Chapter 231, 1/2

The sky had been dark.

The Old Cosmology above the ruined city of Iben had been a simple night sky, devoid of clouds and empty of most stars. The only real light source anywhere in the city and in the heavens had been the world of Riam, sitting up there like a green and blue marble with its southern Surface peeled away, to reveal yet another world below the original. All of that land up there was a land of plenty. For the last few hours, Riam’s subtle glow had been the only real light cast upon this dead city of Iben, on the dying world of Insten, where Erick stood.

Now, though, in the advent of the Beast of Destruction, red lightning crackled across thin mana clouds above, and the waters that half-drowned Iben in darkness were now illuminated from below with deep red glows. Rapidly, those waters began to drain away, exposing deep red faults in the land, and sending plumes of foggy light into the air.

Most of the redness of the world had collected upon the coliseum in the back of Ramblewood Arcanaeum and University, like it was the only grounding for all the red lightning in the sky. It almost looked like a plasma ball that Erick would have found back on Earth, or how he made his sunform look sometimes.

A monster housecat that was not a housecat roared with fury deep within that coliseum, its main form hidden from Erick’s direct sight. Tendrils of shadow licked out of that coliseum, like negative presences upon the world. Where those tendrils touched clouds and waters, red lightning flickered down those lengths of power, into the bowl of the coliseum, and the cat roared again.

Erick checked himself. Rod of the Lightning Guardian; full power, with the ball-end coruscating with white light, and lightning. [Meditation] amulet; shining gold. Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation]; shimmering blue on his left wrist. His core, functioning fine and still hidden behind illusion magics, ready to be used in case of emergency.

Stomach with a bit of food in it; sure. Erick wasn’t hungry or tired at all.

Was he ready for this? Yeah. He was.

Erick strode across the rapidly-drying campus, toward the coliseum. Water seemed to rush away from the path between him and the coliseum, to vanish down into red cracks in barren ground. But really, the ground was getting pushed up here and there, and then fracturing even more, spilling red light upward directly into Erick’s path. His heart beat slow and steady, though it began to thump thump thump faster as Erick stepped across a gap in the ground, and saw red shadows swirling in red lightning depths, like liquid souls being tormented on their ways to the afterlife.

But they weren’t on their way to an afterlife at all.

Those red-lined shadow tendrils, thick as a person and kilometers long, snaked out of the coliseum, to dip into those cracks in the ground. Red light shimmered up those shadowed tails, and the tails seemed to be darker and brighter as they drank deep the souls buried in Iben’s land. Because that’s what those human-shaped things in the red light below had to be, right? Souls.

The cracks in the ground widened. The world screamed. And the tendrils drank deeper.

The screams of the dead mixed with the screams of the cat.

Erick reached the coliseum. Walls had collapsed, blocking the way through the tunnels, to the coliseum floor, but those same collapsed walls offered another path. It was an occupied path, though. Those red-lined, soul-sucking tendrils filled every gap leading into the coliseum's interior.

Erick hefted his Rod of the Lightning Guardian. Power flickered. Erick brought his weapon down on the shadow tendrils and met no resistance as his weapon passed right through. It was like soap being dropped into a greasy pan.

Benevolent Lightning touched red shadows, and red shadows fell away like a soap bubble collapsing, the entire length of the kilometer-long, person-thick shadow breaking apart from Erick’s contact, leaving flickers of white lightning spreading through empty air. As that lightning passed, red souls instantly turned pearlescent and rainbow, as they were released from the shadow’s power, and soaked back into the world, into the very rocks and stone and air and moisture.

For a brief moment, the land around Erick bloomed with green life, and localized sunlight returned. And then all the other shadow tendrils soaked that sunlight and green into themselves, sucking souls back out of the ground, and out of the air.

Erick stepped onto the rubble path leading into the coliseum, and started swinging. Ten shadow tendrils burst in three moments, bringing brightness back to the world, as Erick made his way inward, into the arena. The tendrils never attacked him, but they desperately tried to suck up the souls he had released. Erick just popped them again.

Before Erick crested the rubble and saw the center of the arena, he recalled one very pertinent fact about the Old Cosmology that made it much, much different from the New Cosmology. Back then, before the Sundering, everything was made of mana. Everything. It wasn’t that way these days, for the New Cosmology was a world of physics and particles, where mana was a secondary existence which thrived as best it could atop normal physics. People and their souls were not the same thing anymore.

But back in the Old Cosmology, souls and mana were all there was.

Erick crested the rubble. He saw the monster drinking deep all of Iben, trying to consume the souls of this very land; the land itself.

The shadow cat had abandoned its previous, small form, where only the hints of its true form occasionally popped up, in the size of its claws and the largeness of its maw.

It was in its true form now, and it rather more resembled what Erick expected a shadowcat to look like, but bigger. It was the size of a moving truck; maybe 7 meters long, 4 meters tall. Lithe and dangerous, and fully black, except it wasn’t fully black at all. It was bare muscle and sinew and bone at the joints, and large claws and large teeth, but black shadows formed a sort of skin and fur around the whole creature. That skin was not solid at all, and it moved as a shadow moved. Those shadows gave the cat countless tails, but also wing-like projections out of its entire back, like extensions of every joint in its spine, each of them reaching out into the world, to suck down souls from everywhere it could reach.

Red light streamed down those lengths of shadow, into the cat, and the cat’s roars never stopped, but only shifted from loud to less loud. Its eyes were covered in shadow, closed tight, as red light flowed directly into the shadow tiger’s spine. It was in pain.

Erick found he was glad it was in pain, for the horror that it was currently committing was probably that most ancient of taboos; it was taking in the magical power and possibilities of others, and making that power into its own. It was increasing its personal mana gain at the cost of all the world around it.

And just like that, Erick understood the conflict between what Riam truly wanted out of Insten, and how dangerous this transaction was for this land, and those who lived here.

The tiger, whom Erick had called ‘Fyuri’, roared like an animal, and like a woman in pain, as its bones stretched, and muscles grew stronger, and red lightning blasted away shadows from its skin, only for those shadows to reform a second later. With every passing second Fyuri seemed to be getting bigger. Her fangs larger, and her roars deeper—

She suddenly opened her eyes and stared at Erick from across the coliseum.

Her eyes were molten pits of gold with a slitted pupil made of red light that suddenly widened, and then narrowed. Her roars turned from pained to pleasure, into a laugh as deep and true as any horror’s laugh could be. She spoke with an echo of the dead, “Little mouse has become a rat worthy of extermination! Well come get it! Try your best, little guardian of the already-dead.”

Erick strode forward, an anger bubbling within, as he softly said, “Time to die, Fyuri.”

Fyuri suddenly screamed, all composure vanishing as she whipped her head back and forth, her spinal and tail shadows lashing the ground and draining the world of all color. “HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME!” She roared, incoherent and furious, and then she yelled, “I didn’t know my name until you said my name! How did you know my name?”

Erick’s anger turned into something softer, more controlled, as he realized he was seeing consciousness bloom within Fyuri, the ‘Beast of Destruction’… Maybe. Could be a lie. Didn’t seem to be 100% a lie, though.

Erick answered truthfully, “I saw it in a [Witness].”

Fyuri screamed at him with incoherent rage, but she did not advance. She did not move.

Erick had not fully entered the arena floor yet, because despite Fyuri’s words, and his own apprehension at what was happening in front of him, every single thing about the shadowtiger’s body language was telling him that the very second he got within striking range, she would attack. She probably wouldn’t be able to control herself, either. She would just attack, because that’s who she was made to be.

She had been a fake thing.

And then Erick had held up a mirror, and Fyuri had recognized herself for the first time.

Erick hefted his mace, and took one step toward the arena floor, saying, “I’m going to approach. If you attack, I will put you down until you cannot attack anymore. And then we’re going to talk.”

Fyuri suddenly roared, “Don’t come any closer!”

Erick paused.

Fyuri’s cat face was filled with a terror that was half of a lie. She was feeling something odd, Erick could tell; something warred inside her for control of her actions. Would she attack? Would she talk? And then something settled inside of her —the barest flinch of a change!— and she rapidly decided to continue to pretend to be conflicted.

Erick realized it was all completely fake long before that flinch, though. She was too good of an actress.

Because she had been snaking her tendrils around the arena, through hallways to the sides of Erick, and then behind Erick, ever since Erick started advancing into the arena. Erick still stood a good 200 meters away from Fyuri, but her tendrils had more than enough range to strike all around the coliseum, to attack him from behind.

Which they tried to do.

Erick flicked his rod through each attack without really looking. Each tendril popped at the touch of Benevolent Lightning, sending rainbows of souls back into the ground, and stone, and air, filling the world briefly with light all around him.

Fyuri, draped in shadows, roared, “No talk! Only kill!”

Erick, surrounded by light, rod crackling, whispered, resigned, “Okay.”

And then he stepped onto the sands of the arena and the world behind him turned into red lightning. There was no going back now.

Fyuri charged, her massive paws and claws ripping up the arena floor, sending sand wide. All her ephemeral tails collapsed down into one thick tail, and that one became a bladed whip sword longer than her, black as the Dark, as she barreled down on Erick. Almost invisibly, her clawing aura reached forward to strike long before she actually got in range.

If Erick had been a normal man, striking at Fyuri with a normal weapon, Fyuri’s near-invisible bladed aura would have carved him to pieces long before he got within range. But Erick was not normal, and neither was his weapon.

Erick met her first claw swipe, coming in at his top right, with a twist of his body, moving into the fight, bringing to bear his coruscating rod, its payload discharging and continuing to discharge well before the metal and lightning actually touched her shadowy fur and skin. Erick’s lightning met Fyuri’s bladed aura, and just like with the tails, Erick’s lightning popped that aura, while the rod continued forward, to glance, ever so gently, against Fyuri’s paw.

Where the rod touched lightning ripped across black fur made of shadows, dispelling darkness and bursting the red flesh below. Fyuri spun away before Erick could connect with her hissing face, her several-thousand kilo body moving a lot lighter than it should, as she spun and whipped her tail right at Erick.

Erick ducked the bisecting attack, the edge of shadow passing right over him, the aura around that tail threatening to rip him to shreds even without a direct blow. His rod passed through that aura, popping it again, and then he gently connected with the flat side of the tail. The damage this time was extensive.

White lightning flickered across shadow and shadow exploded. Bladed bones charred and broke, half of Fyuri’s tail charring instantly. Fyuri screamed, retreating, her tail broken, her left arm charred from paw to elbow. Red light seeped out from her wounds, as shadows tried and tried to cover her flesh once again. She limped.

It was a fake limp; Erick wasn’t fooled at all. Erick had done some real damage to her, or rather his weapon had, but only truly to her tail. That thing could probably grow back if Fyuri wanted it to, but right now she seemed to be having trouble with her left arm. Maybe her limp wasn’t so fake? Hard to tell with compulsive liars.

Fyuri hissed at Erick from half an arena away, and then she looked at her arm.

Among the red lightning, there was white lightning, too. Her tail still sparked vibrant white, and even charred a little bit more as cloying lightning continued to damage her. That tail was a deadly weapon, but unlike the rest of Fyuri, it was physically weak. Erick didn’t expect his weapon to do that well against her, but Lightning was a powerful Element, and Benevolence was multiplicative, and had a lot more effects besides just that. Since Erick’s ‘dungeon mana’ was Benevolence-buffing, though, and had even easily made a [Benediction], with a bit of work it had been easy enough to invert that, and make something truly dangerous; a debuff filled with destructive Lightning and Benevolence.

It might even be a stacking debuff. If he were to make this spell back on Veird, he probably would have gotten a box for [Lingering Lightning], or [Benevolent Corruption Decay of Shadows], or something like that—

Fyuri’s tail flickered with brighter white lightning, and suddenly she lost another three meters of tailsword. She screamed, even as she grabbed her tail in her mouth and chomped off the Lightning-poisoned limb. Several meters of bladed tail fell to the ground and the lightning finally stopped.

Fyuri rubbed at her lightning-infected arm with her uninfected arm, and the white lightning finally vanished. She narrowed her eyes at him, saying, “You found a good toy, too.”

“I made it, actually,” Erick said, fine with talking, even if talking allowed Fyuri to heal. As Erick watched, the shadows around Fyuri’s injured arm began to surround the wound, once again concealing her naked muscle. Erick was running [Meditation], so his rod was regaining mana, too. Only about 8 mana every 10 seconds, but every little bit helped. Both of them were regaining resources from this pause. But. “My spell is a rather economical spell, so my mana will last a lot longer than it takes to defeat you.”

Fyuri narrowed her eyes again. “Hmm. So I can’t wear you down?”

“I’m rather sure we would both injure each other a lot more if we actually fought without breaks. You might even get lucky, though this is doubtful. So: No. You can’t wear me down with one or two attacks every minute. I will win that fight.”

Fyuri sighed, and a great weight seemed to fall from her, as she sat down and stared at Erick. “So there’s no point in fighting.”

… Erick almost agreed with her.

But there was something off about her. She hadn’t actually stood down from the fight at all. She was pretending again. Her next words confirmed that she was just planning on winning a different way.

“We can both wait for the End together.” Fyuri grinned, as she looked up to the red lightning sky. “Won’t be long now, little mouse. I just need to stay away from you long enough, and we both die.”

Erick realized what he was seeing rather fast.

The world beyond the arena was not simply filled with lightning, in order to force this fight, in some sort of narrative sense— Well. It was exactly that. But it was something else, too. The world beyond here was truly breaking apart… As much as a dungeon space can break apart and not really break at all.

With steel in his voice, and in his hands, Erick asked, “You’re controlling this ending, aren’t you.”

“Yes. Kill me and save your city, little mouse. Otherwise Riam is taking this land for their own. Liquidation! We’re finally liquidating Iben for its war crimes, just as we have liquidated all the peasantry for their failure to pay their taxes long before now.”

“… You really do want to die, don’t you?”

Fyuri laughed. “I’ve wanted to die since I was born!”

She attacked. There was no grace this time. There were no probing strikes. She came at Erick with her claws and then instantly with her fangs, her maw open wide and filled with death.

Erick managed to go into Fyuri’s attack, tapping his rod across a paw and dodging the other, twisting inward, his rod smacking Fyuri’s lower jaw. She tried to continue the attack, to bite down on him, but lightning fucked her up, her jaw snapping shut as her lightning-infected leg buckled under her. Erick tapped four more times all across Fyuri’s chest—

Fyuri screamed as she kicked reflexively with her back legs, catching Erick on his left side, and catching Erick’s rod on her back legs at the same time. Erick went flying, but the massive cat twisted and writhed on the ground, her body infected with too much lightning for her to function properly.

Erick rolled to a controlled stop right before he crashed into the arena wall, clutching his ribs. A claw had almost taken out his liver. Blood poured and pain caused problems with moving properly, but Erick had worked through the problem of pain long before now. He steeled himself as he triggered the active form of his [Self Rejuvenation]. Blood still poured from his side, but the pain became something mentally manageable; it still fucking hurt, and it wouldn’t actually heal for ten minutes, but Erick wasn’t going to die from an injury.

Lightning continued to linger all across Fyuri.

Erick decided that there was no saving Fyuri. He went over and did what he had to do.

He had to dodge a few frantic swipes from jittery claws the size of kitchen cleavers, and thrusts from paws half the size of himself, but every attack from Fyuri was just another part that Erick could counter, and could infect with more lightning. It was not a magnificent end for the deadly cat.

Soon, Fyuri was dead, her body smoldering. The corpse still flinched, for that’s what lightning did to living things. But soon, even the lightning stopped—

Some redness broke inside Fyuri’s body.

And suddenly the lightning all around the arena began to falter. To stop. The sky cleared. And the sky had changed. Riam in the sky had gained a red light, circling the plane like a sunstone, but smaller. It was a spec of red power, but it was there, and it was the exact color as the red lightning had been all around the arena.

Erick just watched it all for a moment.

All too fast, another light joined the sky above, but this one appeared on the horizon, far beyond Erick’s actual sight. All he could see was that the night began to give way to the day, the blackness up there turning to pale blue. All too fast, in an almost cinematic sort of way, a proper white sunstone began to shine through a crack in the wall of the arena, and to shine down upon Iben… or what was left of it—

Congratulations!

You have defeated the Beast of Destruction!

MP up! +2035 mana production per day!

Choose your reward!

Physical Power. Magical Power. Utility Power.

“Utility,” Erick said, without hesitation.

What remained of Fyuri’s body flashed over as proper sunlight touched it, the whole thing becoming a pile of ashes. Something shimmered silver upon that ashy body, and Erick suspected that was the reward.

He didn’t grab it right away, for he was rather sure that as soon as he picked it up the door to the second floor would open… Or maybe it would be a staircase. Or a [Gate]. Whatever it was, it would mark the end of his time on the first floor.

There was one more thing to do before Erick moved on.

Everything had happened too fast here. He felt an emptiness within that needed answers.

He needed to know what had happened to Ashes.

So Erick relaxed his mana senses, and became one with the past—

- - - -

The city burned beyond the coliseum, raging flames of every color marring the horizon in all directions. Ramblewood University and Arcanaeum was dead and gone, all its people turned to monsters by Riam in one final act of horror, or fled to try and rebuild elsewhere. Some stayed to fight, though. The resistance.

And though Iben had fallen, and would likely never rise again, the resistance had won in so many different ways. The adjudicators sent here were mostly dead, and that was the largest blow Iben could inflict upon Riam.

It was all because Ashes had—

The laughter of a dying cat broke through Ashes’s thoughts; shattering the still of the burning morning.

—because Ashes had finally killed the person who deserved all the death that she had delivered unto others. She just needed to fucking die, though, and then this part of his life would be over.

“Ahh hahahahaha!” Fyuri screamed out laughter again, as she tried to move, but couldn’t. Ashes had finally caught her in a moment of weakness and broken everything about her that he could. Her legs, her arms, her mind. It was only by breaking her mind that she could truly ever die, and Ashes had done that as best as anyone possibly could. High Adjudicator Fyuri Riamiteer lay dying in a puddle of her own shadows, amidst the sands of the arena, and even though she was on her way out, she still refused to leave. Riam had stuffed her too full of natural treasures and life-saving magics. But those magics had trouble with crushing and lightning, and with all the rest that Ashes had done. All Fyuri could really do now was cackle and keen and scream. And maybe die, soon enough. “The traitor was you! Ah hahaha! Ashes! My love! The traitor was you! You’ve grown so strong, my wonderful mouse!”

Ashes stared, impassively.

That seemed to make Fyuri scream with rapturous laughter all over again, though her lungs and her mouth had long since stopped functioning properly. She was only alive because of her magic, and soon, that would run out.

Lightning flickered across her body, interrupting all of her magic.

Ashes almost left her to die alone, for he did not want to see this, but if he didn’t actually see her die, then he would never really be sure if she was dead. So he stayed. He watched. And his rage of working with Fyuri for the last eleven years finally began to ebb, as the beat of Fyuri’s lifeblood finally began to slow.

Fyuri’s cackling slowed, then sped up, then slowed again. And then it stopped. But she was not dead. Through the wreck of her bloodied body, Fyuri tried to crawl her way back out of the horror Ashes had inflicted upon her, but she couldn’t. She was dying.

Why wouldn’t she just fucking die already!? Why wouldn’t she—

She stopped screaming. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t really do anything.

But she could rally for one final taunt.

Fyuri stared at Ashes through her remaining, bright golden eye, for Ashes had destroyed the other one in their fight. Her voice was soft, “I always knew you were a traitor, but I always tested you, and you always passed those tests. I grew soft. I stopped testing as much as I needed to… Tell me at least one true thing about our time together. Tell me when, exactly, you first planned to kill me.”

“That first time you wrapped your arms around mine, when you taunted me with Markie and Sofie’s deaths, when you massacred those students of RAU.”

Fyuri’s single eye went wide. Her jaw trembled. “… Ha.” She breathed once. She laughed louder. “Ha… Ha… hahaha!”

Ashes couldn’t watch anymore.

He brought lightning down upon Fyuri over and over again, and he did not stop until long, long after she had stopped laughing. Long after there was nothing left of that hateful woman except for a black mark upon the arena floor.

And then he went to the resistance.

He had been feeding them information for a decade, but it was always just enough to prevent the worst atrocities, and never enough to get himself caught. There was no holding back now, though. He handed over a decade’s worth of intelligence gathered from the innermost levels of Riam, from every meeting he had attended alongside Fyuri, and every dalliance they had shared in their house on Riam. From her relatives in the upper echelons of Riam, to cousins and otherwise also in the system over there. Ashes felt a guilty pleasure in handing over information on his ‘family’. None of them had ever accepted Ashes as a member of their family, even though Ashes had tried his hardest. Maybe they always knew he was a traitor? But, no. That would be giving them too much credit. They just hated him.

It was for the best that Fyuri had unilaterally decided against having kids, but then again, it was illegal for a child of a Riamite and an Instenian to inherit anything under Riam law. So it was just as well that Ashes’s false loyalty to Riam had never been tested in that way.

If they had had a child, then perhaps Ashes’s anger would have abated over these past eleven years. Maybe he could have become the person who Fyuri saw when she looked down on him in the bedroom, and everywhere else.

He was glad to finally be done with that farce.

- - - -

Erick thought about what he had just seen.

And then he moved on, distracting himself from all the heavy emotions swirling in his gut through a focus on numbers…

Numbers. Yes. Important numbers…

Okay. So maybe he needed to distract himself a bit more before he got to anything else.

Erick stood there, breathing, for a good while. Why did that [Witness] feel so… So deeply?

Erick ignored it, for now. Later, he would ask questions. For now, he ignored it.

And then he started to move once again. There was still that bit of silver to pluck from Fyuri’s ashed corpse, but he would get there eventually. Firstly, Erick wondered about that +2035 mana reward he had gotten for beating the floor. Was that odd number specifically to bring him up to 5000 base mana production? Seemed that way. He almost asked the dungeon if he had been ‘underpowered’ for the fight, but that seemed like a question to save up for the people running this place, for Erick was certainly going to be talking to the people here…

Or maybe not.

Maybe he could just continue to run through this dungeon? See what it showed him, and not ask questions yet? Aside from the [Witness] stuff… This was kinda fun. It was certainly wholly different from what Erick was used to, and something very strange and magical was going on here. Erick liked dealing with strange things in magic. Now that seemed kinda fun.

He probably had a lot of time to kill, too, waiting for Denutha Odaari’s trial to get up and running. He could save the questions for the people who ran this place for a month from now, or whenever his cover was finally blown.

Yes.

Plan made.

Erick went over to the ashed corpse of Fyuri. A wind picked up as he approached, scattering flaking ash to the wind. The ashed meat went first, followed by bones collapsing inward like a house of cards knocked down, and then turned to ash as well. The final thing to vanish from the corpse was its heart.

That heart, before it lost its shape, looked exactly like a normal heart sized to a semi-sized cat should look. Funny. Erick expected Fyuri’s heart to look more monstrous, but even the hearts of monsters were mostly normal-shaped.

When the heart finally vanished into the wind, all that was left was a strip of loose, silvery metal that had fallen into a pile. It had a latch on one end, and was unmistakably a belt, though it was made of flat links and wires and three thicker plates, so it didn’t look like any sort of normal belt. It didn’t have a clip for his Rod of the Iron Guardian, but it was obviously a magical belt, and those were generally not made with any sort of utility function as base as ‘holding up pants’ or holding a weapon’s sheathe. The silver coloring painted it as metiron, and those three plates were locations for metamonds, with the leftmost metal plate already filled with a smoky grey metairon.

Erick picked it up.

Belt of Many Functions. (depleted), (depleted), [Unsensible], 5/250

… Plus-3 utility functions. Ha! Erick smiled a little bit, feeling something like joy crawl into the arena with the sunlight, and then coax itself into his heart.

“Right,” Erick reminded himself. “All of this is history. I wasn’t actually there.”

Weird!

Erick banished his thoughts on the story he had seen, and then he wrapped the belt around his waist. It fit well, though he did have to do some rearranging with his belt to hold his rod. Soon enough, he wore both just fine. When he found another metamond workshop cube, he would fit this belt with a [Benediction]… And maybe some more stuff. That [Memorize] might go well with [Benediction], actually. Putting both together might give him some sort of ‘All Stat’ equivalent… if he turned the power on both of those metamonds into an all-the-time thing, instead of a temporary boost of power. Erick preferred reliable, low level power anyway, over high-powered, emergency-use magics. Such a working would likely go very well with the belt, since that’s the type of magic it already contained.

Now Erick wasn’t completely sure, but [Unsensible] was probably an anti-sensory self-buffing magic. An illusion spell, to hide himself from others. Erick couldn’t really tell the difference, sense-wise, as he put on the belt, but he was pretty sure he was now subject to the same sort of anti-sensory magics that he had already seen a bunch of people using on the entrance zone, and what Fyuri had used, too.

He could still mana sense out to around 100 meters, but that level of mana sense was probably going to go way, way down in the next floor, when the mana saturation went from 80% to 60%…

Erick wasn’t exactly looking forward to that, but it would be good to get used to that sort of thing in case he ever had to go back outside the Edge of the Script again. He would probably need to vent a good portion of the mana in his core before he went down another level, though, just so he didn’t have to hold in so much against that pressure gradient. Erick checked his core, and guessed he was at around… 95% contained? So he had leaked a good 2500-ish mana into the dungeon.

… Like, honestly, he could just go down to 80% mana and match the dungeon’s mana density, and avoid this whole bloated feeling altogether. 80% of his max was still 44k mana. If he matched the next floor’s mana density for 60%, that was still 33k mana. More than enough to save himself if the worst should happen.

But that was rather irresponsible, wasn’t it.

Erick sighed, and contented himself with containing his mana, for now. Maybe he could construct a magic that would allow him to hold in more mana in the face of the void of space, but he had already tried that after facing Holo, the Wizard of Anarchy, and he had failed miserably, because he already had the best possible containing magic; a Domain. Which he was already using, internally. But a Domain still faltered in the face of outer space.

Maybe this dungeon had a specific solution for his problem, though? A solution that existed only here, inside this Second Script? It was possible. Erick was rather sure that permanent enhancements wouldn’t work inside a manaless environment, so maybe they had… Domains of different sorts?

The Edge of the Script, that most strongest of barriers against the void of space, still leaked, to this day, even after Erick had given Rozeta the knowledge of Earth’s magnetosphere. Veird’s new magnetosphere certainly helped, of course, both to keep mana in, and to keep the cosmic radiation of the sun and the rest of the New Cosmology from impacting Veird and cleaving away mana. It helped a lot. But mana still leaked.

Erick had already tried making a personal magnetosphere, but that didn’t work—

Oh.

He looked at the rod in his hands.

Metal was a much better container of power than flesh, and cores. Radiation barely impacted metal’s mana containment properties, or the mana therein, and pressure differentials certainly didn’t matter...

Ah.

… Well duh. These properties of metal was why Atunir had made this Second Script using metal containers as substitutes for cores, and interchangeable mana crystals as substitutes for soul-imbued spellwork; both metal and mana crystals were very good permanent holders of magic, if they were made correctly.

Erick briefly considered casting his core in platinum, or something like that, but rather instantly discarded the idea completely. Bad, bad idea, for too many reasons to count.

… Had Rozeta and the Relevant Entities ever considered surrounding Veird in platinum, or something like that? In order to fully prevent mana loss? … They probably had tried that at least once, for sure, for the benefits of contained mana fully outweighed the aesthetics of never seeing the sky again. But Melemizargo probably ripped that apart, calling it a prison, for sure. If a metal-covered Veird had ever happened, it had probably been a very short-lived experiment.

Anyway.

The gate to the next level had appeared several minutes ago.

As the morning sun had washed into the coliseum it had illuminated a hole in the world on the western end of the arena. That hole had expanded to form an archway to a white room, with words hovering above that doorway.

FLOOR ONE COMPLETE!

Erick headed that way.

With one final look to the crumbling walls of the arena, the destroyed city beyond, and the sun rising over all that wreckage, Erick breathed deep the scent of lingering destruction…

And then he stepped through the words, and the doorway.

The path shut behind him.

- - - -

Nothing changed in the deserted city for a while. But then, everything began to change in small ways, and then in large, as though someone was setting the world to rights one city block at a time.

The repair man had been busy, until now.

Water reappeared in the streets, like someone simply willed it to happen, and without any flow of water from point A to point B at all. Cracks in the ground filled in with stone and debris, like someone running a finger across the broken streets, closing in the holes with a push. Fallen buildings reversed their own destruction, like time flowing backward, walls and roofs and all the rest rising into the air and then settling back down. Walls remained broken here and there, because this was a war torn city. Only the destruction of the Beast of Destruction had been reversed.

And then suddenly the sun whipped across the sky, setting fast, and Riam’s new red star vanished from sight. As night settled into the city once again it was almost ready for another delver, or a party, or whoever. The place was still fully devoid of monsters, but...

Monsters would be placed as necessary, and at the dungeon’s discretion.

- - - -

Erick stood under bright white lights in a domed room like the ones he had encountered in the tutorial.

Ahead of him floated his status.

- -

Ashes Woodfield (9 saves remaining)

MP per day: 5000

Meta-Irons: 1600, 0 in storage

Meta-Diamonds: 5/10, 0 in storage

Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], 99/100

Rod of the Lightning Guardian, 1000/1000

Necklace of [Meditation], 49/50

Wand of [Drinking Food], 156/200

Belt of Many Functions. (depleted), (depleted), [Unsensible], 5/250

Unused Meta-Diamonds: [Murky], [Benediction], [Flaming Ooze], [Shadow Bolt], [Paper Control], [Memorize].

- -

As Erick acknowledged that status, it moved to the left, and new words began to appear.

You have two options:

Continue your delve without interruption

OR

Return to the entrance zone, and come back to challenge floor 2 another day

Erick considered for a moment, then said, “I’ll come back another day. Return me to the entrance, please.”

Words appeared.

Delver housing, storage, and many other options unlock upon the completion of floor 5.

For now, you must carry your collected items with you.

Upon leaving, all of your collected items will turn into non-functional iron crystals and iron gems, but they will regain functionality after re-entering the Glittering Depths, provided they have not been altered. Altered items might not function the same way inside the Glittering Depths! Alter an item at your own risk!

Seek out a dungeon guide if you have questions.

Thank you for delving the Glittering Depths!

The words vanished from the air, and an archway opened up on the other side of the room. Beyond that open path lay blue skies and grasslands.

Erick went through the gate and many things happened at once. Mana pressure evened out, rising to 95%, allowing Erick to relax his Domain around his core, allowing him to feel more normal. It was a great relief, but leaving the dungeon would be better. Almost as soon as Erick felt physically better, his mana sense expanded outward, allowing him to mana sense everything for 400 meters around. That was how he found himself standing on the backside of a hill, on the opposite side of where people entered the lower floors. A reconnection with Ophiel came next.

‘Dad!’ Ophiel sent him, though his voice was garbled as it faltered in the distance between Erick and the entrance. ‘Nothing bad happen! Play more?’

‘Play is done for now, Ophiel. We’ll head back to Odaali for a little while.’

‘Can we pie?! Purple pie?!’

Erick smiled as he started walking around the grassy hill, to where he saw people entering the shadowed side of the hill, and where the dirt path led to the entrance. There, floating to the side of the black [Gate], Ophiel fluttered invisibly and intangibly. Seeing his son was almost as good as feeling the world start to make magical sense once again. As Erick strode forward, passing people heading into the dungeon, he felt the Script once again begin to take hold.

As Erick stepped across the shadows ringing the entrance, the Script fully took hold. Erick’s belt, wand in his pocket and all the various metamonds inside, his rod, and his [Meditation] necklace, all began to transform. In three steps, Erick felt his Stats under the Script return to him in full, and every single item he had gained inside the dungeon had turned into grey iron crystal, or decorative glass.

Ophiel alighted on Erick’s shoulder, telepathically tweeting, as Erick grinned.

‘Yes, Ophiel, we can get you some purple pie. Maybe even some red and pink and orange, too!’

Ophiel briefly fluffed up, but then he got real low on Erick’s shoulder, and kinda unhappy, too. ‘No orange. Bad color.’

Erick chuckled as he stepped out of the dungeon, all the way back into the real world. The grand spider of a good hundred legs, which stood over and around the entire dungeon gatehouse, did nothing as Erick and Ophiel passed underneath.

Night had fallen outside, and a quick look through Ophiels revealed that daytime was only a couple of hours away. The dungeon didn’t seem to sleep much, though, for the number of people in the courtyard and in the dungeon guildhouse across the way seemed to be the same amount as it had been when Erick had entered the dungeon a good 18 hours ago.

Erick made his way through a tunnel, to the Platform Square, off to the side of the Grand Dungeon’s main compound, where he summoned a Platform and rose into the air, up and away, as he spoke to Ophiel about anything and everything, but mostly about what the little guy had seen when Erick had been inside the dungeon. Ophiel’s replies weren’t the most well composed thoughts that Erick had ever heard, but he still loved to hear them. Ophiel was growing up.

And soon, Yggdrasil’s voice came to Erick, too, ‘Father. There are some concerns for upcoming Shadow’s Feast preparations, and while no one wants to interrupt your time away from the kingdom, they are overwhelmed. Can you help? But not be directly involved?’

‘Of course!’ Erick sent, ‘I might spend the night at Odaali with Poi and the Odaalis, but I will also be ready and willing to revert time if necessary.’

With obvious relief, Yggdrasil sent, ‘Ahh… Good…’ After a moment he asked, ‘So how was it in there?’

‘It was rather darned interesting, for sure. How much would you like to know?’

Yggdrasil excitedly sent, ‘Everything. I was… I was talking to Everbless, and he’s been working on dungeons for a while. I don’t think I want to do that, but the idea of a Second Script, if well done, might be interesting? I am not sure how such a thing would actually need to be done, though, for isn’t the Script already rather well done?’

Erick sent, ‘The Script is rather well done, but Atunir was not going for breadth of coverage when she came up with the Second Script inside the Glittering Depths… Maybe. I’m not sure about that. I have some longer-term questions about the nature of the exact sort of Second Script Atunir has imposed, but to start with, she’s gone for a more limited form of magic. That, along with allowing people to produce their own mana for their own use, instead of having mana being produced in the Core, means a whole lot of simplification in any required Script. When you get that simple, that simplification can probably be taken outside of the Script, into the void of outer space.’ Erick continued, ‘Now, to start, you must understand about mana density...’

Erick spoke for a long time as he flew through the early morning night. Erick made sure Ophiel was a part of the conversation, as he flew his Platform up through the sky, and toward the west, but Ophiel rolled all his eyes and did not care about magic too much. Yggdrasil was incredibly interested in magic, and Erick answered as many questions as he could, but some of Yggdrasil’s questions were beyond Erick’s current understanding, and he said so.

No one seemed to be chasing him from Greensoil, too, which was great! ‘Ashes’ had been discovered by some higher-ups and various people here and there in the Odaali Embassy in Greendale, but he had not been found out by the general populace, or by the Viridian Throne. If Ashes had been found out, then Erick would have had some very polite and also insistent inquisitors tracking him down right now, to talk. But there was none of that.

So Erick flew along, and when he judged himself safe enough to open a [Gate], he did so, and had Ophiel blank the manasphere where he conjured that ring of lightning. Anyone who had been tracking him would have found their path stymied by a sudden loss of anything to trail.

Odaali was just waking up when Erick stepped into the royal throne room, as himself, with his crown of black horns, a smile on his face, and Ophiel twittering behind him. Within moments, the guard was on him, but almost just as fast they realized who he was, and Poi was awake by then, anyway.

Breakfast was early in the Odaali household that day, with Yetta’s kids already screaming and having fun with Ophiel over a nice family breakfast. Eventually, the kids and Ophiel rushed away into the next rooms, and Yetta, Cyril, Poi, and Erick, had breakfast in peace, as they spoke of Odaali’s preparations for Shadow’s Feast, and about Denutha Odaari’s trial.

Yetta said, “Odaali will be fine with the Feast. The last decade has been rather calm in all those sorts of ways, but we still do Feast drills as any city should.”

Erick grinned. “Good to hear.”

“In less favorable news,” Cyril said, “Odaari isn’t going to see the inside of a courtroom anytime soon. The Viridian Throne has rebuffed our initial attempts to reopen the case, trying to get us to drop our interests. We told them that we’re not dropping it, and then they opted to try and delay again, which we counter-filed, telling them we demand a public trial, in accordance with the Founding Laws of the Republic.” Miffed, and not showing that too much, Cyril added, “Which has started a week countdown timer, which they are turning into a 2 week timer because of a ‘special exceptions for holidays’ clause, using Triumph of Light to make this whole thing a lot more delayed than it needs to be.”

Erick was not surprised. “So what does this mean?”

Cyril said, “This all means that if Poi wants to stay in Odaali, we’re happy to have him, but the throne is [Force Wall]ing us, and so there’s nothing to be done. They won’t even set any meetings with Poi, as they have declared him an outsider.”

Erick was surprised at that. He looked to Poi. “They won’t even set meetings with you?”

Poi nodded. “They would if it were you asking.”

Erick thought about that for a second. “… I’m not getting involved yet.” He said to Cyril and Yetta, “Let me know when you want me involved.”

Cyril gave a small sigh of relief. “Thank you. What they’re doing is underhanded, but the paperwork and politics are still actually moving, which is more than how it’s been for the last decade. So we don’t need your direct assistance yet.”

“Atunir is fine if you execute her, or do whatever, Erick,” Yetta said. “You don’t have to go along with our mortal requests.”

Erick just smiled, and changed the subject, “Speaking of Atunir, I suppose I can contact her in a dream anywhere, so I’ll probably do that, but after I take Poi back home. Her dungeon was quite interesting!”

Yetta brightened. “What did you like about it?”

“Oh well… To start with, there’s the simplicity of the system, in that everyone can make a ‘core’ without needing to alter their biology to actually incorporate a core, which seems like it would almost eliminate the general possibility of monsterization, for monsters simply don’t form in low-mana environments. Even normal humans can use that Second Script, and…”

Erick spoke for a good hour about most of the things he had seen. Not all, though. He specifically went thin on how the mana density of even the first floor was uncomfortable, and he specifically stayed away from the [Witness] stuff, because… Well that would make him look crazy? Right? Dungeons didn’t have [Witness]able shit… Right? Erick hadn’t even talked to his kids about that, yet.

Anyway. Soon enough, Erick said farewell to Yetta, Cyril, and their kids (which was mostly Ophiel saying goodbye, to the little kids, because the kids didn’t give a shit about Erick, which was kinda cute) it was time to go back home.

Erick would be back to Greensoil to delve more floors of the Glittering Depths later, for he had truly enjoyed the experience, even if it had been frightening in certain ways. After Shadow’s Feast, though.

- - - -

Erick purposefully opened a [Gate] from Odaali to a secluded part of his cloud castle home; one of the out-of-the-way gardens, nestled behind the library. There, he asked Poi, “So about all that stuff that happened in the dungeon that I didn’t talk about. The [Witness] of events that were certainly apocryphal, that never happened? With Ashes and Markie and Sofie and Fyuri… What did you think?”

Poi deadpanned, “I think you should have brought it up with them.”

“But it would make me look crazy! … Right? Dungeons don’t have alternate realities inside of them… Right?”

Poi rolled his eyes, and more strongly repeated, “I think you should have brought it up with them.”

Erick frowned. “… Maybe after I get through another floor.”

Poi nodded, then changed the subject, “I’m getting about a hundred questions about what are your plans for Shadow’s Feast tonight, and I’m going to tell them…?”

“Nothing. I’m indisposed, or whatever it is that Kiri and Zolan have been telling people.”

“[Force Wall]ing it is, then.”

Erick chuckled. “Oh come on! That’s not the same at all.”

“Whatever you say, King Erick, absolute ruler of the world.”

Erick laughed again.

He didn’t get a chance to take a nap before night came on, for Zolan and Kiri both quietly handed him some major tasks for him to do, if he could please. So Erick spent the next several hours repairing several small sections of the Gate Network, as he did every so often. It was easy work.

And then came Shadow’s Feast.

- - - -

Shadow’s Feast was mostly a non-event.

Erick spent the ‘holiday’ at home for the first time in a long time, with Ophiel spread wide across the globe, looking for any potential problems. Mostly, there was nothing; a few uppity dungeon breaks here and there in the wilds, where no one really lived, yes, but those were easy to take care of, which is what Erick did, with lancing light and targeted explosions. The dungeon breaks weren’t anything malicious on Melemizargo’s end; just natural dungeon breaks. Other than that, Erick read some books on the history of the Fall of Quintlan and how [Create Food and Water] tied into all of that. He also spied upon Storm’s Edge. According to a skeleton speaker-for-the-dungeon-master, that Quilatalap had set up outside of Vanya’s central dungeon, Quilatalap was much too busy to be disturbed right now.

Erick kinda wanted to surprise the man, but Quilatalap was too busy right now.

In the morning, as the black sky flaked away and Shadow’s Feast ended, Erick waited a few more hours to make sure nothing was happening, and then he tucked himself into bed.

On the first day of Triumph of Light, Erick dreamed of wheat fields.

- - - -

“So you liked it?” Atunir asked.

Erick walked through golden wheat fields with the goddess who made them, under a bright blue sky.

“I do like it, in a general sort of sense. The system is simple, which has points in its favor, but I have a few questions. Primarily: how does one learn how to make real magic, if the average person will use crystals for everything? What does this system look like, on a larger scale?”

Atunir easily said, “Actual mages will learn to make magic inside arcanaeums in high-mana environments where auras function normally. Elsewise, most people will take the mana crystals that are produced by whoever is in charge of whatever areas they are in, or which they make themselves using spell tomes. I would expect spell tomes to be produced by any dungeon on our version of a Second Script world. Metirons and basic metamonds, too. The meta-irons to hold those gems could be any metal, too, though platinum is likely one of the best options. From there, it would be easy to transfer such a system into a true void of outer space, as you call it. Whatever metal is used there would simply need to be properly enchanted with layered magnetic defenses and other nuances, in order to be used outside of a Scripted space. Such a thing would probably form the central engine of a spaceship, or what-have-you.” Atunir said, “Meta-irons and meta-diamonds would function differently, too, outside of a Second Script, with the irons holding a lot more mana and the diamonds actually being vulnerable to degradation if they’re not properly sealed within the meta-iron. But in its base form, this system would work on any world with a Second Script dedicated to making it work. It would probably even work here, on Veird, but Veird has some anti-mana-crystal properties that make this mostly non-viable here.”

Erick took that in, and imagined a world where people didn’t use a whole lot of magic in their daily lives, but which they still had magic. “A world of mostly technology, then?”

“For a long time, yes.” Atunir said, “Until the mana density of a world naturally rose to good levels, and people began to use magic themselves, instead of through trinkets and artifacts. This sort of system would be much simpler to maintain, as well. It would still need a central overseer, but that god could be a naturally arising lifeforce in a planet, instead of a person assigned to the task. A dungeon core, grown to large proportions. The current overseers of the Glittering Depths are a handful of dungeon masters who usually spend their time watching screens, managing monster habitats, reporting to Greensoil according to Greensoil’s laws, and not much more than that. The dungeon does almost everything on its own. It would be easy to scale that system up.”

Erick’s eyes went a little wide at that. “… Well that’s certainly ambitious, but I could see it happening.” Erick said, “Onto my next question, then: About what I saw through [Witness]. The story of ‘Ashes’ and Markie, Sofie, and Fyuri. But more than just that: how much of that whole story was true?”

Atunir smiled softly, as she gazed out across the golden fields. A few cows mooed in the distance, as a wonderful breeze brushed across the wheat fields, sending the golden stalks to waving. “It seems something unexpected has happened, hasn’t it? A [Witness] returning a true sight, inside a dungeon. Somewhat impossible from most understandings. But then, upon understanding what dungeons are, we arrive at a possible explanation, or at least what I believe might be true. I could be wrong, but…

“The Dark is full of memories; more than the mana, more than Melemizargo, more than gods. Though this youngest incarnation of the Dark is young, the Dark itself was here before all of us. And the Dark has memories more than any of us.

“I even put my own memories into that dungeon.

“I asked you to check out the Glittering Depths, to see what you make of it all, but along the way, somehow, someway, you have triggered some confluence of power, there in the Dark. I made the Glittering Depths with a true story, so perhaps the Truth of it all seeped through, triggering something else within you, the viewer.

“You’re not the first person to go [Witness]ing stuff that mostly happened, though I believe you have [Witness]ed the most of all those who had come before. Ask around with Yetta, or with other delvers in the Glittering Depths, and you will find others like you. As for why some people [Witness] the past, and not everyone? We have arrived at an explanation I believe might be true.

“A part of your soul passed through that time of history, back in the Old Cosmology.”

Erick stopped walking as Atunir’s words hit him.

Atunir paused beside him. “Souls never really die, you know. They simply move on, into other forms. Into mana, usually. That mana becomes new life, and new souls, which spawn new mana all the time. The mana of your own soul, here on Veird, has already gifted life to so many other things out there, from the plant life of that Benevolence Dungeon Tower, to how you have simply flooded the world with Benevolence, and that Benevolence has coalesced into elementals here and there. Slimes, too. Every single Benevolence creature anyone manages to create through [Conjure Force Elemental] and Mana Altering for Benevolence is directly created from the castoffs of your own soul.

“If, in ten thousand years, a conjured elemental should become a real existence, then they might experience memories of being ‘Erick’, if they dove deep enough all the way back into their own past.”

Erick found himself whispering, “Oh. Wow. Okay.”

Atunir continued, “Before the Sundering the Old Cosmology was like a leaking boat, with people traveling to other universes all the time. Mana leaked into other universes, and other universes leaked into the Old Cosmology. The fae are the most obvious example of this truth, but we had outsiders back then, too. In this sort of light, and likely due to the Sundering, it is not that surprising that your current soul has roots in the Old Cosmology.

“Many people do.

“Now. To address the horror in the room, or at least the circumstance that you believe is a horror: There’s that whole Xoatist thing happening right now, which is whatever you want it to be. I don’t believe you are Xoat. I do, however, believe that a part of your soul did come from the Old Cosmology. Is this impressive? Concerning? Interesting or dangerous? Maybe all of those things; maybe none.

“As a general caution: You should not believe what you saw there, in the Dark, for memories and existence gets tangled up something fierce inside those deep places in the mana. No one can really [Witness] that far and see any sort of Truth at all. Take a look at Melemizargo’s insanity, if you want to know what it means to look too deeply into oneself. You, Erick, should understand that what you see in the Glittering Depths is to be taken with a heavy, heavy dose of disbelief.” Atunir said, “There’s no harm in continuing to plumb the Dark for answers, though… Or at least not for you. Melemizargo likes you.”

Erick took a moment to collect his thoughts, as his mind ripped back toward his [Witness]es inside the Glittering Depths. “… What of the Ashes storyline is true?”

Atunir nodded slowly, as though she was deciding how much to say. And then she began, “To be able to see the past in the Dark, three things need to be generally true: You need to be a solo-delver, or have the Dark focused on you in particular. You need to be able to [Witness] on your own. And you have to have a real connection with the Old Cosmology. If you had been someone else inside the Glittering Depths, if you had gone in with Poi, or others, you likely never would have seen anything at all in the manasphere, as the dungeon wouldn’t have had any resonance at all between all your separate souls. You would have tried a [Witness], and seen nothing but empty Dark.

“But since you do have some connection with Insten…

“Or maybe it’s just because you’re a Wizard, actually.” Atunir shrugged. “That could also be true, since you simply have more Dark inside you, and are therefore able to see more of the Dark inside others...

“Either way.

“The general shape of the story you saw inside the Glittering Depths is exceedingly true. ‘Ashes’ was a man who struck the first true blow against Riam when he killed ‘Fyuri’, the Grand Adjudicator heading the purge against the Resistance. He had a great many personal reasons for doing what he did, as you have seen. He was a very brave man, but he was not the only one there, in that past, who brought my Truth to Insten.” Atunir smiled softly again, as she said, “You’re the first one to bring out the real names of Ashes’s past, though. Ashes’s name wasn’t ‘Ashes’, but that is what he became known as afterward; what he called himself for that was what he made of Riam’s forces. ‘Fyuri’ wasn’t her name, either, but she became known by that name because of her nature, and because of what she inspired in the Resistance. No one knows those names but you and me and a few other gods… And whoever you tell, I suppose. I never told the builders of the Glittering Depths those names; they use the NPC generator to fill in those parts of the story.

“Those names didn’t exist in that dungeon until you came along and made that happen.

“Most of those storylines are as true as they can be, but they are nudged into positions, to allow people to follow archetypes, to discover the story of Insten and Riam, and to understand the power of Field and Fertility through whatever lens they wish to view the world.

“The story you [Witness]ed of Ashes and Fyuri was mostly true, though.” Atunir said, “Either because you’re a Wizard, and you molded yourself to fit a pathway that you didn’t know you wanted to fit until you got there, or because you are the [Reincarnation] of Ashes, or because you’re an offshoot of some wayward bit of mana from the Old Cosmology… Take your pick of reasoning.

“All of it could be true, or none of it could be true, for walking in the Dark is always a trip, one way or another. And that’s what dungeons are; trips through the Dark. Most people cannot see the Dark that clearly, though, so most of the time this is not a problem.”

For several moments, the wind calmly blew.

“… There’s no real answer for why I [Witness]ed anything at all, is there?”

“Broadly, there is no real answer. Could be any number of reasons. One of them is probably correct, and Wizardry has a lot to do with it, but since the Old Cosmology is gone there’s no way for me to track your soul from there to here.” Atunir offered, “If you want, I could get you into contact with the other person who has experienced a major [Witness] inside the Glittering Depths?”

Erick kinda did want that. “… Who?”

“Clarice Icewind. The top solo-delver, and most highly decorated delver. The Iron Bandits still beat her in overall depth, and they’ve had a few true Old Cosmology experiences themselves, and mostly in the Endless Dungeon. Clarice’s journey through the first five story levels was about as revealing to her as your first floor was to you. Most of her revelation came to her on floor 5, which is where the bits of her current soul connected the most with an echo of what her soul used to be, so long ago.” Atunir said, “The Endless Dungeon, so far, has been the major source of Old Cosmology memories for other people.”

Erick knowingly said, “You made this dungeon so that you could see the Old Cosmology again.”

“Yes. Of course I did.” Atunir looked across the sky. “Every random level in the Endless Dungeon of the Glittering Depths is… It’s all my memories of the Old Cosmology, laid down for all to see. Every place that I touched in my duty as the Goddess of Field and Fertility for uncountable worlds.” She looked to Erick. “If you went deep enough into the Dark, you’d see more of your own life, for sure, because despite the varied possibilities of why this is happening to you… You have a history with the Old Cosmology, in some unknown and unknowable way, Erick. Ever since you brought us the idea of ‘Reincarnation’, replacing the phrase we use to describe high-tier summoning with a simple, single word, I knew you had a history with what came before the Sundering.

“Are you Xoat? Hmm. Doubtful. But an intriguing tale, anyway.”

Erick breathed shallowly; he was still uncomfortable with the idea of him being Xoat after all these years, and especially now, with all the rest of what Atunir had said.

Atunir kept talking, though. “I know how uncomfortable the idea of you being Xoat makes you, but I believe you were alive in the Old Cosmology long before you lived here, in this universe. That, at least, is true. In a large way, this is as big of a deal as you choose to make it. But in a smaller, more personal way, you are not alone in this circumstance. Look to the shadelings, if you want to know others who have been revived from very distant places and times. Or look to others who have delved into the Glittering Depths, who have found connections to the Old Cosmology through those delves. Souls are effervescent, and though the original soul might be gone, their impact on all which came later still draws lines between the present and the past.”

Erick felt like he had been gifted a white elephant; a large thing that he had no idea how to handle.

Atunir asked, “Will you be delving more?”

“… Yes.”

“I could simply tell you what happens to Ashes if a delve makes you uncomfortable.”

“… No… No. I will find out on my own what came before—” Suddenly, and —Erick admitted to himself— because he wanted to get away from the current topic, Erick changed the subject to something much more interesting, which he had never really poked at too hard. Erick asked, “No one really knows what caused the Sundering, right?”

Atunir looked at him, suddenly unsure. “… No one knows what caused the Sundering; yes.”

“Is the truth of it somewhere inside the Dark? Inside the dungeons? Inside the memories laid down by gods and Melemizargo?”

Atunir looked like she was juggling ten different responses, from utter disbelief, to surprise, to a desire to say some very angry words. And then she calmed, and said, “I respect the Dark and its mysteries, but I do not respect Melemizargo at all. Less than 10,000 years into his power and we had the Sundering… I do believe that he doesn’t know exactly what happened, otherwise he would have told us, and we gods would have known the truth anyway. It is possible he is keeping that knowledge buried deep; deep enough that even the Dark’s current avatar cannot know the truth. It might, therefore, be possible to delve the Dark and discover what has been hidden from us all, for all these years. But the Dark is still the Dark. I would suggest not poking the Dark without the Dark’s express consent.”

“… Maybe I’ll save discovering the truth of the Sundering until later, then. After I free Yggdrasil from myself.”

Atunir nodded, but she was still unsure.

“But about Ashes…” Erick asked, “You can’t give me anything but suggestions as to what might be happening?”

“Either you put yourself into that storyline in a rather deep way, because you’re related to Ashes, or because you’re a Paradox Wizard. I can tell you that you have not Established yourself as Ashes; you won’t ever have enough power to do that to a god like me, thankfully.” Atunir’s voice drifted away on the golden wind, “I wish the Sundering had never happened and I could tell you directly what your connection is, but that’s impossible.”

The dream faded.

Erick woke.

For a while he simply lay in bed, thinking about a great many different things.