The sky of the Celestial Observatory was a blue blackness, filled with stars. The world itself was divided between mountain tops and valleys, with layers of illuminated clouds separating mountains made of crystal spires, and valleys filled with greenery and sparkling blue water. The air was cool, but not cold, though Erick didn’t really get cold anymore.

Not as a human-shaped protean person, and especially not as a giant black dragon.

With wings spread wide, Erick surveyed the land. This was not where Yggdrasil had dropped him the first time; that kilometers-wide bridge between the two crystal-spire mountains was nowhere to be seen. Of course there were other big bridges between the mountain lands out there. The crystal spire cities above the clouds were all connected by bridges, like they were all islands in an illuminated sea of clouds.

Erick flew above those clouds, feeling kinda great, as he checked his Lightning Path.

There was lots to do here.

As opposed to Erick’s time at Da’luwe, where all his Path generally pointed at the various problems of Da’luwe, since the world outside the city was pretty hostile to life and thus there wasn’t much he could do out in the Endless, there was life everywhere here, in this land of peaks and valleys. Down there, in the green lands, people toiled in fields and lived simple, rural lives. The places Erick flew over seemed to be firmly stuck in the 1400’s, if he were going by Earth-standards, though some places looked a lot more primitive than that. Cows helped men and women plow fields while kids played with hoops and sticks as grandmothers and fathers knitted scarves or whittled wood into cooking utensils. The buildings looked made out of wood and plaster and thatch while the roads were dirt in most places, and gravel by the nicer houses.

It was so weird to see, and yet not that weird at all. The more Erick saw of Margleknot the more he knew how stratified the whole place was. There was the Dragon District, where people invented reality whole cloth, and then places like this and like Da’luwe, where some people lived so far below others that they were practically caricatures of ancient pasts.

The people that lived above the clouds were somewhere between those extremes.

Erick soared through the eternal night sky and cast his gaze far and deep.

In those crystal spire mountaintops Erick saw what appeared to be places like Ar’Kendrithyst, with spires and sky bridges and people living openly, using little ‘smartphones’, or whatever they called them. Some restaurants used machines to flip vegetable-and-egg cakes on griddles and serve them to customers. Men and women spoke at board meetings to investors. Nannies and grandfathers and uncles and aunts and fathers and mothers and all sorts of people walked from this place to that place with two kids in tow and a baby in a basket on their back, or with their girlfriend, or boyfriend, or just friends.

Watchtowers here and there spotted Erick, and so did a whole bunch of completely normal places.

Most people simply freaked out for a moment at the big black dragon flying far away, and then they continued about their day. One guy at a tower that stuck out pretty far from the other towers pissed himself, but that, and some ribbing from the other guys on duty, were all that happened there. That guy would probably recover from the loss of pride eventually.

Erick smirked a little as friends laughed at friends, as he kept flying, breathing in the cool air and feeling pretty great.

The Celestial Observatory was a land divided, though, and the ‘why’ of that was a pretty big explanation. He already knew a little bit of that reasoning, according to one of the conversations he had had with Eldawae, back in Da’luwe.

- -

City Eldawae, who was named as such for Reasons, had scowled when asked about the Good lands of Margleknot, saying, “All the truly Good places are gone and have been for a while. Paradise Rises was the truest bastion of Good in the universe over 6,400 years ago. Morbion saw to the destruction of that place personally, and it only took him a millennium to do it! Of course they should have seen it coming, though, so it was kind of their own fault. Morbion acted as a sort of ally of Good back then, killing off the most Evil lands out there. That’s how he started getting Contracts in on the Celestial Observatory and other places; they saw him as an ally of convenience now and then, and so that is what he became.”

Other Eldawae, named himself that way because they both were still trying to figure out new names, continued, “When Morbion eventually turned on Paradise Rises he turned with the full force of Balance at his back. Paradise Rises never stood a chance. From there they went after The Good Lands, Heartshearth, and many others. All the while the Celestial Observatory was getting worked on by Wraithborne’s lawyers due to the survivors of those other Good lands flooding that place. That’s what really did the Celestial Observatory in. Wraithborne conquered that place through infection of Contracts. Some of those Contracts could even be passed down to kids!”

City Eldawae said, “Now when the Prismatic Wilderness fell to Wraithborne… that’s when the Balance started to shift back against Wraithborne.”

“Quite right.” Other Eldawae said, “The fall of the Wilderness is when Wraithborne began its Reformation, adjusting from a land of complete war and domination and Evil, to something less overt. The lawyers came out in force with Contracts that forced more Contracts.”

“Morbion forced the Celestial Observatory into what it is today,” City Eldawae cursed, “A land of middling Good filled with systemic problems which would require war to fix, but no one wants to go to war because that would cut supply lines and end the easy life for a great many people.” Eldawae waved a wing. “And sunder a bunch of souls, too, as generationally-tied Contracts activated all across that part of Margleknot.”

- -

Both Eldawaes were not friends, exactly, and they both had rather dim views of the Good lands out there and they were not afraid to be acerbic about it, but they were both people who had stopped lying to Erick a while ago, in the month that Erick had spent at Layer 1 in and around Da’luwe. That solidly spoken nature and spending some time among the real people of Margleknot had helped Erick to learn a whole bunch of little things that he hadn’t known before that break.

Erick saw one of those facts now, as he soared through the starry sky, and viewed the horizon of Margleknot.

Margleknot was what Veird and FENRIR might one day be, in the very, very distant future; a giant dyson sphere surrounding a sun, but a whole lot more complicated than that.

Looking down at the Celestial Observatory, Erick imagined Margleknot’s original sun inside the sphere underneath, far, far inside, along with a bunch of other suns gathered and created by the various Fathers and Mothers of Margleknot, and all the other strong powers of this Fractal Universe. The entire interior space of that dyson sphere was many, many astronomical units across. No one but Margleknot really knew the full distance between one place and the next. The entire interior space was under Margleknot’s full control, and things such as ‘distance’ only really mattered when Margleknot made them matter. One could simply look up at the sky and see other lands, which should be impossible in any normal sort of space.

Inside the sphere, if Erick would have kept traveling across the Endless desert to reach the next grey pillar rising up from the next Wraithborne town, he would have stumbled into a land of forest and trees and simply left the Endless behind, without realizing he had left it behind. That’s how it was traveling in there. To get back to the Endless, he would have had to fly for many days back in that direction, and when he finally, suddenly found the Endless, he would have found himself a week away from the forested places.

Traveling out here, though, outside of the sphere, was a lot simpler and straightforward. The land below had such an imperceptible curve that it looked like all the crystal mountaintops simply stretched on forever. The Celestial Observatory was technically a land of 350,000,000,000,000,000 square kilometers, and more than ten times that when it came to actual living space, which was all up and down those mountains.

The Celestial Observatory was the entire outer surface of Margleknot, which was why it had been so easy for Wraithborne to infect with Evil. There were simply too many entry points into this land.

Except that wasn’t the whole story, either.

A lot of the outer surface of Margleknot was used for a lot of different peoples; in a way similar to how the inside was all spatially managed, the outside was also cut up into pieces. The Observatory didn’t actually comprise 350,000,000,000,000,000 square kilometers. It was more like only .5% of that big number.

Still a pretty big freaking number.

Trillions of people lived within quadrillions of square kilometers, so it wasn’t that populated. Technically. This was still one of the more populated, low-power places, though. The lands where the big powers existed was far, far away from here. And yet, if one moved right, the powerful places were just a skip over the next horizon.

The ‘next horizon’ being both multi-planetary and spatially-managed in distance, of course.

Erick could turn to lightning and fly where he needed to go, but he was pretty sure that it would take decades, because Eldawae’s estimates of the land’s size were rather guesstimates. Margleknot grew and shifted all the time, after all.

Knowing all of that, it was pretty easy to understand why Yggdrasil was happy to have Veird expand onto a dyson sphere.

Knowing that, it was easy to see why whatever legality and rights of ownership surrounding Veird was a Big Fucking Deal that Erick wasn’t truly prepared for. Not really.

And so, he needed allies, and the Celestial Observatory needed to be freed from Wraithborne’s grip.

And that wasn’t even the whole story of the Celestial Observatory. The main story of this spatially-managed and divided land was even deeper than that, with secrets and powers that Erick had barely read about in Yggdrasil’s Guidebook, but which he kinda wanted to test out.

The Celestial Observatory was not just a land that viewed the sky, it was also a land that viewed the other lands. The true ‘Observatory’ were the crystal mountains above the illuminated clouds. The land below was not the Observatory at all. Not really.

There were two, maybe 2.5 ways to travel through this place.

The main way to travel was kinda difficult. Eldawae had explained how to navigate and move through this land, but Erick wasn’t quite seeing it yet, and he didn’t want to simply ask Yggdrasil for the quick navigation solution.

Apparently, if he flew for a while, aiming toward a specific person, the land would change around him and he would end up at that person, or near them. That was the simple, overworld-sort-of-travel. It was sort of like how the Black Crystal District that surrounded the Dragon District worked.

And then there was a more difficult way which involved dipping below the clouds, for the lands down there were not connected directly to the mountaintops all around. They were other worlds. Other places that could use some help. Other lands in other galaxies around other stars and other layers that needed help from those on the Good Mountaintops of the Celestial Observatory. That was, in actuality, the main way in which the Celestial Observatory worked.

One could look down from the mountaintops and always see a land of Good people in need of assistance.

This was a rather supreme land of Good, and when people weren’t watching the lands below, those lands changed into other lands that needed help.

Erick could literally spend an entire immortal life flitting down through the clouds and up again, helping people who could use it, or who deserved it. They were ‘random’ lands down there, though by some metric they were not that random at all. Those lands belonged to people who had some distant connection to Margleknot, and who prayed to any sort of iteration of Margleknot, or to the Good gods who held court here.

Every single valley was an open invitation for people to come and help.

Most valleys had watchers, though, and that was the rub.

Those watchers maintained vigilant views on the lands below, and so those lands below remained below, visible and open for any to come and visit, as long as some Good person existed down there, desiring help of any form at all. If the watchers stopped watching, or if the valleys emptied of good people, then the lands would change and a new source of need would open up.

And so, people above the valleys watched the valleys and kept them from switching to new places that needed help, thus they ‘fulfilled their duty’ of keeping the lands around them safe and Good.

It was kinda insidious, and Wraithborne was to blame for a lot of this current culture of the Observatory.

And yet, to find a valley that truly needed help, all Erick had to do was fuzz his vision and his senses, and fly for a while, seeking to right a great wrong. And then he’d be above a valley that needed help. According to what he had heard, he would then find himself above a plagued land, or a land at war, or even something as simple as a woman needing help giving birth who had no one to help her.

It was a siren’s call to help.

A lure.

A demand on every part of Erick’s everything, now that he knew what this place truly was, thanks to Eldawae.

Erick wanted to give in to that siren’s call. To drop down into other worlds and gift them power and property and peace. But that would be stepping out of Margleknot. The way back would remain, of course, but time would shift in the transfer between worlds, and there was no telling how much time would pass on Veird between now and after Erick solved whatever problem there was to solve in whatever valley he managed to enter.

And so, like many of the crystal mountains all around, Erick inured himself to the small problems and good lives he saw that could be made better.

Erick sighed out, releasing his gaze upon the world, shutting his senses and then closing his eyes. He was aiming to find some specific people. Not just anyone who needed help, but those who could help him.

He felt the wind flicker and a chill pass, and then he opened his eyes… And he wasn’t much further from where he started. Hmm. So. Maybe he needed to travel for longer? Eldawae had said that sometimes it took a great deal of blind flying before the world shifted, if you had a great deal of distance to go to get where you wanted to be. Erick was rather certain that ‘where he wanted to be’ was ‘wherever Moonarcher and Darkcaller and Crystalmaster were’.

Maybe he needed to lower his scope, though.

Just pick one of them.

Well… Shadow hadn’t known that Crystalmaster was here, and that was on purpose from Crystalmaster, so he’d be the hardest to find, but Erick kinda really wanted to talk to that ancient Wizard from the Painted Cosmology. Later, though.

Orin Darkcaller was probably busy ‘connecting worlds through darkness’. Whatever that meant, it was yet another thing that Erick was truly interested in investigating. But later.

Astrologer Moonarcher was the 6-winged astraeilf who everyone went to see because she was some great oracle…

Erick focused on Moonarcher. If anyone was ready to receive him, it would probably be her. She had been right there in the center of that formation of powers when Erick had appeared last time. She might even have messages waiting for him, should he show.

Erick flew high into the sky and focused on Moonarcher, and then he closed his eyes and—

- - - -

—opened his eyes.

The world was different below and above.

Erick was no longer surrounded by a random assortment of crystal mountains filled with people, and valleys filled with the same sorts of people, but less technologically advanced. The valleys below were distant things, but there were castles and markets and people working magics here and there. The mountains all around were empty.

Erick flew above a kilometers-wide bridge, set between two massive crystal mountains that barely had any people in them at all. There were the guards who were probably not guards at all, but paladins, and then they were people in robes.

A giant gate held far behind Erick, while ahead of him, in front of the largest crystal mountain he had seen, was a bigger gate. This right here was where Yggdrasil had set him down that first time, where he had met Crystalmaster, Moonarcher, and Darkcaller that first time, and Crystalmaster had sent him seeking Wraithborne instead, so that the paladins they had arrayed around them didn’t auto-sunder from Wraithborne Contracts.

Erick was a dragon this time, so walking to that big gate went a lot faster. Within a minute he stood before the gate, and this time there was no greeting from those in the towers beyond. Erick shrunk down to person-sized, his glowthread clothes reforming around his body like living light made into ephemeral, professional softness. He really did like his clothes when they did that.

Erick spoke, “Hello! I come seeking an audience with the forces of Good in this land.”

Every single nearby person winced, even though they were all behind heavy wards and doors and walls.

… Erick hadn’t spoken that loud—

A door opened to the side of the big gate and a paladin stepped out. He wore gleaming silver armor and his helmet at his side, hooked to his belt, showing off a strong chin and a human appearance. With an unexpected weight to his gaze, and yet a lightness in his voice, he spoke as though from a script that he didn’t realize he was following, “Pardon, good sir, but a more precise desire would be easier to fulfill. What do you want, exactly?”

Erick took a moment because everything seemed surreal, and then he said, “I want to untangle the Contracts from Wraithborne that have flooded this land and make some allies to take with me back home.”

The man nodded, then he took out a small black book from his back pockets and handed it over, grinning lightly as he said, “I’m supposed to give this to you now.”

“… Okay?” Erick could not see the book in his mana senses, but that wasn’t that unusual what with all the different powers he had seen here and there. Erick took the book— He paused as he read the cover. And then he looked up at the paladin. “A list of souls from the Waiting Room?”

“Yes, sir.” The paladin spoke softly, yet strongly, saying, “Sometimes some of our people are Contracted too steeply to ever allow themselves back into the world, and so they choose to stay in the Waiting Room after death. Some of them have been in there for a few thousand years or more. A good explanation of all of those people and more are there in that book, gifted to me by some force I didn’t understand, asking me for something I did not want to give, but which now I do, wholly and fully. It was an honor serving the forces of Good. Please don’t speak to anyone else here, good sir.”

And then the guy exploded into ribbons of light, as though he had been holding everything back as much as he could, and he simply could not pull back from the precipice any more.

He had been sundered via Wraithborne Contract.

Erick had a few different thoughts. Firstly, he wondered how good a Contract Sundering was, because normal Sunderings were able to be recovered from through Time Magic, but Nothanganathor’s Sundering of Debby was impossible to reverse.

And then Erick rewound time.

Stepping back to where he had stepped, Erick watched as the paladin in silver stepped out of the side of the gate.

The Contract Sundering wasn’t one of the stronger ones. Good!

“Pardon, good sir, but a more precise desire would be easier to fulfill. What do you want, exactly?”

Erick said the same line again, “I want to untangle the Contracts from Wraithborne that have flooded this land and make some allies to take with me back home.”

The man nodded, then handed over the black boon, saying, “I’m supposed to give this to you now.”

Erick took the book and looked the man in the eyes, saying, “Agree to a reincarnation. I can target the person who you’re linked to, as well.”

The man smiled, and asked, “Do you really need permission? How many times have we gone through this conversation?”

And then he allowed himself to explode into mana and power and possibilities of all kinds that were not mana at all.

Erick rewound time further than before.

He stood as a dragon on the road to the big gate and rapidly thought through the problem. Many paladins of the Celestial Observatory were under direct soul-sundering Contracts from Wraithborne in order to never act against Wraithborne interests. Eldawae had spoken about this sort of thing at length, for these sorts of Contracts were rather well-established. They were, one and all, broad limiters-of-action for the Contracted, with a great many loopholes to be exploited now and again, but once a certain level of Contract breaking had been achieved the final clause was always triggered. The Contracts given to Good people were a lot more restrictive than the ones given to allies of Wraithborne, too, which served to compound the problem of the proliferation of Evil in Margleknot.

‘Just don’t be Good, and your Contract is lesser! Please sign here now for benefits A through Z!’

Erick had seen one of the Contracts in Da’luwe. They were pretty terrible in how easily Erick could see someone signing them. A Good person could do whatever they wanted and benefit from automagic resurrections from the Waiting Room, for instance, but as soon as they saw a potential enemy wield the Sign of the Wraithborne Tower, then they were to back off or suffer the consequences. This, too, served to drive people to Wraithborne, because being of Wraithborne meant protection from a lot of forces out there.

How to free these people without actually interacting with these people?

Erick already knew how, actually.

Erick infused his body with Time, speeding up everything until the world turned into a tableau of unmoving clouds and frozen paladins and watchers, wondering what the hell the big black dragon was doing out there on the bridge. It was a [Time Stop] effect. And then he turned to light, zipped forward, stole the book from the paladin in the front guard station, and then zipped back to where he had been standing. He had done it fast enough that no one could have seen him except those with the power to see very well, and the paladins and the guards did not qualify in that way.

Time resumed.

And no one sundered.

Erick sat down and waited.

The paladin in the front, the one waiting for Erick to come forward to fulfill the mission he had been given by some unknown person, checked his back pocket. He found it empty. He said, “Ah.” And then he closed his eyes and waited for death.

But nothing happened.

The paladin winked open one eye. He opened both eyes and looked around. He frowned, then patted himself, and then he frowned some more. He paused and did nothing for a long moment, before whispering to himself, “Well that’s nice.”

And nothing continued to happen.

Erick watched the paladin’s soul for a little while longer, though he pretended to be looking elsewhere.

Nothing happened.

Which was great.

Erick couldn’t free these people right now but he could eventually, after he learned true Propagation magic. He already knew enough of that stuff right now to make such a spell that could do individual [Reincarnation]s on a grand scale and then move on to the next magically-closest person, and never stop propagating… Or at least he thought he did.

It would be some sort of [Familiar] magic, and [Gate] magic, and it would probably start with a few thousand people all linked to a central mana source through Mana Siphons. Then it would roll on from there, gradually increasing in power and speed as it both [Reincarnation]ed people, and then locked on to them for continual mana donations in order to continue operating on more and more people…

Maybe Erick could just use his Margleknot Benevolence Sun for the fuel source, and just kick start it that way. Once it gained past a certain level of power, then it would continue without the need of that original source. Maybe it could even make copies of itself, so that it wasn’t just one [Reincarnation Familiar]…

Yeah. That’d do it.

Nothanganathor learned of his Propagation Magic for the Sundering through corruption, but Erick had an understanding of Propagation Magic through having the Script very clearly outline, though many bloody spell creations, exactly what was not allowed because it was toeing that Propagation Ban line.

Erick didn’t trust himself to make such a spell right now, though.

Erick turned back into a small person. He spoke to the air, “I’ll take that portal home, Yggdrasil.”

A portal of gold and green swirled open behind Erick, leading to his house in the Old Dragon District, and Erick walked through. He might not have gotten to make any allies here today, but he’d be making more allies later. He had a whole book full of them to bring back from the dead.

… But first he checked out the absolute galaxy of messages waiting for him all around the front of his house.

- - - -

Erick sat down with Lionshard on the balcony of Erick’s house, overlooking the lake. There were more fish in there than before. A lot more biodiversity.

Lionshard ate another tri-berry tart, grinning as he did so, saying, “These little things are delicious.”

“I’m glad I got some seeds from Da’Luwe.” Erick said, “I like them, too.”

“To me, the lazulibob and perinom flavors are well-trod paths, but this cupberry is something that truly brings them both together, and which I had forgotten about.”

“I taste strawberry, purpleberry, and blackberry,” Erick said.

“They’re mildly addictive, you know, causing you to be more easily influenced. That’s how these sorts of memory-foods work.”

Erick chuckled. “I had not known that, but it makes sense why Eldawae only offered them that one time, and then when I proved my power they stopped being on offer.” He added, “Sorry about that. I did not know.”

Lionshard smiled. “No worries. When you get as strong as we are then you can enjoy the dangerous things in life. And speaking of dangerous things… Are you truly going to tackle Wraithborne?”

“… Well. Not directly.” Erick said, “I don’t want to get into that war. When I made Benevolence I spoke of the ‘good of all and every individual’, but I certainly didn’t mean ‘good’ as in ‘Good’. The whole concept of Good and Evil as physical things that you can measure and account for is… Disheartening, to say the least. I do not like it, and I would rather offer a different approach to power. My hope is that I can build an extension of my organization on Veird up here; a House Benevolence. An organization that can more easily bring Benevolence to the masses.” Erick gestured to the stars still gathered around the front gate of his property. “I went through a thousand of those before I found your friendly letter, and invited you over. They all want a lot more help than what I can give them, and there are a lot of people out there who want me to bring fire and lightning against all Evil in Margleknot. And I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Lionshard asked, prompting the question that Erick had been thinking about a lot. “The fire and lightning, that is.”

“Because even if I killed Morbion and his Primes and all of that then Wraithborne would simply fall inward, collapsing hard, which would lead to the deaths of trillions.”

“Ah,” Lionshard said, “But we have the Waiting Room, and it is doubtful you could kill Morbion in a satisfactory way. Even reincarnating him into a better form would simply allow that Evil to be free in Margleknot, and I highly doubt he doesn’t have specific protections against you by now.”

“I think I could still kill him if I needed to… Maybe.” Erick said, “But I don’t want to. I want him to come to the decision that being Not-Evil is better than being Evil… but then we come to the problem of Evil, and that’s the sticking point. Can Elemental Evil ever be not-Evil?” Erick looked to him. “I’d like to have that conversation now, if you’re willing.”

Lionshard nodded, and then he began, “Good and Evil are large topics, with many wide-ranging problems. But to summarize the issue of having literal good and evil in the universe, we begin at the base.

“Where does Evil start? It starts with thinking of everyone as another thing to be used.

“Where does Good start? It starts with thinking of everyone as someone.

“Evil excels at using people to one’s own positive ends. It is theft and murder and all acts of taking.

“Good excels at using yourself to the positive ends of others. It is gifts and creation and all acts of giving that empower others.

“Neither Good nor Evil are capable of existing on their own. Evil ends up with the world empty and the user upon a throne of dust and nothing. Good ends up in a world where everyone is mediocre without any real goals of their own except to make others happy.

“This is what is meant by the Balance. This is why Good and Evil fuel each other, for there is not a single thriving civilization out there that is not Balanced in some way. The only reason Wraithborne is so successful is because it is a lesser Great Evil.

“Margleknot is not currently Balanced.

“This is why the Celestial Observatory is how it is. It is a land of Good that is no longer able to be Good how it was meant to be, and yet, it is better than how it was before. You saw the place. You saw how there are mountaintops with people living decent lives and valleys where people live in the mud and stone. The Celestial Observatory has not always been like that; a land of plenty and a land of nothing. Many would say it is better how it is today.” Lionshard asked, “Did you go down below the clouds?”

“… I really, really wanted to. If I would have seen something horrendous I might have.”

Lionshard nodded. “The odds of you seeing something horrendous are very large in that land, but it is a good thing you did not go below the clouds. You might have come back above the clouds and a week or a year could have passed.”

“I think I could have handled a week.” Erick said, “But the people in the mountains send people down into those lands below all the time, don’t they? Those lands below certainly didn’t look like they were that far away, time-wise. How does that work?”

“Distance is time, and the Observatory does a lot of Fate Magic to figure out which places they’re looking at which needs help the most, and the timetables required to help those places, but the help they give is no longer absolutely needed, like it used to be.” Lionshard said, “It’s all very complicated, and it’s a lot less fervent today than it used to be. Used to be you had ascetic monks in the mountains, divining truth and time in what they saw below, and then intervening right at the right times to avert great Evils, or establish great Goods. Now you have a lot larger of a civilization, looking over a whole lot more lands.

“This increase in population is the direct result of Wraithborne’s influence. It is more Balanced these days, with a lot less Good, and so the people in the mountains don’t need to give as much, and so they have more.

“But since the Observatory is Balanced, there is no great counter to Wraithborne’s expansive, grand Evils.

“For Wraithborne is Evil at its core. But it is a softer Evil. One that spreads and infects and draws back to the source and tries to limit its own growth and depravity. It has accepted some basic Goods into its existence, like the idea that if other people are allowed to be selfish, because other Evils make better allies against their lessers out there.” Lionshard stopped explaining as he asked, “Now tell me: Where do you think Benevolence fits into such a strategy of Good versus Evil?”

Erick didn’t have to think for very long. “Benevolence is about having the power to help other people.” He added, “It’s longer than that, but you’ve already read the specific words in my dossier. I once heard a god call it ‘Elemental Altruism, but more self-empowering in order to give any excess power to others, instead of self-effacing’.” Erick asked, “I would have thought Elemental Good wasn’t so much like Elemental Altruism, though. Surely it’s not ‘Good’ to give away every part of oneself to others?”

Lionshard nodded, then said, “Altruism is rather more of a ‘pure’ sort of Good.” Lionshard asked, “But tell me this, now: You’re the strongest person on your world. Would you be okay with someone else being just as strong? Or stronger?”

Erick chuckled. “Sure. I’m fine with that? How is that a question?”

“Just feeling you out. Because yes, I have read your full dossier, Erick, and you have often said that no one should have the sort of power you wield. So my question is a valid one. You don’t believe people should be stronger than you, because you believe that you have the right to choose what happens to others, and that is where Benevolence leads you.” Lionshard said, “That is where you have led yourself.”

Erick frowned a little. “… I can see that point, but at the same time I do make good decisions for the prosperity of all and every individual, so this is a power I am fine with wielding, and I am fine with other Benevolent powers out there.”

Lionshard smiled a little. “Good. I doubted that you would be broken by a little bit of logical fallacy talk, but these things are important to discuss when going up against the big problems of the universe that have clear parallels with your own existence. You are clearly Good, but in some ways you are selfish, and as long as you acknowledge that, then you can stay out of the Good and Evil war.” Lionshard said, “Just like how Nothanganathor stayed out of that war with Malevolence, for Malevolence is very ‘good’ at killing corruption, and therefore Malevolence is in great use across much of Margleknot. If you thread that same needle then you can stay out of that war with Benevolence, too, and likely right some of the Balance back to Good through indirect means.”

Erick looked at Lionshard. “I thought Malevolence was on the side of Evil?”

“Not directly. It is similar to how Benevolence is not directly on the side of Good.”

Erick had to stop and think about that for a moment. “… Huh.” He asked, “Do you think my idea of Wraithborne turning not-Evil has merit? That they might actually do such a thing?”

“There are as many paths to power as there are drops of infinity in this fractal universe.” Lionshard said, “Evil might turn less-Evil if given enough incentive. Just as the Enclave has asked you to prove your power to prove your worth to them, in order to bring Balance, there are Evil lands out there which are looking to escape the Balance through you and yours, which is another way to make the Enclave happy. Not every Evil wants to remain Evil, especially if the alternative is a vast amount of power and a life that is easier to live, without paladins and otherwise crashing down doors now and again.” Lionshard said, “I think that is where you will be making the most headway with your goals; offer power and redemption in the same gift, and see your influence multiply.”

Erick really needed reestablish House Benevolence up here in Margleknot—

“Ask the question I know you have wanted to ask me for a long time.” Lionshard said, “Now is the time for it, Erick.”

Erick felt a weight of a large moment upon his shoulders, for yes, now was a good time to bring up a question that Erick had held in his back pocket for a while. Erick asked, “Would you like to become a member of House Benevolence?”

“Nope! But I will be an ally you can count upon.” Lionshard rapidly added, “That you can count upon. No others. I’m not meeting anyone else but you.”

Erick paused. And then he laughed. “I’ll take it!”

“Now let us discuss how you can access the Waiting Room so you can find some true members of your House expansion.”

Erick smiled. “I would like that. Thank you.”

Lionshard smiled, then began, “To access the Waiting Room…”

Accessing the Waiting Room to find souls to bring back to life was both easy, and tough.

There were two main ways to do it, and then one more third way which was more dangerous.

The most dangerous way involved killing yourself and then finding the Waiting Room while still having enough personal power in your Margleknot Bank account to resurrect yourself and others. This was the most dangerous way because it involved one’s own death, and then ‘physically’ inhabiting the absolute madhouse of the Waiting Room.

The more normal way to access the Waiting Room involved either:

A) Projecting one’s living soul into the Waiting Room and trying to see through the cacophony of souls to find the ones you were looking for, and then spending either the resons to bring them back, or using your own spellwork to do the same. A variation on this method is what Wraithborne did. They used a trio of people to search the Waiting Room for souls; a diver, an anchor up above holding the diver secure, and a contractor who would facilitate the resurrection of the found soul. Wraithborne’s method almost 100% guaranteed that the person projecting into the Waiting Room wouldn’t die themselves. Trying this method on one’s own usually ended up in a suicide.

Or B) Asking a god to do all the parts of diver, anchor, and dealer for you, with you in the driver’s seat.

After thanking Lionshard and sending him away, Erick brought out the little black book he had ‘received’ from the paladin in the Celestial Observatory.

First, it was a primer on how to reach the Waiting Room and then came a whole bunch of stuff about how to find the souls you wanted to find. After that primer came the names and small dossiers of the 87 people who were Erick’s targets for reincarnation. Or they were the targets the book wanted him to bring back.

The black book was rather suspect, but from what Erick was seeing, it was a good list, and the small instructions in the book for how to bring them all back matched the instructions that Lionshard had given him in a general sort of way. And so, Erick put the book away in his house, and made plans for what came next.

Erick chose to go for option B, to enlist the help of a god to access the Waiting Room, because he needed to check out some gods anyway.

This resulted in a trip to the Mortal Lands of Margleknot and a change of attire from the truly nice-looking glowthread, to something more subdued and made of cotton. Erick missed his glowthread already.

- - - -

Erick stepped out of swirling gold and green, onto a land that looked rather Veird-normal or maybe Earth-normal, but different. The buildings were made of stone, or maybe even concrete, and the windows were glass. The road was paved with bricks of varying grey colors that formed a nice pattern leading up to grand and semi-grand cathedrals in the distance. People were everywhere, and Erick stood upon a ‘Teleport Square’ of sorts.

Portals opened and shut all around Erick, disgorging people out of this crossroads or letting people leave.

“Please move along!” flapped some large red goo-like person, sitting upon a pedestal situated to the side of the portal square. And then it pointed toward Erick and his companion, “Please move along. This means you.”

Shadow moved forward, saying, “We really have a lot to be doing besides this.”

“Yes,” Erick said, already walking forward, enjoying the fact that no one recognized him. He wasn’t wearing his horns right now and he was simply a 2 meters tall human-person, and his soul was hidden. He still expected someone to instantly say something; to spot him, to out him. That didn’t instantly happen, though! Erick stepped onto the road to the churches, alongside Shadow, saying, “But this is on the list, and while I want to be your ally, you are not empowered in the necessary ways right now, and I want to build my House, and so we’re here.”

“… When you answered my message I assumed we’d be having a long talk. Not that I’d get asked about my current inadequacy and then get an invite to go talk to some piddling little gods.”

Shadow was a former goddess of creation. She was the one who first forged a link between the Darkness and Something Else, thus making the Painted Cosmology. She was also a former Goddess of Magic, the great-time-a-lot grandmother of both Melemizargo and Nothanganathor, a person whom Erick hoped would be a fantastic ally, and a whole lot more besides. She was also Just Shadow, and right now that meant she could not help Erick how he needed to be helped, for he needed a god, and Shadow was, quite firmly, a former god. She even looked rather mortal right now. Gone were the deep shadows around her body, and the light in her eyes was merely the light around her; that much was a show, though. She was pretty good at blending in, physically, but not so much mentally. At least right now.

Erick couldn’t really blame her for that. He had kinda swept her up in his own designs.

“I’m skipping all that talk and moving on,” Erick said, “Because I’m rather certain that you and I would have a more productive time actually being productive in a goal, rather than sitting around talking to each other. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m working to make the unkillables approve of me in order for them to withdraw their approval of that guy, collapsing his support structure and making it so I don’t have armies of your kind working against me, rather than for me… Or whatever vague sorts of threats they’d do if I went back and fought that guy directly.”

“A continual stream of 10 to 100 of ‘my kind’ constantly trying to kill you is correct,” Shadow said. And then she mocked, “Look at that! I’m being helpful already, and would do more if you would talk to me.”

Erick eyed her a little, saying, “Your method hasn’t gotten you far. I would like to try my methods and I would like your help, since you cannot access the Waiting Room like you used to. In doing such help, we learn to work together to achieve good ends, and maybe you can get some goodwill back among your kind. The goal is to establish a wing of my House here, and thus have people working for the good of our shared home even when we’re not here. I would have you as a part of that House.”

He had already explained this before, though admittedly it had only been a 5 minute ‘hey I’m doing this, want to come along?’ sort of conversation.

Shadow had already heard this before.

Erick hoped that this time the message would actually stick.

Shadow rolled her eyes. “Fine fine fine, Apparently you’re the King. So we do this your way.”

They were speaking in slight code so they could go incognito for a little while. Or at least Shadow had picked up on that, and she was following Erick’s lead well enough that he couldn’t tell her off.

“Appreciated,” Erick said, looking around.

Priests and proselytizers stood on short stone risers outside the front of every church and other sort of structure dotting the road ahead, while the sky overhead was pale blue with a single sun. ‘The Mortal Lands’ was similar to the Celestial Observatory on the outside of the ‘dyson sphere’ that was Margleknot, in that it was on the interior of the main shell, while the Observatory was on the outside. There was no Margleknot sky here. All of that spatially-altered place was located on a different slice of Layer 0.

These Mortal Lands were perhaps how Erick would have thought to continue building FENRIR, if Nothanganathor weren’t ‘locked’ inside.

Erick couldn’t see the land on the other side of the sphere, unfortunately, but he could fly up, theoretically, and look at the nearest thousand kilometers. This land even had a day/night cycle, unlike the Endless desert. That was achieved through some sort of translucent bubble around the sun that turned opaque in a 15 hour cycle, with 15 hours of light and then 15 hours of dark. Erick wasn’t sure about what was going on up there or how it worked, but the small description of all of that in Yggdrasil’s Guidebook suggested that opaqueness was some sort of energy-gathering thing, perhaps technologically-based.

The sun right now looked bright, yet it was getting darker. It was afternoon according to a clocktower at the end of the street where the street split into two more streets, so that made sense. When that clock struck an hour to dark, then the sun overhead would rapidly begin to turn dark in hexagonal markers in a moving crescent, the whole thing vanishing over the course of an hour like a moon rapidly turning phases. It was already doing that, actually. The sun looked kinda like a squashed circle. It would get more squished as the day went on.

Erick wanted to watch that transition happen. It was an impressive feat of engineering and magic and technology, for sure.

When the sky turned dark, he might be able to see some of the lands on the other side, bathed in light. Unless clouds rolled in. It never really got dark in the Mortal Lands because the sun was always still there in some capacity, unless clouds rolled in.

Erick felt a deep pang of homesickness as he thought of Jane, and maybe Beth. They’d love to explore this place. Maybe not the Mortal Lands, for this place was filled with people in the way that America or any first world nation back on Earth was filled with people; violence happened, but it was rare. War here was like war back on Earth. But in the rest of Margleknot? On Layer 1 Mortal Lands? Now that place was a disaster zone. People always tried to win more lands there, and the war never ended. Layer 1 anywhere was filled with danger.

Layer 1 was more Jane’s style.

Or maybe Jane and Beth would go to the Celestial Observatory, and spend eternities diving into other worlds to help Good people with whatever disasters they were experiencing—

“What ya thinking about?” Shadow asked.

“My daughters. Home. The future...” Erick asked, “And now I’m wondering about what makes the Mantle of Darkness so special. I was warned against accidental divinity a few times. Seems like That Guy could have ascended that way if he wanted to.”

Shadow raised an eyebrow, then smirked, and said, “I believe I will let you find that out through the actions here today.” She gestured to the road ahead, at the priests on their pulpits and the parishioners on the path. “Pick a poison!”

“Sun gods.” Erick said, “I was told about one of them, but if you have a better idea then I’ll hear it.”

Shadow made a face. “I never was one for those kinds, but… I suppose you are.” She frowned a little. She thought. She looked around, and focused on a few different places. “Ikarothis is a decent sort. He’s a god of Undeath and Protection. He regularly deals in Waiting Room evacuations. Not a sun god, though. But he should fulfill the needs of the Waiting Room quest rather well.”

“… Hmm.”

Ikarothis’s temple was an austere cathedral of grey stone that looked like flowing fabrics layered upon pillars, and upon each other. The whole place looked sort of like a four-poster bed crossed with a normal cathedral, and it wasn’t very big, either. None of the places here were big, and that was by regulation. Ikarothis’s place didn’t take up its full lot, though, which Erick kinda respected.

Some of these places were like grand apartment buildings and places of worship all in one, their lands fully occupied as much as they could be with either ostentation, or priests living together. Erick kinda respected the apartment buildings more than he respected the giant places of worship… But then again, the people here were the ones who built these places, not the gods.

Erick glanced at his Lightning Path, as he often did, and decided that while Ikarothis would work for his desires, he wanted someone that he could maybe import to Veird. He didn’t want to step on Phagar’s toes, and Ikarothis seemed like he would be stepping on Phagar’s toes—

Erick had a sudden question.

“Are the gods of different cosmologies different? Can they work together?”

Shadow hummed, then said, “Big question, there. Gods are born in specific universes in a way that that universe designs them able to be born. In this universe, gods arise from individuals, and in that rising they gain the powers that their worshipers desire them to have while losing themselves in the process. In my… In my old universe, gods arose from common thought, divorced from any individual, though an individual might become crowned with the mantle of a god, and thus speak with that god’s might. I didn’t like people losing themselves, so I made it so that they didn’t lose themselves. Here, though, people lose themselves all the time. It’s the Curse of Power.”

Erick realized… “Ah. That’s why the Mantle of Magic is special. That guy could keep himself through that transformation.”

Shadow smirked. “Didn’t take your actions long to divine that answer.” She continued, “Anyway! It’s a lot more complicated than that, with gods in this universe being rather weak, seeing as they’re what people believe they are, and the gods of my universe being strong, because they’re often individuals with godly might at their call. But to move on and answer your other half of the question: Yes, gods can move and interact with other gods as their people move and interact with other people, and worship spreads. The minute you end the quarantine of V— our home, then people and powers will start moving back and forth. Unless you do a lot of controlling of thoughts, then whoever shows up will show up.”

Speaking of controlling thoughts…

Hmm.

Erick would leave the discussion of the Mark of the Fractal Universe inside [Telepathy] to another day.

He asked, “You read the dossier on me that went out, right?”

Shadow looked a little miffed. “Yes. I had to beg for one of those, though. V— Our home seems pretty… Unstable. But getting better.” She looked at him, put a hand on his shoulder, and stopped walking. She said, “Thank you. I did not know things were that bad down there.”

Erick smiled a little. “It’s getting better.”

Shadow let go, then nodded. She looked forward with renewed vigor in her sight, resuming their walk as she said, “Our home could use some specific gods, though. Otherwise the ones that show up will be whichever ones are feeling more expansionist than others.”

Erick grinned as he walked alongside an ancient fairy goddess, saying, “That was part of my reasoning today, too. What are your thoughts on Cascadio?”

Shadow made a little frown. Then she dropped the frown. “… He’s probably a good choice. Your son put you up to him, didn’t he?”

“He was one of the few mentioned, yes. The only one, actually.” Erick inclined his head toward a large sign with a bunch of god’s names and distances and directions to get those temples. “And he’s not listed here.”

“He wouldn’t be listed here. Cascadio is bigger than this place.” Shadow said, “Let’s go visit him.”

“He’s only part of the reason for visiting here, though. There are also gods of Trickery and Deceit that I would rather have on my side as opposed to that guy’s side.” Erick said, “Those gods are included alongside a bunch of other people on a list of known allies of that guy. Lots of little things I have to check off, here.” Erick asked her, “What would be the better pursuit right now? Investigating the allies of that guy, or going to Cascadio and trying to build the House?”

The question was a little test. Not a big one. It was just to see who Shadow was. There were no wrong answers here.

Shadow said, “I tried to do this all alone last time. That didn’t work. So yeah. Let’s go talk to Cascadio and get you some worker bees for your House expansion.”

Erick paused. He nodded. “Well okay.” He looked around. “He’s really not here? I kinda expected to see an office of his around here.” Erick gestured to the side, saying, “That place is a Sun God temple. Rona, the Goddess of the Healing Suns.”

“She’s a love goddess all about sex in the open sun and rather small besides.” Shadow said, “Atunir would not like her.”

“… There’s probably a whole bunch of portfolio overlap, eh?”

“Oh yeah.” Shadow turned around and began walking back. Erick walked with her, as she said, “Our home is pretty solid with divine influences as it is. I can only think of a few fragments of civilization that aren’t already represented.” She looked at him briefly. “The Sun is about the only one we should consider filling in right now.”

“I wasn’t going to invite Trickery and Deceit home. I did want to remove their backup of that guy up here, though.”

Shadow hummed a little, then said, “Later.”

They walked back to the ‘Teleport Square’.

- - - -

The crystal-like icicle of the Fae Enclave and its crossways silver beam of a Quantum Nexus Hub lay up there in the sky, in the center of it all, surrounded by a whole bunch of invisible suns.

And down here lay the Nexus Gardens.

Down here, the land was green and blue with colorful flowers and a brilliance to the air that reminded Erick a lot of Ar’Cosmos, or fae gatherings, except this brilliance was gold and the ambiance was one of mortal powers and godly oversight. If there were fae here, then they were just a part of the gatherings, joining in the revelry with mortals, while gods of all sorts held parties and jubilation.

It was an eternal garden/jungle/mansion/high-class/low-class party.

Erick and Shadow popped into existence outside of a specific gathering taking place on hundreds of small islands that were only technically islands, but each one was only a meter from each other one, and the waters separating those islands was only a meter deep. Each individual island had people talking and laughing or listening to music or reading with each other, or sleeping in beds or doing any thousand of other activities. Erick imagined that the sleeping areas were the only quiet places, because otherwise there was a soft music in the air that was kinda lively, but not too lively. Erick looked across the large area from this taller, entrance island, and saw places where people were partying down. Other islands had orgies, because of course there were orgies.

There were always orgies when it came to gods.

And in the center of it all lay a grand golden island, raised higher than the rest. A muscular-dad sort of man with dark skin and wearing a toga of gold, reclined on a couch on the top center of that island, and though he did not shine like a sun, he certainly had that sort of aura about him. He laughed with what looked to be friends, as they all drank from golden goblets and ate food off of golden plates, as they spoke of this or that in obvious mirth.

That man was Cascadio, for sure, and Erick already liked the guy.

Shadow did not approve of him, scowling a little, saying, “He’s too bubbly.”

“What are his domains?”

“ ‘Portfolios’, when it comes to gods,” Shadow said, stepping down the stairs, onto the lush grasses of the entrance island of Cascadio’s cavalcade. Erick followed, and Shadow continued, “Gods have influence depending on how their worshipers recognize that influence here in this cosmology, so there is a lot of room for overlap of all types of gods, but we call those influences ‘portfolios’. In my cosmology there were major portfolios, of which there was only ever one of each specific kind. There was always more room for countless minor sparks of those major portfolios, though, and that system created avatars of the major gods. Sometimes those personal manifestations of the major gods were individuals granted power by the major gods, who then went on to become major gods in their own right, and other times they were attempted usurpers of the throne of the major god.” She waved a hand all over the place, saying, “All of this is so much different, though. Gods here are so much weaker… In an absolute sense.”

Erick stepped across a small river, only a meter wide, and set foot on a different rising island closer to the center of the Cavalcade. The entrance island was filled with the soft music of the Cavalcade, but this island was a raucous party and the music was loud and booming. Erick kinda liked it. Shadow kept up.

Neither of them said anything as they kept to the side of the large dance floor and what looked to be choreographed musical numbers… But Erick kinda wanted to join in. He even saw a spot for him, and one for Shadow, right between the main dancer there and those backups over there. The lead dancer winked at Erick, and Erick smiled back, while he also checked his Status. The magic of this place was ‘attacking’ him, but not really. The ‘attack’ was only 1 extra Health and Psyche per second, so Erick easily ignored it. A lot of people outside of the main musical number were ignoring the call to fill that void, too, drinking shots and eating food to the side.

Not a real mind bender. Just a call to party.

Erick stepped off of that island and looked down into the waters as he stepped onto the next island.

He saw flippers down there, below the deepest parts of the water. For a brief moment his mana senses fully worked and he saw Cascadio’s Cavalcade as a whole bunch of turtle islands, all swirling in sync around the main golden-shell island, with more turtles underneath the main flow, all swirling around the power that was Cascadio in the center. Those underwater turtle islands still had parties happening, too. It was kinda beautiful.

And then the simple riverlands and grass islands returned, and Erick was on the next island in the chain, listening to someone speak on a podium about the nature of Good and Evil.

… Erick wanted to listen to that, too.

Shadow moved right on along, easily walking across the edge of the lecture-hall-island, ignoring the talk up above.

Erick followed, softly asking, “So every island is a temptation?”

Shadow shook her head, saying, “No. That’s simplistic. Every island is a stepping stone. Once you have experienced what you want to experience you move forward to the next one, and in that moving you examine yourself and your goals and your whole nature as a living individual.” Shadow stepped onto the next island.

Erick followed.

This island was another party, and a lot more disorganized. Some guy handed Erick a drink and Erick smiled because it was a ‘Vivid Gloom’. The swirling black drink was filled with white flashes, looking exactly as Erick remembered. The first time he had one of these was from Mephistopheles at his Garrison in Candlepoint, back before Erick took that place over. Erick had his second Vivid Gloom courtesy of the Shade Professor Farix, at Last Shadow’s Feast, while the professor was mixing drinks and wearing a cock sock. Cascadio’s Vivid Gloom tasted pretty good, and Erick nodded at the man who had given it to him. That man just smiled and went back to dancing.

Shadow got her own drink which was absolute black. She sipped it, then said, “Cascadio’s Cavalcade is less of a trial and more of a cleansing. People are free to spend as long as they want wherever they want, and then moving in or out as they desire.”

“Cascadio seems like a pretty great god,” Erick said, “So why do you have a low opinion of him?”

Shadow hummed, shrugged, then stepped onto the next island.

Erick joined her on an island of people playing board games that were entire worlds. Little armies moved on little maps, but Erick looked too closely at one of them and he felt the map expand and his consciousness zoom in toward ground level, to a battlefield taking place in a wintry land under a distant sun, where people fought and died to unchained necromancy. Erick pulled back, away from the battlefield, to stand with Shadow.

Shadow glanced at him, then continued on. “I have a low opinion of him Because I’ve been through all these stepping stones before, and yet we still have to go this way to reach him because he doesn’t allow people to simply speak to him unless they’ve gone through this path.” She sipped her drink of Darkness. “It’s all very elitist.”

Erick wondered about that. “… It has to be protective, too, right?” They stepped onto an island that was a lagoon with sandy beaches and people sunning themselves and playing in the surf and having sex under palm trees. The only sound was the sound of the waves and soft love-making, and it was wonderful. Erick moved on. “The people get closer get to have actual talks with an important person, but those who get closer are also changed themselves in how they see Cascadio, and thus Cascadio gets to keep his interpretation of himself, himself.”

“True,” Shadow said, stepping onto the next island.

It was a land of silence and gentle prayer. There was no music, but the wind in the trees and in the tall grasses around the central pavilions certainly sounded like a kind of music.

Erick did not speak, and Shadow did not interrupt the meditation either.

The next island was a land of soft talking and coffee and hot drinks and morning foods under the rise of a new day after a night of love and connection.

Shadow said, “This is how all the bigger gods of this cosmology are. The small ones look to make rituals like this all the time, hoping that the good rituals catch on and that they stabilize themselves into the configuration they designed in their rituals. But this does not always work. The truly big gods always have different cultural interpretations of themselves, forcing them to split into new forms. Some gods try to force this split in a way they like when it seems they’re close to a cultural shift. Some gods just let it happen however it will happen. Some gods like splitting into new forms. For instance, it is thought that all gods of Trickery here are the same, but with different faces. If you talk to them they’d tell you that same story, too, unless they felt like lying to you.”

“Where does Cascadio lie on the small-versus-big scale?”

Shadow thought. She finished off her Darkness drink and tossed it in a bin. Erick finished off his Vivid Gloom and did the same. Shadow continued, “Cascadio is a… A proper god of this cosmology, I guess. He’s infinite, and yet not. I’d rate most gods a 1 to 3 on a power scale going up to 10, with the Darkness as a 10. Cascadio is a 2.”

Talk of Darkness as a god got Erick thinking about the Fractal Fairy. Thinking about them got Erick thinking about the glitter crystal that made up the Fairy and the Fae Enclave. Those thoughts led Erick to consider the Mark of the Fractal Universe sitting inside his [Telepathy]. Was now the time to talk of that?

Erick opened his mouth—

Softly, Shadow said, “No. Not here. Later.” They stepped onto the next turtle-not-turtle grass island, where people learned magics and secrets under the sun, all knowledge shared freely. Shadow tsk’d when when she saw the island. “Well damn. Didn’t mean to step on this one.”

The island had moved without either of them seeing. It had been a place of people training with swords and spears and all sorts of other weapons, all of them wearing full golden armor. But now it was a library with personal tutors speaking softly inside sound-containment bubbles to students learning the mystic arts.

There was an empty desk with a teacher waiting, and on that desk was a book with fractal edges.

Shadow sighed.

Erick really, really wanted to sit down at that desk. His Status only showed a single extra point of damage on all of his Mana, Health, and Psyche, too. The enchantment here was rather weak. Erick could avoid this draw… And yet.

Shadow said, “I promise we’ll talk at length about that, Erick. Later.”

Erick forced himself to lose interest in the teacher with the fractal book. The teacher recognized this fact and did a slight, courteous bow. Erick bowed back, and then he went with Shadow onto the next island where music was happening, saying, “I’ll hold you to that.” And then he added, “And I’ll hold you to answering the question I asked in the beginning: What are Cascadio’s portfolios?”

Shadow rolled her eyes at him, then spoke over the music, “He’s ‘everything under the sun’. Life, is a big one. Light, is another big one, with a smaller focus on Fire. Revelry, which covers a lot of small things. Civilization. Truth. He shares ‘Truth’ with almost every other god, though, so that’s nothing special. His specific Truth is ‘True Teachings and Communication’. Cascadio’s an alright god, but he and I have some creative differences stemming from our histories.”

They stepped onto a more serene island where an old man spoke to a bunch of kids about life.

Shadow continued, “I feel that all of this sort of stuff is best made and found in the Dark. He feels that only through Light can anything good happen. He’s also decidedly Good. I’m rather neutral.”

Erick asked, “That’s just a variation on universes, though. The Dark is dangerous, but the mana ocean created by sapients was highly conducive to all life… From my understanding, anyway. Your universe is not at all like this universe, where life can only exist near sources of light and energy, and even then everything is highly dangerous outside of those spaces. The light here is itself is rather destructive, too. Everything is very violent here.”

Shadow shrugged. “Yeah. Like I said: We’re not enemies. We’re not really on the same side, though.”

The next island was a rehash of a previous island.

Erick was pretty sure that the tests were over with. His Status had stopped getting pinged for extra single points of ‘damage’.

As they walked closer to Cascadio, Erick asked, “Was your Painted Cosmology infinite at all?”

“Hmm… Well. It wasn’t really mine. I was just the creator. We’ll save that conversation for later, but as for infinity?” Shadow paused. “… Sort of. Yes. Less so than this cosmology. In my universe, infinity existed in the hearts of every person…. Which kinda touches upon that which I asked you to wait to discuss with me some other time.”

“Fair enough. I suppose that’s enough of an answer anyway to get to this next point: I’m pretty sure Nothanganathor sent his Sundering through infinity, and if there was any limit at all to the infinity of the Painted Cosmology then it wasn’t as infinite as this universe, so it was possible to Sunder yours through his propagative attack, but not this one... Or at least not using the same methodology.” Erick said, “I was wondering why the God Pact world survived at all, though. I assumed, before all of this, that the God Pact world survived because the gods willing it just that much further ahead of Nothanganathor’s [Infinite Malevolence], or whatever you want to call it. But it’s more like Nothanganathor was still farming Veird.”

Shadow thought on Erick’s words for a moment, then said, “He’s not allowed to kill that land until we know what caused the Sundering, so he’s going to be guarding it forever, or else he’s going to try to evade that executioner’s axe of him causing the Sundering by painting someone else as the Sunderer. That’s probably what he’s going to try to do to you.” She glanced at him, studying him as she said, “The Primal Lightning of the Sundering was white, according to all known first-hand accounts.”

“Yeah. I figured he’d try as much. He’s a white dragon, though. His magical signature has to be naturally white, right?” Erick said, “Perhaps Malevolence is just red because that’s what he Altered his Malevolence to be. Or it’s the other way around, and he made the Sundering white to throw off tracks.”

Shadow let out a tiny, relieved breath, smiling a little as she said, “All possible.”

Erick scoffed. “Don’t tell me people actually believe that I caused the Sundering? I wasn’t even there.”

“The nature of legality in this world and all others is mostly a matter of power and usefulness,” Shadow said, trying not to be too hateful. “The shape of Nothanganathor’s counter-suit is pretty easy to see, though. Or at least the part before the actual fight begins.”

There wasn’t much more to say after that, because now they were two islands away from Cascadio and his personal gathering.

Shadow stepped onto the island right before Cascadio’s golden grasslands—

And in that step, the land ahead, which had been a tea ceremony, became an open-air temple with some clear glass walls and clear glass pillars holding up a nonexistent roof. An older male priest in gold drapery stood on a platform inside the glass temple, beneath a stained glass window made of all sorts of yellow crystal.

Erick followed Shadow onto that land.

The priest was a kindly-looking older man who looked right at Erick, asking, “Could I be of service, or at least delay you for a time while My God speaks with people who have come a very long way, and done a great deal in My God’s name?”

Erick easily said, “Yes. I accept.”

Shadow had been about to say something, both to Erick and to the priest, but she closed her mouth and said nothing.

The priest smiled and gestured to the glass floor ahead of him. Two grand, glass thrones popped up, and the priest sat down on a simple glass stool of his own, saying, “Your willingness to delay is appreciated. Please, come sit with me, and allow me the honor of helping you before Cascadio Himself sees you.”

Erick moved and sat down, saying, “Hello. I’m Erick Flatt, Wizard of Benevolence, here to see Cascadio about helping me to rescue Good people from the Waiting Room who are under Contract from Wraithborn, but in doing so, I’ll be turning them specifically not-Good, instead Benevolent. This is both to erase their Contracts and also to remain out of the Good/Evil war.”

Shadow had sat down while Erick was speaking. Now she reclined on her throne, her legs crossed, her arms easily taking her armrests, making her look like some sort of Dark Queen… Which was probably the exact effect she was going for.

The priest glanced at her, but focused on Erick. At Erick’s words, the priest took in a little breath harder than before, and then he smiled softly. When Erick finished, he said, “I’m Brother Smalls. Cascadio is very interested in this. Acts of good done outside of Good are acceptable. Do you have a list of names?”

Erick conjured a list from memory, taking mana and making a fake thing to then hand over. “I’d prefer if that list didn’t get around right now, which is why I haven’t handed over something real. Most of those names are taken from an anonymous source but the dossiers I got with those names all paint good pictures. I’ve also included a few tens of names down below the 87 that I’m rather sure about wanting to reincarnate, but those are a lot less certain.”

Erick left it there. His Lightning Path said all 87 of those names from the black book were all good names, but the 41 names beyond those 87 were all taken from various messages sitting in star-form around his gate at his house. Those messages had all stood out to his Lightning Path as ones to seek, and each one had included Erick’s Benevolence phrase, ‘For the good of all and every individual’. So there was a trick there, for sure. Probably a trick similar to the one from the black book.

And yet.

Even if all of this was some sort of trick, then the trick wouldn’t really last past [Reincarnation], for Erick was fine with resurrecting great evils and making them good people.

Four of the names on that list were great Evils. Specifically Evils which had sided with Good for one reason or another, and thus become liabilities in the eyes of Wraithborne, and thus a whole bunch of other shit happened that locked them into the Waiting Room for nigh-on centuries or millennia.

Shadow raised her eyebrows at the list. While Brother Smalls kept reading, his eyebrows and mouth doing dances of approval or worry or surprise, Shadow said to Erick, “You want to restart a Grand War with Wraithborne? Because that’s how you start a Grand Good and Evil War.”

“I hope,” Erick said, “That with enough restraint and altering of Good into Benevolence that a Grand War can be avoided completely. There’s more than enough Good to be done without trying to destroy all the Evils out there. And besides that, I’m trying to win Wraithborne over to Benevolence, too.”

Smalls listened, and then he held up the list, asking, “Where did you get the 87 original people?”

“I’d rather not say because then I’m pretty sure some people would get auto-Sundered. I’m almost positive that the person I received them from didn’t even know what they were doing, either, except in the vaguest of senses.”

“Ah.” Smalls frowned a little as he looked at the list again. “Yes. I could see that as a problem. I’m vaguely aware of everyone on this list due to my connection to My God, but I only know of a few people specifically, and Wraithborne would not want them back at all. Will this hurt your attempt to get them to switch from Evil?”

Erick said, “I’m honestly never expecting them to switch away from Evil until I get a lot more powerful or they find some tricky way to be Benevolent. Hopefully all of these people I plan to resurrect will sign on for expansions of House Benevolence and allow Benevolence to have a greater hand in Margleknot and the rest of this universe. In that way, Wraithborne might falter some. But maybe not. I don’t know what is going to happen there.”

Smalls nodded. Then he looked at the list, asking, “Are you aware that Yasmi Bloodgood and Aryear Zumgwyn are eternal enemies? Among the others on the list, of course.”

“Yes.” Erick said, “Yasmi on the side of Paradise Falls and Aryear on the side of Wraithborne, both of them gone 6,500 years and 6,300 years respectively. Of the history I learned, Yasmi fell to a Contract to allow her family to go free and Aryear created that Contract to be punitive, and then Witch Yasmi reflected that punitive action onto Aryear. The history before that is told in songs in bars, as far as I know.”

Smalls nodded as he listened. “You’re digging up rather old history and trying to make it work for you.”

“Correct.”

“Any plans on where to open offices?”

“Either the Mortal Lands or the Celestial Observatory. I’m not sure which, yet. The Celestial Observatory has the benefit of always being able to send out people on missions outside of Margleknot to help others, but then that’s the focus of everything. On the other hand, the Mortal Lands already has locations which connect rather well to Layer 1, which is always in need of help, and which keeps the focus here in Margleknot.”

“Not in some new location?” Smalls asked, “As a Father of Margleknot you might have already made a Sun, but surely you can create a secondary location for personal power?”

Erick smiled softly. “Yeah. I could. I even asked Yggdra— Margleknot as much, and he said sure. But the goal is to be with people, not to be a land apart, even if I could make that land apart really well. I fully expect the majority of our missions to help Veird and the remains of the Painted Cosmology and to fight Nothanganathor before we get to Margleknot stuff, though.”

Smalls nodded. He asked, “Do you have any larger desires for Cascadio, by coming here? Or is it just the Waiting Room assistance?”

“For now, it’s Waiting Room assistance.” Erick said, “But Veird does need a sun god after I kill the not-god currently inhabiting our sun. It would be a sun inside a sphere, like Margleknot’s sphere. I don’t know how that resonates with a sun god, but I assume that such a god would desire the sun to have some view of the actual cosmology around them. Not sure how such a thing would work out, actually at all. I’ve never spoken to a sun god before.”

Smalls contained his absolutely radiant excitement to as low of levels as he could, which was to say not much at all. He didn’t jump for joy, but it was a close thing. Shadow smirked as she saw Smalls react to Erick’s words. She also smirked as she saw Cascadio up there on the central island cough on his wine and then make a joke out of it to his parishioners. He was surely listening in.

Erick added, “But for now, we’re just looking for help with the Waiting Room.”

“Right right!” Smalls glanced over to Cascadio— He rapidly turned back, saying, “Um.” He gestured to the area encompassing them, saying, “This is all very important and Cascadio wishes to partake in this conversation right now, but his people come first, as always, and… Not to put too much of a needle in the eye of your plan, but while all of this is lovely and wonderful and even maybe possible, the probability of it happening as you wish is still rather low. As of right now.”

Erick nodded. “I agree.”

Smalls breathed easily… And then he said, “Uh. I need to entertain you for about another few minutes at least— Maybe just one!” He glanced back at Cascadio. He turned back to Erick and Shadow. “These things take time.”

Shadow inclined her head toward the central island, saying, “Yeah. That’s not finishing soon.”

One of the women speaking with Cascadio started on a story about her child, and all of them looked happy to hear it.

Erick said to Smalls, “I’d love another one of those Vivid Glooms if you got it.”

Smalls smiled, saying, “Excellent choice!” And then he picked the dark drink out of the air and handed it to Erick, the liquid sparkling with white light here and there as the drink moved around. Erick took the drink as Smalls asked Shadow, “Would you care for another Darkness Enthroned?”

Shadow glanced at Erick’s drink, then asked him, “Does it taste like it should?” She asked Smalls, “Is it made with shadow essence, or actual Darkness?”

“Tastes the same as I remember,” Erick said.

Smalls handed Shadow her own Vivid Gloom, saying, “Shadow essence that’s had almost all of its Light extracted. As per the original recipe.”

Shadow smiled and took the drink. She sipped it, paused, then sipped some more. “Pretty good.” She asked Erick, “Have you done much actual Dark Magic yet?”

“Accidentally, I think. Tried working with Shadows long ago, when I wasn’t nearly as educated or experienced, and I think I did some Dark work. Completely unsure, though.”

Shadow nodded and let that thread of conversation go.

Erick asked Smalls, “How would a sun god feel about being inside a big sphere, anyway?”

Smalls happily said, “That’s actually a very large philosophical topic! Suns are ‘suns’ because they are stars that support life. The more life a sun supports, the happier it is. Some stars are jealous, though, and would prefer their life to be completely their own, and those stars would be very happy inside a big sphere. Cascadio is not a jealous god, though he does see great benefit in being the only star that people see.”

“Ah!” Erick said, “I never thought of it that way.”

Shadow said, “A lot of people assume that suns care about other stars, but really it’s half and half, or some other divisor.”

“Quite right!” Smalls said, “Some stars like to view life from a great, great distance. Some like to actually support life. All stars, if they are able, go through a time in their billions of years of existence when they try to support life at some time. Sun gods are almost always… Well. Sun gods appear during a time when a sun is supporting life, and everyone worships them, so they’re almost universally narcissistic.”

Erick laughed.

Smalls smiled, saying, “Cascadio survived and passed from his original world so he’s mostly over that narcissism stage in a sun’s life. He would like to have a singular world to call his own again, though.”

Erick smiled. He asked, “Are stars actually sentient in this cosmology? Or are you speaking of something philosophical there?”

“They’re sleeping when life is not there to worship them and wake them,” Smalls said, “I would consider every star out there to be alive, but for the majority of those who would be asked this question the general answer would likely be ‘no, stars are not alive’.”

Shadow added, “Sunstars were categorically alive in the Painted Cosmology. So were moonstars.”

“Everything was alive in the Painted Cosmology, yes?” Erick asked.

The conversation lasted for more than a few minutes, and actually took a good 27, but Erick was only vaguely counting the time. The conversation itself was rather enlightening about a whole slew of small things that he never really thought about until then.

Eventually, though, the people talking to Cascadio moved on, bowing to their god, who anointed them with a fingerprint of light upon their foreheads. And then those people sighed out, turning to gold fire, to rise into the sky and join with a sun that briefly appeared overhead, like the most brilliant thing that Erick had ever seen. That sun was layered over with brilliant orange turtles made of fire swimming in the nuclear furnace surface. Every sort of lovely part of life happening all around Cascadio’s Cavalcade in these Nexus Gardens also happened up there, upon the backs of world-sized turtles that dove in and out of the sun’s surface, looking like a calm roil of solar fire.

“Huh,” Erick said, as the sun in the sky vanished.

He glanced around. Some of the people on the other islands were bowing toward the ascension, but not everyone, because not everyone on those islands out there was real… or at least not alive, in the usual sense. As the sun appeared, the truth of the Cavalcade had appeared. Many of the dancers and librarians and otherwise were beings of light and flame, only showing their true flaming nature under the brilliance of Cascadio’s true form overhead. Cascadio himself had become a being of golden light, as well. But as the sun vanished, everyone had returned to their mortal guises. Smalls had remained mortal the entire time all of that happened, though.

In that way, Erick had briefly seen that only 5% of the people in the Cavalcade were really here. The rest were likely returned from the greater party, to partake of this smaller, mortal-filled one for a while.

Erick had seen people meet with Cascadio and then move off of the golden island at the center, but this was the first time he had seen someone ascend to the invisible sun in the sky. Erick realized a few things at that moment.

“Not everyone wants to ascend to Cascadio’s afterlife?” Erick asked Smalls. “What about you?”

Smalls smiled gently. “Maybe someday I’ll eventually join those who came before me in the True Cavalcade upon Cascadio, but for now, I am here, helping to guide those to His Glory in a way that they can understand. When I do ascend, though, and when I come back, I will probably be among the Mortal Cavalcade, perhaps serving drinks at the bars, or teaching scripture in the churches. That will hopefully be a long time from now. For now...” Smalls gestured toward the golden island and the glass cathedral around them vanished, opening the way to Cascadio’s central island and the sun god himself. “We thank you for your patience. Cascadio will see you.”

Erick walked forward and Shadow walked beside him. Together they crossed the small bit of water separating the church island of green grass from the golden grasses island at the center of the Cavalcade.

Cascadio stood upon a golden carpet, next to a golden recliner. Two persons of flame and light stood to the side, almost like servants, but they were more like fellow party-goers, happily moving some glass-and-gold-cushion thrones into existence and taking away the more simple chairs, while also setting out some more drinks and refilling Cascadio’s golden goblet with pure sunlight. The man himself was easily three meters tall, and Erick almost bloomed out to his usual height to match him, but that seemed petty, somehow.

Cascadio himself looked like a jolly sort of guy, with dark skin and wearing a gold toga and an easy smile on his face. He was muscular and fat, and he wore it well, moving with strong grace as he gestured to the chairs, saying, “Sit, new friends, and let us talk of possibilities and plans.”

Erick said, “Nice to meet you, Cascadio. I accept your invitation.”

Shadow nodded, saying, “Hello again.”

Cascadio nodded deeper than Shadow did, saying, “Hello again, Daughter of Darkness.”

They sat.

Cascadio opened with, “To get it out of the way, I will gladly help with your designs up the Waiting Room of Margleknot. I’ll act as your Guide, Shield, and Translator all, and not interfere in any of your personal lists of people you wish to reincarnate. I only ask that you bring back 100 more Good people of my choosing, that you consider expanding your soul-rescue-plan many, many times over, and that you consider building your expansion of House Benevolence in the Slaver’s Den. Of course, the Slaver’s Den would need to be fully eradicated for that to happen, but their land would give you plenty of space to make a new land of not-exactly-Good.” Cascadio added, “Or ‘Good-in-all-but-Name’, if you would prefer.”

Erick took a moment. He answered, “I see no immediate problems with that idea.”

Shadow said, “I’m good with wholesale slaver slaughter.”

“I would try to reincarnate them, Shadow,” Erick said.

Shadow shrugged. “Works for me.”

Cascadio smiled. “Excellent!” He reclined on his seat and drinks of liquid sunlight appeared as he said, “Then let us discuss many other topics of great import, from overall plans, to how I can help, and to ultimate goals.” He lifted his drink, saying, “To Infinity!”

Erick guessed that was the toast, then? He raised his glass alongside Shadow, and both of them repeated, “To Infinity.”

The liquid gold light tasted like nuclear fire, but nicer.

They got to talking.