Ar'Kendrithyst

Jane walked among a battlefield, under the bright sun inside Fenrir.

The fortifications of the refugee cities behind Jane and Candice were heavily damaged, and many undead had gotten through, but the lands of millions beyond had been spared. Jane and Candice had been the final line for a land completely unprepared for what was coming for them.

There had been several Red Archmages that were near enough to Wizards in certain ways.

It was a repeat of the Lich War of yesteryear, before they had to bomb all of Quintlan off of the map, blowing up the land and a few layers of shell overhead. The same enemies. The same dangers. But more in the open. More present; less subterfuge. They had built themselves up, a lot. The Valkyries helped, but they weren’t as strong as Jane expected them to be. Most of the truly strong Valkyries had been at the Last Battle, so that sort of made sense. Despite their hive minds, individuals were still individuals.

It had been a straight up brawl of monumental proportions.

For half an hour there, among the castles that walked on zombie legs, and in the mires of Blood, Gloom, and Decay that flew through the sky like city-sized undead oozes, things had been going well. Jane and Candice had been the only ones able to truly stand against the Red near-Wizardry of the liches, which was a big change from how it had been, while the Valkyries mostly kept Jane and Candice safe as they could, as the two of them advanced against the real threats, the liches.

And then the Valkyries had vanished.

For another half an hour, it had been near-death after near-death, with Jane and Candice struggling to kill the commanders while the undead forces rolled across the defenses of the refugees, tearing into their cities.

And then…

And then it all stopped.

It had been stopped for about 20 minutes now.

The air still smelled of blood and death, and Jane’s Status was running on empty, but it was filling up and there weren’t any threats on the horizon. People were cradling their dead, crying, or in shock. If the war hadn’t just stopped then Jane would have been furious with those people, because cradling the dead when necromancers were on the loose was a recipe for getting one’s throat bit out by grandma.

Most people were furiously burning their dead. Those people were more sane.

And the war was over?

Just like that?

Huge abominations of flesh and dead magic lay everywhere. Some of them were the size of mountains. All of it was once again rotting, because the animating Death was gone.

Candice squelched through the blood and mud in front of Jane, looking around. Both of them were clothed in just some conjured underwear and a lot of blood. Both of them had dropped their [Polymorph]s. Candice frowned, looking at all the piled dead.

Jane was frowning with her.

Candice said, “What the fuck happened?”

Jane said, “It looked like the Red sort of… folded in on itself? All the liches had Red cores and they’re gone now… The dead are going to rise again, though, even if the main threat is gone. The Elemental Death is still here… kinda.”

Might be a few days before natural undead start to rise. They had time to burn… An entire continent’s worth of bodies? Maybe not that much time at all, really.

Candice’s frown intensified as she grumbled an angry, “mmmm,” followed by, “Something is wrong— OH! Wait a fucking second!” Her entire countenance changed to one of pure joy, as she said, “Dad must have—”

Jane cut her off, “Nothanganathor might have killed his people in order to facilitate a better transition to him having true power. We might need to go into hiding… Or it might be too late.”

Candice lost her joy. “… Oh shit.”

“Something big and Red happened, though,” Jane said, as she sent out a [Telepathy], trying to connect to whatever sort of Crossroads might be going up. She didn’t get any response, but she kept trying. She asked Candice, “Can you [Telepathy] any—”

The sky brightened, the sun in the center of Fenrir doubling in brightness.

Light flooded.

And then, out of the Light came the Dark.

Jane gasped.

- - - -

Power flowed from Xoat, joining to the Dark, becoming too much for any one person to handle. Chaos unfurled, stripping away everything, but Erick was still there. The fae were still there with him.

They went to work instantly.

Fairy Moon cradled Springtime like a prism, peeling off a flow of Xoat’s everything like sticking a colored rock into a river of light, and the river changed. Light turned pastel pink, green, and white, and flowed along her axis of existence, returning Elemental Fae to the Dark. The Dark reached wantingly, disastrously, pulling power wider, taking bits of Fairy Moon to color everything that she already was. She was hurt, but not diminished in this taking, this changing. She was made More. She became a Home for Everyone; the King of a new Nation In the Dark. Her tears became a flood. Her blood became nascent life. She set down a part of a foundation, so that others could join as they were wont.

The Dark ripped at her, perhaps unkindly, because it knew no other way to be.

At that same time, Shadow peeled off the light of Xoat and made it more of herself, filling the universe with half-light that stood between the Dark and everything else. She gave of herself so that the Dark could interact less painfully, and that is what it did. With Dark hands covered in Elemental Shadow, the Dark’s touch became an easier thing for everyone else to withstand.

That is when the Dark truly started helping everyone else in Creation. That was when its touch turned loving, caring, helpful, and full of life.

Life became more life.

Enchanter’s Guile was there, the little metal fox taking Xoat’s light and painting the universe in his own hues of Metal. Gnowmi stood in that same creation, adding more metal, and gems.

Fae of Water took Xoat’s light, which wasn’t really light at all, but a different sort of Darkness, and made water unending, filling the universe with flows and waves, and the Darkness made way for that creation, pulling oceans wider, as though it was ripping itself apart to reveal oceans already existing inside.

Fae of Stone sent sands into the waters that then became rocks and lands.

Fae of Fire sent animation into that crashing tumult, animating some of it to primitive life.

Fae of Air gave everyone room to breathe.

Fae of Blood granted holds for complex life. Fae of Body gave form out of the chaos to that life. Fae of Breath brought animation to that life. Souls took form out of the Dark; mana begetting mana.

Erick took the expanding Light of Xoat, raising it high in a draconic hand, and the light doubled; radiant and every color. With a deft hand Erick painted a universe of many colors, revealing the Dark for what it could be. What it would be.

Lands and people and a dream of peace, where everyone could grasp the Dark and know power. Where everyone would have the ability to become who they wanted to become, and make their realities into truth, to then share that truth with others and grow in the telling.

Erick became the Light and the Dark, reaching out to others, in Welcome, in Benevolence, dictating the Foundation.

“Hello Darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to help you talk again~”

- - - -

Poi saw the event the best, though he did not know it at the time. He merely observed from inside the dungeon, and outside in the world, in both of his bodies. The former allowed him to know something big was happening, while the latter allowed him a grounding of a sort, since he was still all the way on Veird when it happened.

Inside the Dungeon of the Black Gate, near a facsimile of their old home in Spur, Poi was caught walking between rooms when the floor and everything else turned translucent, and then thinner than that. Poi was a soul in a body that was not really embodied at all, and the solidified nature of the dungeon became a figment of an imagination inside the Dark.

That’s all dungeons were, after all; imaginings in the Dark.

They could return to the Dark at any point in time, if Melemizargo desired such.

That’s not what was happening here, though. Poi understood that much.

Inside of his house on the Cloud Castle over Candlepoint, Poi felt the world turn solid. The usual way of experiencing life up here was to live among the dreamscape-overlapping-reality thought slimes that were the people around him. But now those thought slimes crackled with distinct borders, lined in Benevolent Lightning. The lightning borders of every single person linked with Benevolence Itself, and with each other, forming chains from one person to every other, no matter how far they were. Even the animals were linked. Poi saw ten million people linked to himself, and he knew what it meant to know others, in a whole different way.

Poi-in-the-dungeon stepped out of the Dark and into the light of the inside of Fenrir. He had moved to Fenrir.

Poi-in-the-castle rippled along with his entire existence, and then he settled back down. He stayed at the cloud castle over Candlepoint.

He looked up in the sky of Fenrir, and saw the Darkness reach out from the void, becoming a draconic hand that grasped the sun. Darkness spilled out of the hand’s entire shadow, falling across the interior of Fenrir. The grip around the sun rotated, bringing night and day to Fenrir like some god having too much fun making hand puppets with the entire sun.

Among the Dark Hand’s shadows, all across Fenrir, Poi watched as dots of light flowed up inside the shadows of the sun, linked by Benevolence. Perhaps it was a matter of distance that caused those dustings of light to seem smaller than they were, but Poi knew there were entire civilizations being pulled up and pushed down, getting rearranged across all of Fenrir, based on the declarations of a god.

Multiple gods, probably.

All of the gods, and maybe a few more, Poi decided, after not too much deliberation at all.

It was among the most magical things that he had ever seen, and it would leave an impression for the rest of his life, and far beyond.

- - - -

Teressa smiled as she stood with Ophiel inside Benevolence Itself, with Lenitha and Dariok. Her daughter and husband were a little scared, and Teressa couldn’t blame them for that. The sky was filled with White Chains that looked like Primal Lightning, or rather, Benevolent Lightning, so of course normal people would be freaked out. Teressa imagined that most people couldn’t see the chains, and all they saw were the bubbles of people, and perilously Dark spots invading Benevolence and then retreating like tides, rushing people across the cosmos at the command of someone far, far above everyone else.

People flowed from one side of Everything to the other side of Everything.

All the sky had been filled with Valkyries for a good hour, flowing on rainbow lights to battles and beyond, but then they had vanished and true danger had almost happened. And now, there was this. People, sleeping or maybe just insensate, being moved from one place in the universe to another.

This node of Benevolence itself was a thousand kilometers across, while the sky was much, much larger.

The chains of people filled up that entire sky. Even Yggdrasil, over on the side, was blocked from sight by the sheer number of people.

Lenitha tugged on Teressa’s robes. “Mommy? What’s happening?”

Teressa picked up Lenitha, smiling, holding her on her arm, as she looked up at the sky. Dariok held both of them, because he was worried, too. Dariok could probably see what was really happening, but even Teressa was having trouble truly understanding. Not many people had the Sight to see what this was, but Teressa had the Sight.

Teressa explained as best she could, “I think Erick won, and now he’s putting all of Fenrir to rights. You know how I explained how every people placed out there by Nothanganathor was placed to cause distress? Well now Erick’s putting people where they ought to go… Oh…” Teressa watched as Benevolence Itself twisted here and there, and people appeared from nowhere. Teressa gasped. “He’s reviving all the dead. A lot of the dead. Every single person who died on Veird in the wars—” Teressa smiled and pointed to a part of the sky. “There! Look!” Teressa couldn’t believe her eyes at all. “Clan Patriarch Xue!” Teressa gasped, “And Sikali?! She died years ago!”

Patriarch Xue Star Song had been taken by the Red in the Leviathan attack at the Songli Highlands. A lot of people had been taken in that attack. Erased. Sikali Star Song had died years ago, during the Terror Peaks Chelation War.

“Oh my gods how am I even seeing that,” Teressa whispered at herself, and then she spotted—

“I’m scared.” Lenitha held Teressa, pressing her face against Teressa’s neck. She whispered, “I’m scared.”

Teressa put all thoughts of others outside of her mind and held her daughter close. “It’s okay, honey. Erick won. It’s scary, but that’s what happens when big people move in big ways. I’m sure Erick will finish up whatever he’s doing now and then we’ll all have a good long talk, like we always do.” Teressa smiled enough to put Lenitha at ease, but it only really worked to chase away the terror because Teressa asked, “What kind of dessert do you want mommy to make? I’m sure Erick will want a lot of good, sweet things! How about those cinnamon rolls?”

Lethitha sniffled, eyeing the sky, and then she looked at her mother. “… I want apple tarts.”

Dariok got in on the action, too, saying, “Apple tarts and donuts and chocolate cake and—”

“Ice cream!” Lenitha said, and then she looked to Ophiel and her burgeoning smile faltered.

Ophiel was looking pretty serious right now, as he looked at the sky and the chains of people flowing where they needed to go, but Lenitha’s glance had the guy shaping up and putting on a happy face. He smiled. “I want cinnamon rolls.”

Lethitha made a face. “Why do you adults love those things!”

Ophiel scoffed, “I am not an adult!”

Lenitha stuck her tongue out at Ophiel. “You have the Script! Therefore adult!”

Ophiel said, “The real adults are working now and I’m not working so I’m not one of them, so I’m still a kid! Therefore I get to say what desserts are getting made!”

“Nuh uh!” Lenitha stuck out her tongue.

Ophiel complained.

Teressa smiled, and said that she’d get Quilatalap to make some purpleberry pie, and that made Ophiel incredibly happy and Lenitha saying that she’d eat a whole pie herself, which started a whole new round of spats.

Teressa felt at ease for the first time in way, way too long.

- - - -

Jane watched a giant black dragon claw encircle the sun, blocking the light, allowing night to return to the inside of Fenrir in the shadow of its loose grip. That dark allowed Jane to see across the full expanse of Fenrir for the first time.

It was fantastical.

Jane could see it now; how night and day worked in this land. The grip rotated, and the five fingers and palm of the encircling grip provided darkness… But the pure power needed to do such a thing was… it was crazy. That hand, ten times the size of the sun, felt like the Fenrir ritual itself. It made Jane feel something magnificent inside, like when she first saw the blue boxes for the Script, and the first time she conjured a sword out of Force, but writ large and oh so much better.

Because that was dad’s hand, for sure. She didn’t know what Nothanganathor’s hands looked like, and she was pretty sure Melemizargo’s hands were slightly different, so that was dad’s hand. It looked like Jane’s dragon hands, but black and thicker.

Candice whispered to herself, to the world, “Dad won.”

Jane smiled—

All around them, the corpses of the fallen undead army turned to motes of light that flew up into the sky, into the Dark, leaving behind lush grasses and wildflowers. Their departure was like fireflies, but better. Bigger and brighter.

Some of those lights got mere meters above the ground before they went right back down and popped, revealing people, healed and whole. Those people were still wearing the torn armor of the refugee cities, but they themselves were healed.

Oh, Jane thought. Dad is resurrecting everyone, too.

This is a lot.

This is more than a simple win.

Oh.

… Is the hand going to stay?

Candice asked, “Do you think the hand is permanent?”

- - - -

Yggdrasil watched Fenrir’s entire ecosystem be restructured into something more conducive to life and eternity. Checks and balances of ecosystems were instituted by way of creating continents and oceans and rivers, where once was simple chaos intended to cause conflict. The hand was also doing a lot more than just reshaping Fenrir. It was resurrecting everyone… too… Hmm.

“That hand is going to be so unwieldy, father,” Yggdrasil said, as he gazed through Benevolence Itself, to see it all. “The magical requirements alone to constantly compensate for gravity— It’s pissing off Cascadio now, too. You’re ripping at the functionality of the sun by just existing— Ah. You see it too, then… Er.”

Something changed in the sky.

“That’s not a fix, father. That’s the opposite of a fix.”

Yggdrasil watched as one dragon hand became two dragon hands that sort of reached for each other, as though to almost take each other’s wrists, with the sun between their fingers. It was less ‘gripping’, more ‘warming themselves’, or maybe ‘reaching out to each other’ and with the sun in the center as a point of brilliance between the Darkness. That seemed good, both in an artistic sense, and in an environmental control sense. The ripping sensations Cascadio was reporting on were gone, too, so they were probably hollow hands now, too. Or something. Yggdrasil would find out eventually, but right now they were too filled with Darkness to see clearly. But this was good!

It was too early for Fenrir to heat up to unimaginable degrees, but it would have happened in a few years, or maybe a few hundred, and whatever day/night thing father was trying to set up was very unbalanced with only two hands.

One was clearly Father’s hand, but the other one was Melemizargo’s, but only a very trained eye could tell the difference.

So two hands that acted like north/south pole blockers with their palms, and ten fingers that rotated fast enough to provide enough shadow to mimic a rather normal day/night cycle for maybe… Yggdrasil did some fast math… for maybe 65% of the interior surface. 12 hour days, 12 hour nights. 35% of the land would be in perpetual twilight, or have longer days and nights that might last half of a year, before those lengths of days and nights switched in the other way.

There was also something going on with the poles of Fenrir, but it was too filled with Darkness to see clearly yet.

Yggdrasil admitted, “Okay. I like that idea. One of them should be a human hand, though, even if you are a dragon, father.”

Yggdrasil felt the barest brush of ‘bah!’ And also, ‘Dragon hands are cool!’

Yggdrasil laughed at that.

And then Erick stepped down into Benevolence with Yggdrasil, onto one of his bigger roots, looking like a normal person, but he was a lot more than that.

Yggdrasil appeared as a person next to him, smiling, saying, “Congrats on winning in more ways than I thought possible. All your divinity should be flowing to you now that you’ve actively claimed it. You okay with that?”

Erick waved a hand. “It’s what I needed to do. I’m good with it. Thanks for taking care of it while I didn’t want it.” He asked, “And what’s wrong with dragon hands! They could both be mine, you know!”

“They could both be Melemizargo’s, too,” Yggdrasil said, grinning. “Except they’re not. The first one was yours. The second one you added to make him feel better.”

“He needed a big win and this sort of reviving everyone was always his plan anyway. It’s what he started with the shadelings and how he wanted to bring the Painted Cosmology back, using the souls of those he had saved in Darkness.” Erick said, “Cascadio didn’t like the harsh grip, either, but he loves the hands-reaching-out design.”

“I do, too,” Yggdrasil said, still grinning. And then he tentatively asked, “Are you still a hugger? Or has your time away—”

Erick rushed his son, and Yggdrasil was glad that he was allowed to have tears of joy, instead of the possible tears of sorrow of what could have been. Father was still father, no matter what new office he inhabited.

Erick said, “I’m still a hugger.”

“I’m glad.” Yggdrasil held Erick tighter, saying, “Very glad.”

“I have a gift for you—”

“I don’t want the Sign. It’s not my sign, and I don’t even think it’s Margleknot’s, either. Give it to Margleknot next time you’re back, or don’t. Use it until you don’t need it anymore.”

Erick simply said, “How about your memories, then?”

Yggdrasil laughed. “Oh yeah! I do want those. Gimme gimme!” He paused. “But not to me. Not directly. You should give those to Margleknot. I don’t want to touch them.”

Erick chuckled. “You’re giving me mixed messages here, Yggdrasil.”

“I’m sure it’ll be a quick trip to Margleknot, and then you can come back and be a good Tyrant Dragon God King to everyone,” Yggdrasil said, smirking.

Erick paused as he couldn’t believe that Yggdrasil would say that to him…

Oh.

AH.

Speaking softly to himself, Erick said, “… Oh my gods, have I lost my sense of sarcasm? I think I have.”

Yggdrasil nodded. “Time for a break, Father.”

“Okay. Vacation time this time, and for real.”

“Yes, for real vacation time,” Yggdrasil said. “If the Fae Council bullies you into doing stuff then tell them you’re on a doctor-prescribed vacation and you’re not allowed to do any heavy lifting for a while. You won your war, and now you get to be the Arbiter of Veird, first and foremost.”

Erick grinned.

- - - -

“Oh. Hello, I guess,” Erick said to the Fae Council. “I was coming your way soon enough.”

Erick stood underneath Margleknot in Margleknot, and though the big guy looked like Yggdrasil right now, he wasn’t Yggdrasil at all. Not really. Not anymore than Erick was Xoat, anyway. Yggdrasil was a glowing white tree, with flaming green leaves and a rainbow aurora crown. His roots were shaped like roots that twined up and down into the land below, while his branches kinda looked like Primal Lightning frozen in time. Margleknot had been gold, with roots that formed geometric shapes that spiraled, fractally, down into infinity, while his branches were looping, tendrils of gold, that also curled through impossible geometry.

Yggdrasil in Margleknot had roots that curled in geometric shapes and lightning-like branches that were way too fractal to be normal branches, like Yggdrasil’s branches back on Veird, and now Fenrir.

Also, this land’s surface was glass and see-through, so all of Margleknot was visible at the same time.

The Fae Council of Aelorika, Eldraki, Seraphaka, and Dakka, all stood upon that clear surface with Erick. Margleknot’s golden-eyed orcol-avatar stood closer to Erick, though.

Margleknot said, “I told them not to take too long.” He looked at Erick again, and with a faint sadness in his voice, he said, “Thanks for the Memories, Father. Yggdrasil is right, though, I don’t want the actual Sign of Power. I replaced it a long time ago, and that Sign of Power isn’t something I want to use.”

Erick was surprised at that. “Are you sure? I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but… Yeah. I can use it.”

The Sign of Power sat inside Erick’s divine soul like a small universe waiting to be filled; completely empty, completely unutilized. He’d figure out something to do with it, he was sure.

“Good. You can use it well, I am sure. Nothanganathor...” With a far-off sense of loss, Margleknot said, “Nothanganathor… I still can’t believe the full extent of what he did. He was like a surrogate father to me. He didn’t make a World Tree that connected to me, but I enjoyed being a family with him. My memories confirmed what I already knew to be true; yes, he was evil, but… He was a good person… And yet…” Margleknot deflated. “He wasn’t a good person at all.”

Erick simply nodded. Even the worst people in existence were still just people, no matter how much power they acquired… But Erick supposed that thinking that way was a luxury for the strong. Nothanganathor was truly evil, and yet…

Nothanganathor was denied power for most of his life, which is what turned him evil enough to want to Sunder a universe. Thinking about it that way… No.

Nothanganathor still made bad decisions, and those decisions were reason enough to hate the man he had become, but before that fall, he had been different. The Curse of Obscurity had twisted him into something he didn’t want to be, for he wanted to be, and was, a strong emperor to billions. He knew how to create stability and prosperity. That much was never in doubt.

And then he was twisted into creating Malevolence in order to take back what was taken from him.

Erick said, “It’s unforgivable what happened, and yet the evil is gone, and so we must forgive if only for our own sanity. But at the same time, we must never allow evils like that to flourish ever again. It’s a paradox that we must navigate all the time, because the problem of evil is one of selfishness, and we’re all just people trying to make the best of our situations. Selfishness is inevitable, my son.”

Margleknot looked upon Erick with golden eyes, and he saw many other people at that same time, deep in memory. He smiled softly, “Nothanganathor said something like that a few different times.”

“Sounds like a smart man who ended up going down the wrong path.”

“Aye,” Margleknot said. “He did.”

The Fae Council watched as Erick and Margleknot had their moment, silence filling the air.

The moment passed.

Lady Aelorika stepped forward. “The Fae Council recognizes the sovereign nation of Fenrir, Dark Benevolence, Erick Flatt of Veird. We are interested in contracting services for Corruption cleanup, and also thank you for both destroying Malevolence, and also coming back and keeping Margleknot from falling apart in Malevolence’s absence.”

“Ah. Shit.” Erick said, “Yeah. That. I need to, uh, come back and do that, eh?”

Lady Aelorika grinned a little. “If you haven’t already. It took you a good 29 years of work, if we’re counting all your appearances and the time you spent in each location. It was quite a lot of work!”

Lady Seraphaka said, “Billions of lives saved.”

Lord Dakka said, “Started and ended a few wars, which is fun!”

Lord Eldraki grinned as he said, “We simply couldn’t get you to speak to us though, which was quite frustrating. It’s almost like you weren’t even there.”

Erick grumbled. “… Okay. Let’s get through the big points: The Dark wishes to be friendly, so I’ll be planting Yggdrasil there soon enough. I’m going to help with corruption here in this universe. And I’m not going to have your big tasks looming over my head. Let’s just [Onward] through all of these Margleknot-centric tasks right now, and deal with the rest later.”

And that is what he did.

He didn’t remember any of it, and that was by design.

He did not want to leave his family behind any longer than he already had.