Chapter 180, 1/2

Erick rolled out of bed. He felt a bit tense, but he was relaxed and focused as his bare feet touched the cold, wood-slat floor. Rainbow white glows shone in through the window, the pastel, green, and light from Yggdrasil all blending in to form an almost iridescent shimmer. A nice wind would have been blowing through the window, too, if Erick had left it open, but he had shut himself off from the breeze as soon as he could, as soon as he had made his room last night. For the first time in weeks he had actual floors. And a roof! And actual walls! Camping out on Yggdrasil’s branches was fun for a while, and thanks to his Constitution the cold air wasn’t hard on him, but it was nice to have an actual room again.

The floor was brown wood. The walls were white drywall. The ceiling was vaulted with exposed beams and lots of little spots for Ophiel to roost in, which he did. Erick went to his private bathroom where the tile floor was comfortably colder than the floor in his room. A cast of [Sealed Privacy Ward] cut off this space from Tasar’s sight, who was in the main working room at the moment, and then Erick switched to his Other Self and began his extended morning ritual.

Ten minutes later, Erick [Cleanse]ed the toilet and dropped the Privacy, returning to Tasar’s various senses, but Erick doubted that the woman actually noticed him beyond a cursory glance every now and then. Fully relaxed and ready for a new day, Erick exited his private little tower and entered the main structure of [Fairy Stronghold].

Tasar was already hard at work.

Tasar had all of the third floor to herself, to use in her Fae Space experiments, and she had made good use of the space. The black-green woman had three floating pieces of chalk writing out math on three different sets of chalkboards, while she spoke math at those various chalks as she danced around inside her shadowy, glittering green Domain she had scattered over the room. She wasn’t really dancing, Erick admitted to himself, but she was blipping herself and about a dozen smaller objects between various clumps of shadow space in movements that were almost dance-like. Most of the objects were normal; a few wooden cubes, a metal sphere, a triangular pyramid with numbers on each side. Some were odd; a spinning top, a hundred-sided die, and a bowl of water.

None of those other objects had been there last night when Erick went to bed.

And Tasar was so engrossed with the numbers and her experiment that she didn’t say anything to Erick as Erick walked in; she was already mumbling out a steady stream of instructions to the floating chalk and had each of them taking down different notes. She had set a little blackberry summon on the wall outside his door and marked it out with a note, saying ‘To keep an eye on possible security issues while I work, pop when you want privacy.’ Erick had popped it, of course, before he did his business. That action had briefly alerted Tasar, but then she had gone right back to working on… whatever it was she was doing.

The math on the boards was beyond Erick, but he understood some of what Tasar was doing. Chalkboard one held normal Spatial Magic math. Chalkboard two held experimental notes from all the blipping Tasar was doing. Chalkboard one and two correlated rather heavily, but here and there Tasar had circled certain bits of math with great big circles, and those bits of math had been reproduced on the third set of chalkboards. Erick didn’t understand the math itself, but he understood that Tasar was figuring out how Fae Space differed from Normal Space.

He watched as Tasar blipped between two shadowy areas, and nothing changed, but then she blipped the hundred-sided die across the room and up onto a chair, and the bowl of water to where the die had been sitting on the floor. The die switched from showing a 27 on top, to show 72. The water inside the bowl transformed into a 100-sided die made of ice, resting in the bowl and showing a 27 on top.

Tasar already had a half-manic grin on her face, but now, she laughed loud, saying, “Oh my gods!” And then she went right back to blipping things around, working at a frantic pace, spouting off words like ‘arcanomatrix’ and ‘probability-shears’ and ‘reflective transformations’. Strings of numbers and letters and symbols poured out of her mouth, going in one of Erick’s ears and then out the other.

Erick thumbed toward the balcony, saying, “I’m going to take a swim.”

Tasar paused everything, staring at Erick with a manic expression, then she said, “Can you give me five minutes? Or leave an Ophiel in the room so that we can still see each other?”

Erick smiled, then said, “I will leave an Ophiel in the room.”

Ophiel hopped off of Erick’s shoulder and alighted on a perch by the window. He cooed in recognition of his new responsibility; to watch Tasar, and to make sure that she and Erick were never too far outside of communication.

Erick asked, “How close are you to figuring it out?”

Tasar’s whole expression went blank, as though she couldn’t understand the question. “I don’t understand the question.” And then she got a little mad. “This could take me decades.” She got a little more miffed. “The Artosian Transformation alone— Decades! The answer is decades.”

Erick wisely decided to leave. “I’m going to get out of your hair now.”

And then he stepped away, out onto the open balcony.

With a quick dash and a large hop, Erick leaped over the railing, into the open air. As the [Fairy Stronghold] vanished behind him, Erick sailed through the air, guiding himself through the rushing flow with his hands stretched outward and a bit of laughter on his lips. This was such a fun way to wake! An Ophiel, different from the one Erick had left in the room, flew down beside him and latched onto his shoulder, twittering in joy at the fun dive through the open air.

Back in the room, Tasar stared at nothing for a little while, then she tried to regain her train of thought, going to her boards and reading over the math she had written down—

She jerked as she realized something.

And then she was back to blipping around her toys, and herself, with a renewed enthusiasm in her motions. She had rediscovered her flow, too.

Erick ditched his clothes seconds before touchdown in the lake, handing the cloth and the Crystal Star off to Ophiel as he softened the water ahead of himself with an application of sunform. He crashed through the bubbly surface of the lake. Cold water slammed him from all sides in a bracing grasp. Bubbles surrounded him… And he relaxed. With only a [Fairy Item] bracelet around his wrist, Erick swam under the waves for a little bit, gazing out under the water, staring at everything that was growing under his largest [Familiar].

Yggdrasil’s subway-sized white roots brought brightness to the depths, illuminating fishes and long grasses and things that looked almost like corals, but not. With all the light down here, there was no ‘deeper part’ of this ocean-deep lake. Everything was as bright as the Surface, and so there was a lot of space for plants to grow, and a lot of space for fish and crabs and other marine life to live. For a little while, Erick just swam under the surface, taking it all in, watching as schools of fish swam away at his approach. He could hold his breath for a long time, these days, and with a bit of sunform helping him to breathe, like how Jane’s shadowform helped her shadow spider to breathe, Erick could actually swim underwater forever, if he wanted.

It was nice.

Much nicer than swimming around elsewhere on Veird. Too many places had too many underwater monsters. There were supposedly some underwater civilizations out there, too, but Erick hadn’t heard much of them… from anyone, actually. Only Quilatalap had spoken of them before, back at his Armory Presentation. He lumped ‘islands and the underwaters’ together, into a single category, if Erick recalled correctly. ‘Stone Reef’ and ‘Deadtide’ got lumped in with Oceanside. Erick wasn’t quite sure where Stone Reef or Deadtide were actually located, or if both, or only one, were an ‘underwater’, or what that meant, exactly. Whichever or wherever they were, they likely had unique underwater magics to drive away or kill the largest monsters of this world.

Why hadn’t Erick ever heard about them, before, though?

Maybe Quilatalap had mentioned them only because they were massive and thus deserving of recognition for that fact alone. It was quite likely they were like the Fractured Citadels; lands to which no normal person ever went, full of necromancers, in the case of the Citadels, or perhaps full of…

Erick wasn’t sure what actually lived in the deepest parts of the ocean. It was probably scary, for sure. In that case, no one spoke of them in polite company because it was just worrying over something they couldn’t do anything about.

Eh! This world was massive. Erick had likely never heard much about the ‘underwaters’ because there were more than enough local problems to go around, so people didn’t worry about stuff outside of their local systems. A lot of Nelboor had been like that; Erick had basically scoured that land of all major threats that came to him through people asking for help, so he knew of much of Nelboor, but he certainly didn’t know much at all. Flying over a place and eradicating a threat did not equate with ‘knowing a place’, not when there were hidden lands everywhere out there. He had probably blipped over the airspace of an ‘underwater’, too, without knowing any better.

Meh!

Erick breached the surface of the lake and began paddling, lazily, and also for fun.

It was nice to have a working body. His body had been working a lot better ever since he got to Veird, and it was wonderful. He didn’t make note of this change all too often anymore, but sometimes, like this, he couldn’t help but think of all the years he had spent in physical pain for this reason or that reason, and now, those smaller pains were a thing of the past.

Briefly, he wondered how Rats was doing. Or rather, how Xendross Sands was doing; that was his real name, after all. Sands was an orphan name…

Were the orphans back at Spur doing okay? Hopefully, his bank account was still sending them money as he had set it up to do.

How was Spur doing?

How was Jane doing?

… Probably fine.

… Erick hadn’t contacted them in a few days, so it was time to do that. Soon. Not this second. Later, for sure.

Erick turned up the speed, slapping his arms in a whirling motion, his Strength and Dexterity pushing him far, far beyond the best any Olympic athlete back home could ever hope to achieve. As he swam faster and faster, joy burbled in his stomach and came rumbling out as laughter. Water got in his mouth and he coughed, instantly losing his rhythm. He just laughed a bit more at that.

With a gesture, Erick both conjured a [Fairy Item] pool ring and hoisted himself on top of the not-plastic floaty; it was bright pink and just kinda fun. And then he sat there under Yggdrasil’s rainbow, green, and white light for a while, feeling a small, comfortable breeze brush along the lake’s surface. And he was still nude. So with another cast, Erick summoned a pair of board shorts onto his body because it just seemed rude to call people while nude. Another bit of magic sent out a telepathic call through Yggdrasil, across the world, to Poi.

‘Hello, Erick,’ Poi answered almost instantly. ‘I hear strange things are happening down there.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Erick smiled. ‘What strange things are you hearing?’

‘A meeting with Melemizargo, for starters.’

Erick’s grin widened. ‘He’s always in the shadows, Poi. He just decided to come out for a little while because I think I figured out [Gate]! Ha ha!’

‘Congratulations. And I’m glad you finally called.’ Poi said, ‘If you wish to be part of a world-spanning organization to control or at least not allow anyone else to control the [Gate]s, then I suggest we start planning out such an organization now. For starters, we need more personnel. A dedicated secretary for your finances, or perhaps a team for your finances, is absolutely necessary, but there are a bunch of other positions that also need filling. Guard. City defense for Candlepoint. Etcetera. But also, you need to think about what will happen when you’re revealed as a Wizard, because your assets in Mage Bank will be frozen at the very least and I’m pretty sure that some sort of war will happen.’

Erick did not expect the call to go in this direction. But as Erick’s initial feeling of paranoia and worry built, it was then crushed by a larger, overwhelming fact that Poi was thinking and planning for the future. A wave of quiet joy rushed up from deep in Erick’s heart and buoyed him into pleasant feelings of deep friendship, and hope.

And then he got down to business. ‘Do you think Silverite will turn against me?’

‘I cannot speak to the minds of others...’ Poi sent, ‘But what is public knowledge is that Silverite has a deep respect for Koyabez, and if you maintain your current standing with the gods then she will not interfere one way or the other. A lot of world leaders will be like that. The two notable exceptions are the Wasteland Kingdoms and Greensoil Republic, because they’re the major incani and human nations of the world, and they will see your ascension to Wizardry as a direct threat, for by your actions you have already screwed over both demonic and angelic plans for the world. The orcols of Treehome are a wildcard. I have no idea what the wrought will do, but I need to stay out of that, anyway. The Inquisition has come for the Mind Mages in the past and we only survived because of our Code. We don’t keep the Code because of them, but I won’t pretend that our strict adherence to morality and lines did not benefit us long before the Inquisition got hold of Mind Magic.’

Erick thought, then sent, ‘I’ll be dealing with the angels and demons at Oceanside after this Bright Tea and inquiry deal, so I might be able to wrangle a better peace from the Wasteland and the Republic than the one we have now.’ He asked, ‘Would you like to go there with me? Or are you needed at Spur?’

‘I’m needed here. I doubt any of us will be able to rejoin you on your Path.’ Poi sent, ‘Nirzir would likely want to, but she and her cohorts are too busy with... the event happening here. You probably shouldn’t take her, anyway. I hear the fae are now involved?’

‘A lot has happened, Poi. So last I called…’

He spoke with Poi for a good thirty minutes. It was a nice conversation. Erick missed Poi, and he sent as much, to which Poi reciprocated, but he also spoke of how it was nice not to be so close to Fate Magic. It was easy to tell when he was on the Path, for the problems steadily got larger. Now, the problems varied per day, with long stretches of nothing to do and with great strides made toward… Something that he wasn’t willing to share.

There was one thing Poi was willing to share, though. ‘With the power Spur has managed to amass thanks to you and the power Kiri has managed to inherit, we’re actually in a holding pattern because now politics have gotten involved, and people from all over the world are coming in to hunt the larger— Uh. We’ve got a lot of guests in Spur, and— Oh hey. You want to talk to Jane, now?’

Erick had been smiling this whole time, for this was nice, and, ‘Yes! I do want to speak to Jane. It was nice talking, Poi. See you when I see you, and hopefully not with a war at my back! Send everyone my love.’

‘Teressa, Kiri, and Nirzir all want to talk to you, too.’

‘Yes!’ Erick sent, ‘Hand me off to Jane first, please.’

The connection shifted.

Jane’s voice came through loud and clear, ‘Hey, dad! So you let Rozeta put a kill spell in you, eh?’

Erick froze. The disapproval in Jane’s voice was loud and clear, but he had only recognized it after the fact. Erick thawed fast enough, sending, ‘It’s more complicated than that. In exchange, she helped me sort my species from question-mark-human to something else.’

‘… Uh.’ Jane’s voice turned from worried to inquisitive, ‘Uh? What? I guess that’s good? What are you now? No wait… Why?’

‘I have a few defensive abilities now that I didn’t have before, that’s why.’ Erick added, ‘And I needed the change because it was going to happen sooner or later, so I got some help. I have Perfected Body now, too, so that’s gre—’

‘Bahaa!’ Jane laughed. ‘It’s pretty great, isn’t it!’

Erick smiled. ‘Yeah. It is. But I found out that it doesn’t help against long term usage of Blood Magic, so I was going to steal your idea for a Blood Magic [Personal Ward], but that won’t work.’

‘Ah? Damn… I guess I should abandon that idea. I wasn’t getting far with it, anyway.’

Erick dove right in, saying, ‘I did learn of [Steadfast Ward]s, though. They provide absolute damage reduction that works after everything else, including [Defend] or a body’s natural hardness. Made one of those for 250 absolute defense—’

Jane’s excited voice barged in, ‘You can do what!’

Erick smiled, sending, ‘[Steadfast Ward]s are the [Personal Ward]s that wrought use all the time. With it active, I’m immune to all damage under 1000 points. But there’s a problem with that, as I’m sure you can already guess.’

‘… Oh… Yeah.’ Jane sent, ‘Oh. I see. The large hits get through. No. That’s not good enough… Damn.’

‘There’s apparently something called a [Gloom Ward] that makes a person ignore a percentage of the damage they take. I’ve thought about that, if to just get another 5% out of my [Personal Ward]. There’s also an [Illusion Ward] which makes anything less than ‘Unerring’ or too large to not hit, not hit.’ Erick added, ‘That one is annoying to live with, though, and makes it hard to be precise with your own attacks. I think the best possible [Personal Ward] will have to be one that allows your normal defenses to reduce the damage you take, but I haven’t figured that one out yet. I’ll let you know when I do.’

‘Eh. It’s fine.’ Jane sent, ‘I’ll figure it out. I’m glad you looked out for me, but… Eh— Tell me more about the Underworld, and the wrought Geodes. What’s happening down there besides solving [Gate], or whatever— Actually. What’s up with [Gate]?’

Erick had a lot to say about all of those topics, so he started right in, sending, ‘So you know of the fae, yeah?’

Jane gave a tentative and unsure, ‘Oh shit?’

Erick began laying it all out there, from top to bottom, from Ar’Cosmos and the Houses of Fae, Carnage, and Death, to what it might mean to be a planar, to how ‘Fae Space’ was apparently its own thing, and how ‘the Flowery Murderess’ was apparently one of possibly two remaining true fae living on Veird, inside the Twisted Vision that they never got to explore in the Forest of Glaquin.

‘… And you’re sure you didn’t enter into any agreements?’ Jane asked again, for the fifth time, but in a different way than before.

‘I did not.’ Erick sent, ‘Don’t you let her get to you, either, okay?’

‘Of course not!’ Jane sounded almost offended, but she pulled that back, sending, ‘And don’t you let her get to you, either. I can’t recall what fae she could be, exactly, but I’m pretty sure this persona she’s adopted as the Letter Killer isn’t real beyond the fact that it’s useful for her to pretend that it is real. She’ll shed it like a snake skin the second it benefits her to do so.’

‘I think you’re discounting the depth of true reality inherent in Fae Magic, Jane.’ Erick sent, ‘The Letter Killer is probably a real person to her, in this moment, and in this reality of Veird.’

‘Okay. Yeah. I probably am.’ Jane sent, ‘Say… When you get back from Stratagold and your inquiry, will you teach me some of this fae stuff?’

Overflowing joy!

Jane rapidly added, ‘Assuming that you won’t call down a Wild Hunt on us, or any shit like that.’

‘Assuming that, yes.’ Erick happily sent, ‘Yes, I would love to.’

With a relieved and rested tone, Jane sent, ‘Okay. Then… I gotta go. I love you, dad. Talk to you lat— Kiri wants to talk.’

‘Love you too. Put her on.’

‘See you soon!’ Jane’s voice faded away.

Kiri’s voice came through, ‘Hey, Erick. I’m glad you’re okay. We’ve heard some concerning things.’

Erick trailed a hand through the water next to him as he lounged in his floaty tube. The only thing missing was a margarita and maybe an actual sun overhead. Erick sent, ‘I’m doing great. Right now I’m floating in a very large lake, underneath Yggdrasil, near Stratagold, so I’m doing a lot better than before. Things have calmed down and I expect to go to some cultural stuff today and then I’ll try to secure Stratagold’s support for all future endeavors from now until our goals no longer align, but I don’t see such a misalignment happening unless they pull back first. I haven’t heard anything about Spur, but I assume you’re all okay.’

‘In the middle of a quiet night, right now.’ Kiri sent, ‘All the spellwork you gave me through Poi has helped a lot and Sunny lets me take care of— Uh. Not supposed to say anything at all. Huh?’ She said something to someone else that came through like a whisper, but then she came back all the way, sending, ‘Anyway. Nirzir is here providing Singer support, which is something that I still find amazing. I must confess it was a novel experience to find out that there are other people out there that can hear the mana like you can; that you weren’t just making it all up.’

Erick laughed a little, sending, ‘So I had this conversation with Rozeta a bit ago. She said that people who can hear the mana generally end up becoming archmages, but not always. It’s just a support structure; not a real cheat.’

‘… The casual nature with which you talk about talking with gods. I had forgotten that.’

Erick grinned to himself as he relaxed in the lake waters, mana sensing a school of rainbow flits thirty meters below as they darted through long tendrils of kelp-like plants. He asked, ‘How’s your search for a Domain going?’

‘Ugh!’ Disgust flowed through their connection. ‘Not good. I’ll get there, though. Seeing Nirzir with her Domain and you with yours and finding out that apparently, every single high-level person around here has one, too— I had thought Domains were a lot rarer. Mythical-level rare. But apparently everyone has one— Well. That's an exaggeration. I’ll figure it out, eventually. Right now I’m learning mana sense; That seems to be the most important thing right now.’ Kiri sent, ‘I started off with aura control, but with the Sight spells locked behind sensing them, I really should have gone after mana sense, first.’

‘The Sight spells are super important, especially since you can run so many of them at the same time with Sunny.’ Erick sent, ‘As for a Domain, they’re pretty complicated. I have a book on Domain interactions inside the library but it doesn’t say anything about how to get a Domain, itself. You should read up on that anyway, because high level combat is about a lot more than Script-assisted exchanges. I’ll want to talk to all of you about Domainwork when I get back, but I can talk a little bit about it if you have time.’ Erick added, ‘I know we already talked about it, but… More talking never hurt, right?’

‘I would love to hear what you know about Domains.’ Kiri sent, ‘Got an overview?’

Erick began, ‘Basically, Domains are putting your intent out there in such a way that you automatically deny everyone else the ability to put intent into the manasphere; you put your magic out there and in that action, deny magic to all others. There are a few ways to do this, and some work better than others. Void Song’s [Void Song] uses Elemental Void to nullify all magic that they choose to nullify. I suggest you stay away from Void, but you already knew that. You were there for the creation of my own [Domain of Light], and we went over that, but I didn’t know exactly what I was doing until now. By my extensive Shaping of Light to make it pervasive and permanent, what I was actually doing was inundating the local area with my intent, leaving no room for any other intent.

‘Domains have… I suppose Poi would call them magnitudes— Which reminds me that I should find out what that means. Do you know?’

‘Not really.’ Kiri sent, ‘I’m on the Mind Mage watchlist, but not a member. I’m rather sure that magnitude is just the overall strength of a spell, but I am learning that ‘strength of spell’ is a very nebulous concept.’

‘Magic gets strange at higher levels… I’ll ask someone down here what ‘magnitude’ means and tell you later. Anyway. Domains have varying levels of strength, and a stronger Domain can usually break a weaker Domain rather easily. ‘Strength’, in this case, I believe, refers to solidness of control.

‘I would say my [Domain of Light], since it is very thorough and made at tier 8, is about as good as one can make a Domain; it’s quality all around. The [Void Song] gets to that same level at tier 4 or 5, not sure, because Elemental Void is very good at disrupting other magic. My [Domain of the Withering Slime] is probably as weak of a Domain as one can make, because practically anything strong can simply ignore it and it doesn’t stop magic use inside its area of effect, at all.

‘My [Physical Domain], which you haven’t seen… Is a strange one, because it can do certain things very well, like harm and nullify, but I have to work it hard to make it as protective as [Lodestar] and it will likely never get to that good of a level of protection. [Physical Domain] has a range of kilometers, though, so that makes up for its weak defensive nature by a lot. I’ll show that one to you when I get back; it’s fun, and you might be able to make it, too.’

‘I heard about that spell.’ Kiri sent, ‘Large magenta explosions.’

Erick sent, ‘The [Physical Domain] is about vibrations. I was trying to make a Domain to make two places vibrate at the same harmonic frequency, but I now believe that was an improper avenue of research. The true secret to [Gate] is probably deep in the overlap between Elemental Fae, Spatial location-probability Magic, Fate Magic, and Domainwork. Physicality might not have much to do with it at all. I warn you not to get involved with fae, though. Ask Jane about them; she knows more stories than I. Maybe Teressa would, too.’

‘I’m not even sure what a ‘fae’ is, but I’ll talk to Jane, and— Ah.’ Kiri sent, ‘Looks like we got some problems to take care of. Uh. See you later!’

‘Take care!’

Kiri’s connection faded.

Poi came back, sending, ‘Stuff is happening here. Teressa and Nirzir wanted to talk to you, too, but duty calls. Good luck on the inquiry, Erick, and also: Magnitude means the depth to which the manasphere is shifted by magic or personality or otherwise.’

Erick smiled, then laughed, saying, ‘Ha! I was right!’

‘Most people’s magic falls between magnitude 1 to 4. Mag-7 is archmage-level. Everything above mag-9 is disallowed by the Script. None of your stuff is actually mag-9. [Lodestar] is barely mag 8. The Red Dot was mag 9. Other people have much stronger Domains than you, Erick.’ Poi sent, ‘Be careful out there.’

‘… Suitably humbling.’ With a sudden heaviness in his heart, Erick sent, ‘I will be careful. Thanks, Poi, for everything.’

Poi was having none of Erick’s fatalism, though. He sent, ‘You’re coming back and we’ll still be here and this problem will be gone by then. Have fun at your Tea and Inquiry. Don’t speak too openly but don’t lie either. You’ll be fine. Good luck.’

Poi cut the connection; he had things to do.

For a long moment, Erick did nothing. He just breathed, feeling the world around him. The massive body of Yggdrasil above, the waters all below, and the cool air flowing across the lake, coming in from the waterfall area. It was nice down here. A bit cold, but that was fine.

Eh. It wasn’t that cold at all. Erick was just nervous about the coming day, for he had made a decision. The very next Bright Tea? He was going to be there. That ceremony happened twice a week so there had to be one coming up soon.

He dismissed his [Fairy Item] raft and flew back over to Yggdrasil’s base, drying himself off along the way to where Ophiel had folded and set down his clothes, then placed the Crystal Star on top. With some quick sunform movement, Erick was once again redressed with his artifact once again placed over his own heart.

He stepped back into his [Fairy Stronghold] to see Tasar still hard at it, still causing constant green glitters among the black shadows all around as she blipped herself and her toys throughout the scattered pocket of her Domain space. She had already told Erick that she knew how to work her Domain so as not to disturb the Fae Space, but to make sure… Erick reached over to the shiny platinum ‘nail heads’ that were exposed near the door, and pumped another 10,000 mana of [Fairy Stronghold] into the runic web of the house. Nothing changed, and Tasar never stopped blipping or writing down her numbers, but the house felt more solid to him, and there was no harm in that.

Erick conjured a chair, using normal [Conjure Item] magic so as not to disturb Tasar, or to find his chair suddenly popping out from under him (which had happened once already), and then he sat down, and watched Tasar work. There was learning to be had here if he could get through all the impenetrable math, and even if the math continued to escape him, he could still learn by watching.

- - - -

An hour later Erick had gotten nowhere with any of the math but he had learned a lot about manually blipping things. Tasar was very good at Spatial Magic. Erick already knew this, but to see how effortlessly she was able to move things around and then to understand how those things had been moved, was another thing entirely. For Spatial Magic wasn’t actually ‘move something around’ magic. It was ‘This thing was actually over here the whole time’ magic, and inside Fae Space, that sort of possibility-determinism was also able to change how an item was, after it moved.

Properly-made Spatial Magic did not do that. It was only when someone used improper Spatial Magic that objects changed in the transition. The most common [Teleport] accident was when a person was first learning to use that spell, and they blipped to another area and ended up midair, or a meter away from their intended space. All people who used [Teleport] naturally learned to fix those problems, though, and [Teleport] had a lot of failsafes to prevent disaster, like blipping into a wall, or on top of a monster.

Manual cast [Teleport]s had none of these safeguards.

But even perfectly manually cast [Teleport]s were only as good as the base spell already in the Open Script, and a perfect [Teleport] moved someone from one area to another, setting the person down exactly how they had gone into the spell with very little adjustment to form, at all.

The blipping of items in Fae Space fucked with that natural order. Spatial Magic inside this [Fairy Stronghold] changed how [Teleport] operated at a basic level.

Dice got flipped. Water turned to ice. Ice turned to water. The spinning top suddenly stopped, but after another blip, it was whirring around at full speed. An hourglass flipped from one area to the next, causing sands to fall through the glass once again. All of these things were impossible through standard, properly cast [Teleport].

Some of these transformations made Tasar suddenly giddy, but then she blipped the item again and the item shifted again and Tasar’s emotions crashed; she had not meant for the item to transform the second time. She had only meant to move it. In some ways, Tasar was figuring out the differences between Fae Space and normal space, but in other ways, she had no idea what she was doing.

Aside from the math which seemed too strange to ever be real, Erick mostly understood what was happening here. Probability got wonky in Fae Space because of course it did, and it likely had something to do with Fate. Tasar couldn’t control the transformations how she wanted to, though, because this space wasn’t her Fae Space.

Either Fate Magic, or being inside her own Fae Space, or maybe a Fae Domain, was likely needed to direct probability in a purposeful way. She could ride the grooves in the Fae Space cast by Erick to produce certain outcomes —as Erick had witnessed Tasar blip a cube of ice back and forth between a specific location, making it water and then ice and then back to water, rather precisely— but to make those grooves, one needed to cast the Fae Space themselves…

Or something else. Erick wasn’t sure.

One other, perhaps major thing that Erick noticed and did not know before, was that [Teleport] left echos in the manasphere. Normally, it didn’t do that.

It took Erick a half dozen viewings to actually see it happen, but it was most noticeable in the ice/water, as it switched between phase states and locations. Every time Tasar actually made the ice become water, or water turn to ice, as the object left its original location, an almost-invisible green shimmer expanded through the shadows of the room like a suddenly expanding bubble. And then the bubble collapsed into its new location, and the water/ice reappeared, transformed into its other state, where Tasar had put it.

Erick had no idea what the green shimmer bubble was, but he suspected that it was an effect that happened all the time in Spatial Magic. He just couldn’t see/feel/mana sense it before now, and he had certainly never heard of it...

Oh. This explained why Tasar had thought that no one could evade her Spatial Domain, because as soon as they moved through it, in any way, she should have felt the echoes of that movement through her Domain. Those green shimmers were how Tasar knew that something/someone/anything was happening around in her Spatial Domain. She even noticed the lines of power connecting him to Yggdrasil, and all other effects that stretched across distance, or which connected one thing to other parts of a person’s power… or something. Her Domain was likely honed over at least a few centuries, so it probably had a lot of functionality that Erick could only guess at.

He wondered if she could feel the lines of connection between him and all the other magic he had left out there, that he could send a cancel command to with a bare second of concentration? Maybe. There were some implications there, but Erick didn’t really care to think too deeply about those at the moment.

Erick simply watched Tasar work and wondered if she was making actual progress. For a while, it seemed she was, but now...

Tasar looked to be getting less and less sure as time went on. Her chalkboards were messes of crossed out and newly-circled equations, and she had conjured more boards to have more space for more failed equations. Multiple lightwards held in the air; each representing blipping experiments that had gone right, each of them individual identified ‘grooves’ in the Fae Space of the house—

Tasar stopped blipping to stare at one of her lightwards, sighing. She was having trouble understanding why the ice/water was transforming how it was transforming; what made it shift when she moved it along that specific diagonal she had found.

Erick spoke up, “You found a groove in the Fae Space caused by the locations of the nodes in the runic web of the house. The runic web isn’t a complete stretching of magic into a larger space, but instead a collection of power held together in unnatural ways.”

Tasar jolted with terror, turning to face Erick, but as Erick’s words washed over her, she relaxed, and turned back to her lightwards. And then she frowned, and spat out, “Ah. Slag. That’s exactly what’s happening, isn’t it—” She gasped. “Oh! But if that’s really what is happening then… Hmm. I lost it...”

Moments passed.

Erick spoke up again, “You’ve been at this for over 12 hours now and I want to go to Bright Tea today. When is the next one?”

Tasar paused, staring at her chalkboards, then she realized she had other priorities than figuring out Fae Space. That shit was going to take 20 years, at least, and for her to make her own [Fairy House]. She looked to Erick, saying, “Right. There’s stuff to do. Uh. What day is… it...” She glanced up, thinking— “Oh. Today— Bright Tea should be 4 or so hours from now.” She looked to Erick, then she looked at him. “I hope you’re not thinking of wearing that, are you?”

Erick smirked. “Of course not. Any suggestions on what I should wear? I can make practically anything with [Fabricate] and the materials I have on hand.”

Tasar nodded, then she glanced around the room, at all the little things she had strewn about. With a flicker of magic all the objects and the chalkboards moved to the side, neatly stacked or sorted on the ground, or on a table, and then the green-glittering shadows vanished. “Fashion for Bright Tea is rather specific, but it’s never that hard to throw something together…”

- - - -

A nervous jitter propagated through Erick’s chest as he stepped down onto the beach, near Yggdrasil. He had just [Renew]ed his Other Self inside a Privacy not twenty minutes ago so he would be good for at least 12 hours. Bright Tea was a big deal.

This was a big event.

And he was ready.

If Bright Tea turned out to be half as involved as he suspected it would be, then while there would be breaks, he would not be able to be alone for at least 12 hours. Possibly longer. At least the fashion of Bright Tea was nice.

He had not expected togas, and certainly not only a toga. No underwear was a bit odd, but he could deal, for ‘nothing but the toga’ was the preferred style at Bright Tea. The whole point was to show off the ‘body that Rozeta gave you’, but, when Erick joked about orgies, Tasar simply said that only the youngest of wrought were into that sort of scene; Bright Tea at the White Palace was strictly political, relaxing, and ceremonial. Then she made a comment about how Erick had a ‘body from Rozeta’, too, but he should keep that under wraps for now; it was a toga joke, Erick was sure, so he appreciated Tasar’s moment of levity and told her as much.

And now they were here.

He didn’t quite like going commando, but he could deal. Of the various designs possible, Erick opted for a knee-length skirt and to bare one shoulder, with extra fabric forming a drape down his back. The whole thing was bright white, as all Bright Tea clothes were, but with fine details of stars and lines done in platinum thread, turning the edges of the toga into a masterpiece of nuanced embroidery. With a platinum-thread belt cinched around his waist, the look was complete, and Erick was very happy that he needn’t ever be embarrassed about the state of his aging body ever again.

He looked fucking fine and that was great.

Erick had thrown his outfit together in half an hour. Tasar’s own outfit was much the same, but she had grabbed hers from her office back in the embassy, fixed up some of the embroidery to match Erick’s, and slipped it on. It covered both shoulders and draped down to her feet. She looked quite nice with the bright white fabric over her black-green adamantium body, and her hair done in braids in a bun.

She seemed nervous, too.

Erick was nervous enough for both of them, but he didn’t expect Tasar to be the same way.

Erick stared at the t-station sitting on the sands in front of them, and asked, “Got any idea what to expect?”

“It’s usually the same thing, all the time. Mainly talking of goings-on inside Stratagold; rumors and such. Then there’s the tea ceremony itself, and then the dancing. Some people might wear undergarments in the more vigorous dances, but you probably shouldn’t attempt those… I don’t know.” Tasar stood straight, saying, “All throughout you talk to people and make plans to make business connections later. No actual business takes place at Bright Tea… Though I suppose that will change based on your presence. And it might go over the allotted 4 hours, for the same reasons. Feel free to ask people about magic, if you wish; that’s always a safe topic and I’m sure people will want to ask questions in that direction, too.”

Erick nodded. “I’m ready.”

Tasar rambled off some final instructions that she had also already told him twice already, “You can keep your spells running, too, but Ophiel will have to remain outside. Most people will be running some sort of magic. We don’t get attacked often, but it has happened before; it’s a major, bi-weekly political event, after all. And…” Her voice trailed off. “We’ll be fine.”

Well!

No time like the present.

Erick stepped forward, and Tasar instantly followed at his side.