Ar'Kendrithyst

Chapter 215, 1/2

Chapter 215, 1/2

“Yesterday was really good,” Erick said, as he fixed his hair in the mirror. He turned back to Quilatalap. “Aside from the weirdness after the song.”

Quilatalap paused for a moment, thinking. It was a very deep thought, and more than likely it was a series of deep thoughts that tangled up inside of the big man, and then got more tangled with every passing moment. Erick could see the distress on Quilatalap’s face as he came to a conclusion, but struggled with how to express that conclusion.

Erick waited. He considered giving Quilatalap another opening to take, to allow him to express his feelings, but no. Erick had given the guy enough openings. For now. He had been waiting for Quilatalap to say his words for several hours, ever since the song ended, and dinner came and went, and the two of them went to bed in the same bed—

Quilatalap blurted, “You’re everything that the Clergy has been looking for ever since the Sundering.”

“… Ah. That’s what you didn’t want to say last night, wasn’t it?”

“I needed some time to think; yes.” Quilatalap seemed like he was lining up all his thoughts to hit Erick all at once with all of them, which was likely exactly what was happening. And then Quilatalap looked away, and began speaking, gesturing with his hands as he said, “Because it was weird. Overly so. I keep imagining that you picked out a song from your childhood that fit the situation, but it fit the situation too well. And now you’re here, a Paradox Wizard, with Benevolence lightning as your major power which looks an awful lot like Primal Lightning. Last night you even spoke of that dyson swarm thing...

“The scale you spoke of got me thinking of the scale of the Old Cosmology.

“It used to be said that there were uncountable worlds in the Old Cosmology. But real estimates put the number of worlds at something like a billion billion, give or take several million trillion. The distances between worlds was like from here to the sun, which is—

“… It’s not as much as there is in your one home galaxy, to hear you tell it— And yes. I know you were just giving estimates when you told me those numbers, but...

“I don’t have to do any actual math at all to know that this New Cosmology is on a whole different scale than the Old Cosmology.

“Which means the New Cosmology is larger than the Old Cosmology, and by a lot. Whether that ‘a lot’ is on the order of hundreds of times over, or a trillion trillion times over…

“Was the Old Cosmology just a dyson sphere? A particularly advanced sphere? Several hundred thousand dyson spheres? In some spiral arm of some ‘milky way’ somewhere?

“But. No. That’s impossible, right? Everything I’ve seen tells me that this is impossible, but functionally, does it matter? I’m not sure I know what the Old Cosmology really was anymore, only that it did exist, and then it stopped existing due to Primal Lightning creating Yawning Voids…

“Which, looking at it another way…

“A lightning-like force creating mana drains, like the Undertow Effect.”

Silence stretched.

And Erick felt a twinge of panic.

Quilatalap continued, “Are you Xoat? Or are you the cause of, and end to, the Old Cosmology, as well as the creation of this New Cosmology? For us, anyway? Did the Old Cosmology even exist? Or did you will it into existence? But no. That makes no sense either. The Old Cosmology existed, for sure.

“So is the problem I’m having… Is it a soul problem?

“Is the nature of the soul something that, when destroyed in one universe, is reborn in another?

“This is a very uncomfortable thought for me, personally.

“I’ve been doing necromancy for a very long time, and I thought that souls do not go to different universes. When a soul finally fully passes on or is ripped apart, or moves into the realms of the gods, the end-process is to become natural mana. It doesn’t go anywhere else. It remains here, or wherever ‘here’ might be, even after it passes the point of easy reconstitution. The gods’ realms are here, just on the other side of creation, just like Ar’Cosmos is, but more. So the souls might transpose into another slice of reality, but they’re still here. They’re still in the mana. Even souls that go on to godly realms still have expressed mana into the world before their soul deaths.

“You can take mana and turn it back into soulstuff, and if you’re very skilled, you can sometimes do some high-tier summoning and bring back something that might look and partially acts and partially remembers the life of its origin-soul.

“So Xoat’s original form, which was the Entire Old Cosmology if you believe in that tale, which I always have, would have been the Entire Old Cosmology. Xoat was still there in the Old Cosmology this whole time!

“And let me tell you this, Erick.

“Back in the Old Cosmology, people had been trying to summon Xoat for as long as there had been people capable of that Ultimate Necromancy. He was the first Wizard Upon Which All The Rest Was Built. The idea that someone had actually done the impossible and brought Xoat back to life was one of the theories behind the Sundering, but such a magic was impossible to work, because—

“Well there was this old tale, about how a lich had taken one of the original worlds —theorized, not actually known— and then transformed that entire plane of several billion people and lands a thousand times the size of Veird, into a person. That ‘person’ rapidly became an insane god which then promptly died due to internal stresses. The lich escaped that death and then went on to try again. A council of Wizards stopped the lich the third time he tried it— It’s a long story which doesn’t need to be repeated in full to understand that the creature that the lich created was not Xoat. Both times, the proto-god was composed of all the lifeforms that it was made of. It wasn’t till the Wizard council transformed a barren world, made of equal elemental parts, into a living thing, that the lich’s magic proved, once and for all, that one could not summon Xoat; that elemental confluence of a barren rock that the Wizards had raised turned into a primordial elemental which had no—

“Long story short: Thanks to those experiments and a hundred thousand smaller proofs, we know that any part of the Old Cosmology, when turned into life, would revert to thought-patterns and soul-patterns reminiscent of the chronologically-nearest lifeform that created the mana that composed that matter.

“If you take a life, kill it, use that body to make a new life, kill it, then use that second body to try and [Resurrection] the first body, it doesn’t work. That particular experiment is very, very involved, but that was the gist of it all—

“Anyway!

“The Sundering happened, and all the Old Cosmology fell through the Yawning Void, into this New Cosmology…

“Would that old experiment to summon Xoat actually work, now that the Old Cosmology was back to being… Not the Cosmology? Now that all existence had been scrubbed from that land?

“Completely possible! Maybe. Maybe the Old Cosmology collapsed enough to allow such a thing!

“Possible, and yet astronomically large odds against such a happenstance.

“And let me tell you that I have gained a large appreciation for that term since your dyson sphere idea. ‘Astronomically large’. Experience in one’s Status only goes to-the-21, but the size of the volume of the sphere of the Veird system goes a lot higher.

“Xoat’s soul somehow falling to some unknown world in this New Cosmology, and then coming together into a whole? Absolutely unbelievable.

“And yet…

“We have the [Reincarnation] spell, which you made, which takes the smallest part of a person’s true soul and remakes them from that smallest part.

“But why did such a thing not happen here? On Veird?

“Or maybe such a thing could only happen outside of Veird, where the Script does not control the mana?

“And so, maybe that is why you were born on Earth, and that it took 1500 years for that to happen. And maybe… Maybe the reason you have your lightning is because the Sundering left an impossible mark on you, too, just as it did for everyone else who survived the Sundering. Maybe that mark survived even though your own [Reincarnation].” Quilatalap finally got all of his words out, his hands calming down as he finally looked to Erick, saying, “And now, you came back to Veird. You came back here as soon as you could, but with your daughter, taking the only part of the New Cosmology you cared about back to the Dark, to here, to what remained of yourself.”

Erick took all that in, watching as Quilatalap made connections that Erick had never made, which the large man then placed in the best possible light. There were so many different ways Quilatalap could have gone with the ‘your lightning looks like Primal Lightning’ idea, and yet, he chose the best one; a version of events that Erick hadn’t even considered.

Quilatalap’s whole splurge of words brought out a lot of uncomfortable maybe-truths, though.

Erick had wondered, with Establishment magic, exactly how deadly he could get with pasts and futures, and thanks to Rozeta asking him why his lightning looked like Primal Lightning, Erick had considered if he could have somehow caused the Sundering. Somehow. Erick, of course, rejected all those ideas, because it made absolutely no sense why he would ever want to cause something as horrible as the Sundering…

But if Quilatalap was right, and if Erick truly was the reincarnation of Xoat, and that the Sundering had left a mark on him, too…

That made a whole lot more sense.

That Erick would try to turn the thing that hurt him into a source of strength made sense… Sort of. A lot more sense than Erick wanting to somehow Paradox the Sundering into happening, anyway. But then again, mana and fae and planars had freely traveled within the Old Cosmology and other universes, so…

Maybe Xoat’s soul had fallen to this New Cosmology just recently, and only now, being reborn, did ‘Xoat’ call to the largest source of mana in the universe, and thus drag himself and his new daughter back to his ‘former home’. Maybe in that calling he had killed the Old Cosmology.

Because after all, what was a mere 1450 years of difference when it came to Paradox magic, and time travel…

And, more than that, even considering this idea, Erick had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t have wanted to be around for post-Sundering Veird. But 1450 years later? Arriving in a somewhat stable time?

… The answer to that was uncomfortable, but it was uncomfortable in the way that Erick could easily tell himself that he would rather have been alive in the 2000’s on Earth, than the -2000’s.

… Would Erick ever want to have caused the Sundering 1450 years ago? In order to bring about the events of today? To make his whole life on Veird, and the life he was planning for in the far, far future?

The future where he made a universe filled with mana and possibilities, where he brought life and hope to his whole ‘New’ Cosmology? Because that’s what it meant to bring mana and [Cleanse] and Healing Magic and eventual immortality to everyone in this new universe. Erick would even bring that power to the alien civilizations that he had never met, but which he would likely meet in the future. Maybe he could even bring all those things back to Earth, eventually, if Earth didn’t blow up before he got there.

… Could Erick have Established the Sundering, killing the uncountable masses, to bring power to even more uncountable masses?

Erick wanted to say ‘No! Absolutely not!’

But the darker parts of his mind looked back to when he was back on Earth, and facing an early grave due to cancer. He had already outlived his own parents, and he was sure that he was going to die of cancer while Jane was living it up at the CIA, committing international crimes on behalf of the United States.

Could he have done something horrible…

Could Erick have done the unimaginable, there in that car ride, in that liminal space where he was raising his daughter, and sending her off, while he died at home, having outlived his time on Earth?

Erick wanted to say that he was better than that awful decision, but if he had always been a Wizard, and if he had accidentally brought them to Veird anyway, if that was truly his fault, then…

Quilatalap looked down at Erick, his eyes worried, his entire self struggling with a crisis of faith, and trying to find the proper explanation for it all. Perhaps searching for an explanation was a fool’s errand, though.

Erick looked up at the beautiful man, saying, “I like your interpretation of events better than the alternatives, but I’m pretty sure that the whole idea of me being Xoat and all that other stuff is all just coincidence. I was raised in a society where lightning was the strongest natural power; our entire world ran on electricity. That’s probably all that connection is.” He shrugged. “And lightning is neat. I made [Call Lightning] long before I learned any particulars of Primal Lightning and the Sundering, and that Undertow and Yawning Void idea is half-assed at best. Drains are some of the best non-violent ways to take down people, but the Sundering was the exact opposite of non-violent.”

For a long moment Quilatalap just looked at Erick. And then he asked/said, “You want to ignore it all, then. All the connections. All the parallels. All the meaning.”

“Absolutely,” Erick said, with perhaps too much force. “What does it change in the end how it happened, Quilatalap?” Erick let some of his fears out, “Either I’m Xoat and it happened as you say it happened, or I’m Xoat, and I caused the Sundering in order to bring you all here for some unfathomable reason, or I’m some random Wizard who was fleeing a myriad death and who wanted to prevent all death, forever more, and thus I came here to Veird where I could do exactly that. And now we have Benevolence and [Reincarnation] and my desire to open new worlds, and make everything better with this newfound power of mine.”

“… Or maybe all of those are true, and it is your right as Xoat to do anything you wish to do with your own body.”

“Even if I were Xoat it would be very wrong of me to be able to do anything I wanted with my own self, especially if other people were using it. And besides! According to your story with the billions-dead-worlds, Xoat wasn’t even conscious. How could he do anything at all? He couldn’t. Not on his own, and certainly not with a whole lot of help, either.”

“Leaving aside the consciousness factor...” Quilatalap gave Erick a Look, saying, “We’ve had the abortion debate before, Erick, when we talked about stuff happening on Earth and I talked about stuff happening on Veird 1450 years ago. I know your true feelings on this.”

“… That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“A difference of scale, yes. It’s different.”

“Let me ask you this, then: Will you eventually return to your idea of going incognito among the people? Will you abdicate your throne once House Benevolence establishes itself?”

“… I will go incognito eventually. Not for a very long time, though. Why?”

“Because while most of the stories about Xoat were how he died and the universe happened, some of those stories are about how Xoat walked among us, doing good things from the shadows, never knowing who he was and yet still doing good all the time.”

“... I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I would prefer not to be laden with all these ideas of what could have happened, because all these theories are impossible to prove anyway. All they do is get in the way of real work. And this is putting way too much weight on stuff that doesn’t matter, because I would absolutely never cause a Sundering! I made Benevolence so that a Sundering never happens again!”

Erick’s words were probably too heated.

But Quilatalap took Erick’s anger in stride, calmly saying, “Because the Sundering marked your soul as much as it marked all of us that remain, and all of those who came afterward. Even after taking 1450 years to come back together, you still did, and then you came back here to Veird to make Benevolence, to prevent all further Sunderings in this entire New Cosmology.”

With a voice filled with quiet bargaining, Erick said, “Reasons and cause and effect literally do not matter, Quilatalap. I’m just a guy, who has a bit of power, who is using that power to do some good. That’s all.”

Quilatalap looked at Erick for a little while.

And Erick waited.

Quilatalap likely had a thousand more thoughts flitting through his mind, but Erick could not and did not want to unravel them all. So he waited, as Quilatalap had a crisis of faith, of purpose, and of the present.

All too soon, Quilatalap stood up a fraction straighter.

Erick waited some more.

“… Well. Okay.” With an air of brightness, Quilatalap said, “Okay! Well. Then let’s ignore all that circumstantial evidence, because what happened before is simply what happened before, and without any hard evidence this way or that, focusing too much on what could have happened might blind us to what actually happened. And besides that, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Erick felt his heart swell with love, and then he tempered that right back with rationality. Rapidly, Erick ended up in some equilibrium space that veered toward hope, and other nice things, such as a continued relationship with Quilatalap, while he desperately ignored the possible hero/miracle/crisis happening with the big green man right now. Quilatalap seemed to be forcing himself to ignore all of those uncomfortable things, too.

Which was good.

With a calm smile, Erick asked, “Ready for some presentations?”

“I’ll need to make my own. You can go on ahead.”

“… You don’t have to? We’ve already talked about what you’ve done this last year?”

“Sure, but none of the rest know, and I’m rather sure your overseers are still wary of me. A presentation could put their worries to rest.”

“… Okay. Sure?”

Quilatalap smirked. “I’ll catch up with you.”

“… Sure,” Erick said, not sure what else he could possibly say in such a situation.

- - - -

Erick walked alone down the hallway of his private section of the House, for Quilatalap had split off and gone downstairs, to the atrium, to set up in one of the rooms set aside for the presentations. That was probably for the best, for Quilatalap’s thought process regarding Xoat, Erick, the Sundering, and Benevolence, had shaken Erick.

But any more thoughts spent on all of that would be a distraction. He was the host of the Feast and he had work to do.

Ophiels fluttered all around the House, showing Erick that nothing was on fire, and all the people of the House were doing their respective jobs and keeping their heads down, either setting out food or clearing away small messes or cooking in the kitchens. The guests were partaking of the Feast, or setting up presentations, or… Hmm. Flirting with the staff. Erick saw Farix flirt with Cook Donny, but Lapis was at Farix’s side with a quick elbow and a quiet word, and Farix excused himself. Donny excused himself from that situation a second later, once he felt safe enough to do so. The big guy went around a corner and paused, taking a deep breath, before moving on.

Erick moved on, too.

A quick count of people showed that there were a lot more people here than Erick had counted yesterday. The Shade Tower, of which only Goldie was a member until a few days ago, had been transformed from white eternal stonewood and basic niceness, into a fantastically high-class building filled with luxury, and also a secondary section filled with servant-level niceness. In one half of the building there were black carpets running down hallways, four poster beds, and black vases and sculptures of the Dark Dragon on plinths. The other half of Shade Tower was the same normal white flooring and nice lights that Erick had put up months ago. But there were also servants. Some were ghostly, courtesy of Quilatalap, but there were also a lot of real people down there.

Lot of people who had not been there yesterday.

Shadelings of all sorts, from human to orcol to harpy to incani and dragonkin. They all seemed past their initial fugue-state, too, so they weren’t just mindless automatons, but real people. There were also normal people, too. Maybe about 25 people total, all of whom were involved in cooking, or cleaning, or [Fabricate]ing clothes… Making clothes? Yup. Clothes for parties? Probably.

Whatever they were doing was probably fine.

None of the Shades were in residence. Every room given to the Shades was unoccupied, with unseen servants in the process of making up the beds, or completely empty, for the Shades therein had vacated hours ago, or never stayed there at all. Treant’s room looked completely untouched, which was normal for that orcol Shade. He was staying in his grove he had made out of House Benevolence’s southern garden space. A quick look out there showed that the southern gardens were also empty, though the place where Treant had rooted himself for the night had been heavily disturbed, with a void in the dirt where he would have been planted.

Most of the Shades were in the atrium, with only Treant missing… Somewhere.

He’d turn up eventually.

The Cooks and staff seemed to be fine, down there in their rooms located right outside of the atrium, and inside the kitchens already cooking. Breakfast was being served to Queen and Goldie and Hollowsaur now, all of whom sat at the same central table where they had all eaten dinner last night. The three of them seemed to be having a small conversation, which Erick would likely join later if their conversation held past breakfast. A few people had already set up their presentations, and a few presentation spaces were empty. Fairy Moon and Bright Smile were at the presentation rooms located on the second ring of the atrium, beside all the rest, setting up that presentation themselves, with the help of one more.

Volaro was at Ar’Cosmos’s presentation space, talking to them about all that was happening in that space, while a human woman and an incani man cast lightwards into the air, showcasing some sort of presentation about trade, or something. Ar’Cosmos had somehow snuck extra people into the Feast, too, even though Erick had not seen any such people come out of Fairy Moon’s Springtime [Gate] last night. Volaro’s presence was a bit disturbing, though.

Erick almost lightstepped there to interrupt that conversation, to find out what was going on, but he’d discover all of that soon enough.

For now, everything looked okay.

All the various forces of the Feast were located in their own parts of the House, but they all mingled in the atrium in the center. The Shades had their tower. The Cooks and staff had all the lower ring level of the atrium, and all the housing outside of that ring. Ar’Cosmos had Ar’Cosmos’s tower, which was empty of people.

And the people of House Benevolence itself were located here, higher in the central tower, across from the part which held all the office space, at Erick’s part of the House. While he had his rooms closer to the north, Zolan had his rooms to the south, along with a bunch of guest rooms that remained mostly empty. Aisha and Volaro were in two of those guest rooms, and while Volaro was downstairs already, Aisha and Zolan were in Zolan’s common rooms, awake and talking.

Having taken 30 seconds to confirm that the House was not on fire and everyone was getting along, or at least they weren’t killing each other, Erick went to go see his Castellan and his Overseer of Magic. Both Zolan and Aisha looked up in Erick’s direction before he even got to the door, with Zolan looking apprehensive and Aisha telling Erick to come on in, while Erick was in the process of knocking.

- - - -

The Wizard walked into the room.

And Zolan stood strong. A thousand thoughts had been reorganizing in Zolan’s head ever since last night, when Zolan witnessed a horror beyond his imagination. Everything that had come before paled in comparison to the pile of coincidences that slapped him across the face and then stabbed him in the heart a few times, just to be sure that he got the message.

Erick was the reincarnation of Xoat.

Or.

Erick was sent here by Xoat.

Or.

It was all coincidence, and Erick was the same person Zolan had known for the last half a year, and which he had heard of ever since the planar man fell to Veird with his daughter.

… Or maybe there was something else going on, and attempting to assign meaning to all the piled up coincidences was merely Zolan’s way of coping with reality. Zolan had spoken at length with Aisha about all of this, but while he was leaning toward the ‘Xoat is involved somehow’ sort of explanation, they had barely touched the surface of everything that they had seen and heard since the Feast had started. Mostly, Aisha had been shooting down every conspiratorial thought in Zolan’s head, in a way that Zolan had not experienced in well over a hundred years, like Aisha was a teacher and Zolan was a student seeing connections that weren’t there. Which was rather true, in this scenario. Aisha had been a Knowledge Mage for a lot longer than Zolan, and she didn’t need to regain all of her Book Magic after going through a [Reincarnation] like Zolan had.

Aisha did confess that she was worried, too, but she trusted Erick in a way that was hard to put into words.

This led to another deep conversation about trust and their king…

And then the conversation had warped back toward Xoat conspiracies.

Zolan was mainly struck by how much Erick did not look like how Zolan had expected Xoat to look… Not that Zolan ever expected to need to imagine what Xoat looked like in the first place. But Zolan had seen illustrations of that First Wizard. He had heard all the big stories.

But Erick was Erick.

A bit of a goofy smile. A bit of a ‘hidden-power’ sort of look. Ophiel, sitting on his shoulder, was perhaps the only part of Erick which showed off his power. Even when Zolan was in a meeting with the guy, it wasn’t until deep into any of those conversations that Zolan could truly see that Erick deserved to be in those conversations; he certainly never acted powerful or meaningful or deadly. He was not accustomed to the trappings of power, like Kirginatharp, or King Alfonin, or any other ruler of this world.

He was simply Erick.

Sure, in the beginning of this job, Zolan had a bit of reverence for the man. Erick had just come out as a Wizard, and he had brought [Gate] and [Reincarnation] to the world, but now, months had passed, and Zolan dealt with all of Erick’s crazy new magics each and every day…

Zolan’s Knowledge Magic was fully running right now, giving him ample time to assess the situations around him, and so, Erick had yet to walk fully into the room. In that moment Zolan decided that action was better than words right now.

Erick greeted them, and Zolan had said a greeting back, and Aisha said something similar, but pleasantries were unnecessary.

Before the conversation went on past the ‘good mornings’, Zolan asked, “We need a goal for this Feast, sir. I know we spoke of a general goal of ‘no deaths and no ruination’, but we must have some specifics now, and before we rejoin the Feast.”

Aisha briefly looked to Zolan, then she turned back to Erick. “With the reveal of [Duplicate] and that song, a more solid idea for the outcome of this Feast would be prudent.”

Zolan asked, “What is the goal here? What does the world look like when this Feast is over, and what sort of dangers are we to be expected to handle?”

Erick smiled softly, then said, “My goal is that the House looks the same after this Feast is over, as it did before, with nothing changing in the way of short term goals or long term goals. The Greater Candlepoint Area will continue to expand. The Gate Network will expand to Songli, and the Local Area Gate Networks of the Highlands and the Crystal Forest will happen. Trade will occur, and we’ll see that our small parts of the world becomes better than they used to be, and steadily, that change will sweep forward, brought forth by the hands of others who join the cause.”

Zolan and Aisha both got concerned looks.

Zolan spoke his mind, “I ask you not to allow the Shades to live here at this House. Goldie is bad enough. We cannot contain the rest.”

“Of course,” Erick said, “If they have contact with anyone past today, I will ask that they contact me, directly, and don’t involve you or our House at all. After several decades of good behavior and whatnot, that might change.” With a look that could be called forlorn, Erick added, “And I hope they do not press that issue.”

Aisha said, “They will.”

Erick said, “Then I will simply press back.”

Aisha stressed, “Queen is going to involve herself with House Benevolence through our connection to Songli. Lapis is going to want to involve herself through a connection in the Wastelands. Farix is going to come at us through education. I’m not too worried about Fallopolis, Treant, or Hollowsaur, but the other three are going to want to be here in some shape, and Goldie is already here, which already sets a precedent.”

Erick nodded. “I understand and expect all that. I fully expect to get some tertiary connections going with all of them, too, for keep in mind that we must be able to work with everyone, or else they will simply go somewhere else and involve themselves in our business in some indirect way. I would prefer the direct approach.”

“We would be better served with distancing ourselves from the Dark, sir,” Zolan said, “There were too many witnesses to your song to hide it, and so we shall not be doing that, but as your castellan, I must stress that to involve ourselves with the Clergy of the Dark…” Zolan had trouble putting all his thoughts into words, for he knew he only had a short amount of time with Erick, at this critical juncture. Shadow’s Feast was not often a time of great change, but this year, like last, looked to be one of those times of great change. So Zolan simply said, “It does not matter whatever they tell you, and however changed they show themselves to be. They are still Shades. They cannot be allowed to taint this House more than they already have.”

Aisha stood firm. “I agree with Zolan’s assessment. I would add more words, but they are unnecessary; we’ve got a Feast to attend and problems to mitigate.”

For a moment, Erick stood there, watching the world, and also Zolan and Aisha. Erick asked the two of them, “Are you two good? Emotionally, I mean.”

Zolan said, “I am of solid mind, body, and soul. I can handle this, sir, or I would not have volunteered. I must admit that the depth of this year’s Feast is something that I had not expected, but I have a great deal of hope that the issues the Shades have caused, which we uncover here, tonight, will be much more solvable with all of our combined perspectives, instead of with the minimal intelligence we usually get for these sorts of things.”

Aisha softly declared, “As we do every year, we of Rozeta’s faithful will respond with appropriate countermeasures to the dangers we didn’t know existed until after the Shades created them. That doesn’t mean that we should assist them with their Dark work in some sort of effort to mitigate that Dark work. They will twist that assistance into something evil.”

Zolan glanced at Aisha, surprised that she would speak that far against House Benevolence’s stated goal of ensuring some sort of peace between all sides.

Erick stood strong, saying, “The Shades and Melemizargo are not going away, so mitigation is our only viable response. I ask you to see this Feast less as a chance to harm the Shades further, and more as a chance to ensure that their power causes less harm, and more good. I assure you both, though, that I will not be inviting any Shades to live here. I understand that danger full well.”

Aisha seemed mollified slightly. She nodded.

Zolan felt slightly less worried, too.

He was still terrified of what he had seen and heard ten hours ago, when Erick called the Darkness a friend. But that was then. And here, now, with Erick seeming the same as he always was…

Last night was still terrifying.

But Zolan could deal with terrifying. Comparatively, only getting one spell every 20 seconds, thanks to the time differential of the Feast Barrier, was much more worrying. But Zolan had his aura control, and more importantly, he still believed that Erick was still on his and Aisha’s side. They had a Wizard willing to save them if anything went horrible, and they might have even had an archlich willing to bring them back from the dead, if the… Well not ‘the worst’. Death was not the worst thing that could happen around Shades. But it was still a big worry.

Zolan had still never imagined that Erick would speak for the Dark, though. But that’s what it meant to be a living treaty between all people. Zolan admonished himself; the extent that Erick was cozy with the Dark should not have surprised him. A treaty never would have been forged otherwise.

Feeling much better, Zolan had a few more words with Erick and with Aisha as the three of them made their way into the main part of the House, down to the atrium for breakfast…

And a whole lot more.

- - - -

Erick left Zolan and Aisha to walk by themselves down to the buffet. They’d be fine together. Volaro should have been with them, but that Carnage dragon orcol was over talking to Bright Smile, on the other side of the atrium, at Queen’s presentation. They had moved on from Ar’Cosmos’s presentation, talking about this and that and they were probably going to visit the other presentations, too. That kind of pissed Erick off. Volaro should should have been with Aisha and Zolan; they were all overseers of House Benevolence, after all. But Volaro had gone off on his own…

Erick wasn’t going to micromanage them that much, he decided. He’d just mentally mark down everything that happened and if it proved to be a problem, then some people would get talked to afterward, and it was kinda ridiculous to expect Volaro, the Carnage Dragon, to not have a lot of remaining loyalties with Ar’Cosmos. For now, nothing was on fire and no one was screaming, so everything was copacetic.

With his eyes on the first presentation, which was simply the closest presentation, Erick walked over to an empty space on the second floor of the atrium which had been filled by a Shade; by Lapis, the Shade of Enchantment. Last year Lapis had showcased how she and a few other Shades, mainly Treant, had taken people from around the world and turned them into Stat trees, using the color of their souls and a bit of Melemizargo’s Wizardry to make them into reinforcing fruits, or New-Stat-granting fruits. Back then, Treant had forced an Intelligence fruit, an apple, upon Erick, and in the Intelligence fugue that had followed, Erick had given himself all the other New Stats because it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Lapis’s work this following year, after having been Blessed with Empathy, looked to be centered upon the Wasteland Kingdoms and against the Converter Angel. As Erick stepped into that converted business space, with tens of information-filled lightwards and maps and all sorts plotted out with names and places and purposes, Erick wondered, before he read any of it in depth, if he was going to need to deal with some big Quiet War fallout from Candlepoint’s geographically nearest neighbors. The Wall of the Wasteland Kingdoms was only 250 kilometers away, after all.

… Obviously Erick would be dealing with fallout from the Kingdoms over all of Lapis’s actions, but the exact nature of that interaction would be for the future to tell, and Erick couldn’t ask Lapis herself about it right now. Lapis was not in the room.

There was, however, an older incani man of pale red skin and bushy white beard.

The man saw Erick and stepped closer, and then he bowed, and rose, saying, “Welcome, Wizard Flatt. How may I be of service?”

“Greetings. First, who are you, and then, what’s all this.”

Without missing a moment, the older man said, “I am Harriz Greysteel, a retired First Knight of the Kingdoms, a defender of the realms of incani. My current home is the Kingdom of West Bank. King Artotz Rashi is my lord, and I believe you have met Princess Weilux, through her contact and trade with your merchant Zaraanka Checharin.

“I used to oversee the training of recruits for our standing armies but in my advanced age I have moved on to a political post, primarily dealing with potentially catastrophic Quiet War events of all kinds, mostly of a defensive nature. I am here because Shade Lapis has been assisting our nation with the eradication of the Converter Angel Curse and other angelic operations inside of our Kingdoms for the past year, alongside Caizoa of the Black Star. That is the quick version; the larger version is written here in this presentation.”

Erick had a lot of sudden dislike for the man, based on his profession of ‘defender of the realms of incani’, which meant Harriz was deep in the Quiet War, and probably the Forever War, too. But he had come in here expecting something like that, and the man was calm and professional, with no visible anger or apparent desire to influence Erick one way or another. And yes, Erick did know of Weilux and Zaraanka.

Erick said, “I have met Weilux once, in passing, and then once more in an actual meeting, but my castellan is the one who has actually met with her in any real fashion. Based on what I’m seeing here I’ll probably have to make some time to actually attend some of those Wasteland Kingdom meetings soon, though, if all the world calms down enough to let me. Are you capable of speaking on behalf of your people with regard to getting a Gate system setup?”

Harriz relaxed a fraction, his shoulders loosening and his breath evening out. He was glad to broach the topic of Gates. “I am. If possible, we’d be interested in getting a Local Area Gate Network up and running directly inside the Kingdoms. Since we are so close to Yggdrasil, would it be possible to do this? To have Gates in our Kingdoms, directly?”

“In a few months Yggdrasil can certainly do that. Standard rates apply. I won’t be partial to any Quiet War shit, but I am more than willing to support the Kingdoms with a LAGN. Details to be worked out later. I imagine that you’d want to start trading with Songli, too, considering they’re not a part of the Quiet War, and with Stratagold, of course. For those shipments you’d have to go through Candlepoint, along with every other sort of world-wide trade.” Erick gestured to the presentation, asking, “So what has Lapis been doing in the Kingdoms, or rather… What have the Kingdoms been doing? Is there a difference?”

The conversation was moving fast, and Harriz kept up well.

“A great difference, but it started off as Shade Lapis working undercover to root out all the influences of the Angels.” Harriz gestured to the first part of the presentation, on the left side of the room near the door, saying, “She came to us under the guise of a Soul Mage to assist with Seeing and diagnosing the angelic taint, working closely with Black Star Caizoa, though only Caizoa knew that Shade Lapis was a Shade at the time...”

Harriz explained the events of the past year, and Erick listened. There were a hundred details to remember, most of which might not have been true, but the general shape of Lapis’s time in the Wasteland Kingdoms was easy enough to see.

After Last Shadow’s Feast, Caizoa went searching for angel-afflictions with her Black Star of Koyabez. She found many afflicted people, all rather quickly. One of those afflicted people was Princess Dinabez of West Bank, fourth in line to the throne (Princess Weilux was second in line to the throne, Erick recalled). But Caizoa had no way to deal with those afflictions, which was when Lapis stepped forward, under the guise of an unknown incani Soul Mage.

What followed was a lot of tension between Lapis’s persona, Caizoa knowing who Lapis was anyway and choosing not to out her, the rapid purifying of many people’s souls of the angel taint, and a whole bunch of inter-Wasteland incidents, once the depth of the Converter Angel’s infection became truly known. Erick had been there, with Ophiel, for some of that, back when he was keeping tabs on that development. But once the initial problems got contained by Caizoa, and King Rashi’s powerbase was no longer being undermined by angelic interests, Erick was able to step away, and Caizoa was able to go on her crusade against the angel infection on her own (With Lapis helping in the background). Which is exactly what Caizoa did. Since the Black Star could find targets anywhere in the world, and Caizoa used that capability to find every single angel-infected person the world over.

All the while Erick had been walking the Worldly Path, the reason he didn’t see many angel-infected people was because Caizoa and the Kingdoms were ripping those infected people out of their lives, fixing them, and then putting them back. Even in the angel-aligned places of the world like the Greensoil Republic, and the Sovereign City of Pearl, Caizoa and her people went to work, extricating people from their lives, cleansing them, and then returning them. There were many, many different plots against the Wasteland Kingdoms that Caizoa and King Rashi uncovered and foiled, and many almost-wars that happened due to how they chose to solve that issue. Soon enough, due to their actions, the angels were in full retreat. The Converter Angel had retreated to the moon Celes.

But the only reason Caizoa and the Kingdoms were able to fight back against that taint was due to that Soul Mage, at the beginning; Lapis made this counter offensive possible.

It didn’t happen every time Lapis helped remove the angelic taint from someone important, but many times, Lapis got a plus-1 to her ‘Repent Sinner!’ quest, issued by the confluence of Rozeta and Erick’s own [Blessing of Empathy]. That Quest required her to repent for 101 years, and do 1001 good deeds. It was not an exact Quest, though, since only a few soul-cleanings got her a plus-1.

When Lapis tried to save people, on purpose, for the needs of the Quest, the Quest did not update. When she saved someone because they needed saving, she got a Quest update. Mostly. This was not a sure thing. Infuriatingly, the Quest did not seem to have any set parameters at all, which made Lapis think that the Quest was personally overseen by Rozeta, or more likely Koyabez, though all of that was simple conjecture, without any evidence in any particular direction.

The depth of the angelic infection within a person also had something to do with the Quest update, but so did the social and organizational position of the person who had been infected. A deep infection in a random person sometimes gave completion, while a light infection in the general of an army always gave completion, but a light infection in a random person usually gave nothing, while a light infection in a high ranking soldier usually gave something. Knock-on effects had an outsized, completely unpredictable role in the nature of Quest completion, too. One random person in a managerial position and a very weak infection in Eidolon’s shipping district gave Lapis a point, even though she expected nothing.

Lapis was currently sitting at 278-out-of-1001 good deeds done. Tomorrow, if things held how she expected them to hold, then she would get a 1-out-of-101 years marker, too.

Because of the ousting of the angels, the many knock on effects, and Caizoa’s strict unwillingness to progress the Quiet War when she clearly had the capability to do so (Erick felt this was due to the Black Star telling her not to do more, otherwise it would kill her, though he did not voice this objection), the Wasteland was currently experiencing a near-renaissance of ease of life, and international relations. Retired First Knight Harriz did not use that term ‘renaissance’, but from the various Kingdoms suddenly not needing to worry about invasion, to instead be able to devote resources to building and expanding, and enjoying life, ‘renaissance’ was close enough to being true that that’s what Erick mentally called it.

And then the presentation was over, and Shade Lapis stepped out of the shadows, adding, “Though your own actions have likely caused much more stability than my own, Wizard Flatt.”

Erick turned a pleasant attention to the dark skinned, androgynous woman. “Don’t sell yourself short, Lapis. I’ve been waiting for the Converter Angel to cross paths with me for a long time so that I may eliminate that lingering threat, but it looks like you’ve pressured that turmoil back to their moon.”

Lapis allowed herself a small grin. “A complete cessation of the Quiet War will never happen, but through our efforts we can make it as quiet as possible.”

“Hopefully.” Erick asked, “What are your plans going forward?”

“If I were to interact more with the demonic side of the Forever War I would be working on their side of the Quiet War, so I will not be doing that. After some final touches to ensure nothing will fall apart in my absence, I plan on leaving to the Underworld, to assist with ensuring the viability of long term enchantments on various failing states.” Lapis said, “One of my final acts of repentance in the Wasteland Kingdoms was to bring Harriz Greysteel here to the Feast, to make this introduction between you and the incani Kingdom of West Bank.”

Erick gave a tiny nod to the man who he had spoken with for the last half an hour, saying to Lapis, “Seems like a decent fellow; I’m sure we’ll talk more later.”

Harriz had stepped away from the conversation as soon as Lapis had shown, but at being included, he did a small bow in acknowledgment of being heard, and then he stepped away from the conversation again.

And then Erick turned back to Lapis, asking, “How did you find my daughter’s sword? What was your purpose in giving it to her like that?”

Erick had gone into this conversation wanting to keep certain parts of his life separate from the rest, but now that Lapis was finally in front of him, he could not help himself. The words just came out. While he kept the implied danger out of his voice, he still made the implicit threat, even though he tried not to.

Lapis understood the threat.

Which was probably why she had kept herself away from Erick until after her presentation was over.

Without worry at all, Lapis said, “The Well of Souls that existed inside the crystal tower of Brightwater, where Melemizargo’s Heart lay beating, cannot be destroyed, for attempting to destroy that location is like attempting to destroy the low parts of a valley, where rainwater gathers. When the Soul Slime captured that instantiation of the Dark Heart, the Well moved to a new location. I was drawn to that new location by the Dark, and there, I found your daughter’s sword in the small, black waves at the edge. This was two months ago. I still had work to do at the Kingdoms and I was not about to hand the sword off to anyone else, and so, I waited till I would see your daughter again. I suspected that meeting would happen here, since we were already talking about you hosting the Feast all the way back then.

“And so, I delivered the sword to your daughter in a public location so that there would be no subterfuge happening. The Prince destroyed it, though. If he had not, and if she would have accepted my offer to enchant it for her, I would have made it an artifact worthy of her power. Or probably just soulbound it, if that is what your daughter wanted instead, so that she could never lose it again.”

All rather innocuous.

Mostly.

“Soulbound items are those things that came out of Candlepoint the year before last? There’s no trick to them, to cause the shadeling curse, is there, like there is with the New Stats?”

“Attempting to breach the 1 soulbound item limitation would cause problems varying from soul-sickness to gradual soul-death, but other than that, there were no side effects of that particular magic. Outside of specific, difficult, unknown, and purposeful magics, beyond simply using another soulbound stone, breaching that 1-soulbound limit is impossible. If your daughter would have chosen for me to soulbind her sword to her then I would have done so and also warned her of this issue.”

Erick wanted to say that Lapis, the Soul Mage, getting anywhere near Jane and Jane’s soul was a recipe for Lapis’s extermination.

But Jane would absolutely hate him for that; for taking away her agency, for lording his power over her situation, for any number of reasons, all of which Jane would be right to feel. This fact was the only thing that held him back from threatening Lapis more directly.

… And yet, it was his right as Jane’s father to tell people off and to keep her safe.

Luckily, Lapis seemed to understand the threat without it needing to be said.

So, Erick said, “I’d like to know more about soulbinding, but some other time. Based on what I see here and your interest in continuing to assist people in new venues in the Underworld, I’m interested in providing fallback options for you when you’re down there. Possibly even direct assistance with your endeavors, whatever they might be. I will not be accepting any Shades here at the House, but in several years we might be able to work closer. Do you have an idea for how this assistance would happen?”

Lapis’s bright white eyes went wide. “I… Uh. Yes.” She had not expected Erick to approve of anything she had done so now she was floundering. But she was a Shade, and she got herself under control nearly instantly. “I appreciate the offer, Wizard Flatt. I am already purchasing materials through New Brightwater, though, so I am fulfilled at the moment and for the near future. If you wish to contribute to my work then a Gate to New Brightwater would be welcome.”

That suggestion was probably the most reasonable thing that Lapis could have made.

Erick had no trouble saying, “I’ll see about that, though I have yet to see Farix’s presentation and a Gate to New Brightwater is contingent on that meeting.”

Lapis bowed her head.

Erick moved on to the next presentation.