “I was truly worried for a moment there.” Her voice got softer. “Very worried.”

Rozeta had a hollow look in her eyes as she got down to business, saying, “She was not the only one who was worried—”

“I’m not worried now,” Atunir stressed, and then she swept a hand at the glowing map of the expanding [Seeds of Atunir]. “Everything is working out very well out there, and now you’re both out there and in here at the same time. I feel practically young again, Erick, seeing someone step through time so easily. Tell me the problems coming down the line, and allow me to feel joy that this whole thing is going to work out in our complete favor.”

Erick raised an eyebrow at the Goddess of Field and Fertility. “You’re quite peppy right now?”

“I most certainly am! And you should be, too!” Atunir said, “You have no idea how much stress the entire world is under, Erick. So much stress. But now you came in and spent ten hours out there, on your own, fighting the good fight through time itself…” She smiled, and a tiny golden tear formed and then collected in her deep brown eyes. “And I’m rather experiencing a lot of emotions right now.”

She took the drop of gold from her eyes, like plucking a drop of sunlight from the sky, and she flicked the drop into the [Spellsurge Weave] map. That drop struck one of the planetoids out there and then spread like golden light through the spreading spellwork.

Erick couldn’t tell exactly what she had done, but she had just cleared up a good 8 problems that he had foreseen, but which he hadn’t gotten the chance to talk about. He was going to tell them about… well. A bunch of stuff.

Rozeta said, “I’m the Goddess of Knowledge, and you being here is enough to grant me the Knowledge that you want me to have.”

“Ah,” Erick said. “All the gods and Relevant Entities of the Script are in deep communication right now, because that was part of the plan, wasn’t it. I had forgotten about that nuance of this war.”

“You spent a while away, Erick, but now you’re back and stronger than ever,” Atunir said, “And that very presence helps us in turn. The Pantheon has been without any true powers to act on our behalf in… in so long.”

“I’m glad to help,” Erick said, smiling. “I live here too, after all.”

Atunir smiled gently.

“I still have concerns,” Rozeta said. “But yes. We’re all in communication with each other. Everything is working as it should. You leaving was a very big concern, but now you’re back and strong enough to venture outside of the Script without worry, and now we wonder if we should adjust some of our plans. Should we be more aggressive?”

Erick said, “Yes to aggression. It is probably time to talk about killing your alters out there, on Fenrir.”

Rozeta said, “That is one of our main concerns, yes. One among many, really. It has only been a week since we saw Fenrir reveal itself as it currently is.”

Atunir said, “We found out what went wrong with our initial implantation of [Seeds of Me] on Fenrir. We already assumed that he would have some divine assistance to come at us sideways, through an attack based on the nature of mana and divinity itself, and that is exactly what happened there. This larger Plan Surround and Consume is working because it’s taking place outside of Fenrir’s protected space and you’re there to make it actually work, but I can’t plant anything on Fenrir’s surface because… He has a reflection of me down there, Erick. She stopped me.”

Phagar stepped into the meeting, saying, “There are copies of all of us down there.”

Rozeta said, “Everyone except Melemizargo.”

A shadow coiled in the room. Bright white eyes lit up in the gloom, as Melemizargo said, “Of course he doesn’t have me down there.” He looked at Erick. “We need to talk.”

Rozeta sighed. She said to Erick, “We’ll talk about those things later.”

Erick nodded.