Chapter 242, 1/2

Erick sat crossed-legged upon white stone. Before him lay a domed space of absolute nothing; half of it created through Solomon’s instantiation of dungeon Rules, while the other half was Erick’s own [Particle Vacuum]. The only visible indication of that space was a bubble-layer of thick air, all tumbled with mana and unable to enter into the protected space.

Beside Erick sat a few piles of various base metals; nothing magical at all. Platinum, gold, iron, electrum, copper, tin. All of it was melted and slagged ten times over and remade as necessary for more resources when an experiment blew up in Erick’s face, or whatnot. And of course, there was Erick’s adamantium rune carving knife. That thing had survived all of Erick’s accidents, and there had been a lot of those.

The remnants of the previous explosion lay scattered across the area; remnant mana crystals of various color flaking away from the ground near Erick, once again turning back into mana—

Erick mentally set aside his distractions. From the slimes bounding around downstairs, to the thoughts of Solomon and the Janes dungeon delving right now, to Ophiel making musical sounds as he played with the slimes down below, Erick ignored all of that.

Aura escaped from Erick’s core and body, and Erick controlled that mist to flow into the air in front of him. He wielded his auric self like a dense mist, pushing through the membrane of the void and the [Particle Vacuum]. It was not a wholly comfortable experience. It was like sticking his hand into cold water, or stepping out into the sun. Kinda refreshing, while also revealing just how much stress his natural body was already subjected to, just by existing in this Script-controlled, air-filled place. All around were distractions. But in the void, there was nothing but oneself.

Erick’s white aura hung out in that space for a moment. And then he twisted himself, and his aura turned perfectly clear and Forceful. He was attempting to make a plain [Force Bolt] spell, like he had made in the Glittering Depths, and which he had only succeeded at 3 times out of every 10, here in this slime dungeon. The Glittering Depths had done a lot of back-end support to make that mana gemwork function well. A lot more than Erick had realized until he had started these experiments.

He flowed mana into that space beyond his physical body, manifesting a seed-crystal that was only visible in the edges, and mostly in how light glinted off of the facets. It looked like a bit of quartz; six-sided, about 5 centimeters long, and double-terminated. Force, on its own, usually had a quartz-like manifestation. But only usually. Force could also appear fibrous, when Erick was casting any sort of string-shaped spellwork like with [Hermetic Shredder], which was not really Force-based, but it was close. The Force-equivalent spell, [Force Wires], was very much a bunch of semi-invisible crystal strands, though.

Force could also be rhombohedral, like with any Wall-type spell.

[Force Bolt] most often tried to take a double-terminated six-sided quartz shape, and this one was no exception. Most of the [Force Bolt]s that turned out like this managed to maintain integrity all the way through the process.

All in all, the crystal had turned out well. It would probably work.

Erick set the crystal down on the ground inside the experimental space, and then he picked up some… Platinum, this time, Erick decided. That metal always worked the best, though none of it worked as well as Erick would have liked. Outside of the experimental space, and with a bit of aura control and some [Duplicate] inside of a [Prismatic Ward], Erick rapidly finished the base wand that would hold the crystal.

Theoretically.

Erick was rapidly discovering, in wholly novel ways, that magic did not often behave itself outside of the Script, or outside of controlled spaces.

This wand would probably do what he wanted it to do. He had runed it with a bunch of stuff specific to [Force Bolt] and aiming, and with some intentional crafts about ‘mana given, spells gained’ around the base of the wand, which was a spiral-cage of platinum that would hold the gem, and which would be held in turn.

None of this was made according to real, known enchanting ways. All of this was attempted Wizardry, going from intention and piece-meal parts, and hoping for an outcome that was better than the sum of those parts.

A ‘real’ wand of [Force Bolt]s, made under the Script, wouldn’t use a mana crystal at all, for a mana crystal would break apart and thus the whole wand would fall apart in turn. But Erick needed to know how to work with mana crystals, so he was here, working with real mana crystals.

Erick slipped the base wand into the space ahead, picked up the crystal, and then shoved the crystal into the twisted-wire handle. A bit of simple pressure sealed the wand together.

And then Erick made to speak, but not through his voice which would not reach the wand, because there was no air to transmit his voice to the wand, but through his aura, which was already wrapped around it,

“A wand of Force, of bolts galore,

“Spills holder’s mana evermore.”

The wand glinted as its metaphysically-separate parts came together into a cohesive whole.

It had worked, because of course it had worked. If it hadn’t then it would have had some sort of catastrophic failure. As it was… It would probably fail in the other usual way.

Erick reached forward and stuck his hand into the Script-less particle-void, to wrap his fingers around the wand. The no-atmosphere hurt a little, but Erick’s constitution and Constitution were strong, even in the Script-less space, so he easily gripped the wand.

Bolts of sizzling white Force began pouring out of the tip of the wand, sucking mana out of Erick to do so like he had poked a [Force Bolt]-shaped hole in his mana pool, and that’s the only way that mana could leave him now. Which is exactly what he had done. Sort of.

That was his best guess right now, anyway.

Those Bolts flew away from the tip of the wand like slow lasers, moving perfectly straight until they touched the edge of the void space, whereupon contact with air and a manasphere subtly altered their courses, sending them a few random degrees off of perfectly-straight.

Erick released the wand, and the Bolts stopped.

“Moment of truth,” Erick mumbled to himself.

Using his solid aura, Erick pulled the wand out of the empty air, into the Script—

The wand broke in the usual, non-catastrophic ways. The crystal was, of course, breaking. But that’s not all that was happening.

Erick wrapped his hand around the hilt to experience exactly when it would stop working. As Bolts poured out of the end of the wand, Erick watched as the mana crystal in the base of the wand began to crack and unravel, and as the platinum in the wand itself began to shift and falter, platinum melting a little here and reforming into crystallized growths there, like a body reforming into tumors. It was only when the first major crack split the crystal lengthwise, though, that Bolts stopped pouring. The platinum-crystal ‘tumors’ didn’t seem to affect the outpouring of the artifact at all.

Or maybe the item just failed due to the crystal breaking first, and it would have failed due to platinum tumors if the crystal could have remained existent for any real length of time.

He waited till the Force crystal was gone, completely, before he took the platinum and crushed it, tumors and all, twisting and mangling it beyond all recognition, finally stopping when he had turned it into a plop of rather hot, not-molten metal. That lump rejoined the rest of the platinum, to be reused as needed.

Erick had not managed to create a single magical item based around a crystal that could survive under the Script. Granted, he wasn’t trying his absolute hardest. Just some small Wizardry here and there to bring a crystal into line with other magics. Mostly, he was trying to achieve magic-working mana crystals through normal measures; not simply changing the rules of reality to suit his needs.

And he had succeeded in a lot of ways.

Making mana crystals that resonated in specific ways, causing mana to become magic in specific ways, had taken him a day to get right; around 20 hours. Just basic spellwork, though. Bolts and Mana Alterings and Shapings and basic tier spellwork of all kinds had been rather easy to do.

On Veird, under the Script, you couldn’t manually cast high-tier spellwork. Erick was able to ‘get around’ that restriction by manually forcing the magic implanted inside of him by the Script to cast itself, as he desired. Or through simple aura control. But aura control could only do up to tier ‘1.5’, which was basically just normal magic Altered to specific Elements.

But here, in the slime dungeon, Erick had a no-Script space that existed outside of the Script. That meant that he could manually make mana crystals that would be able to ‘manually’ cast higher tier magic, as desired. Erick had spent 2 days figuring out high-tier manual magic in order to figure out how to cast certain high-tier spells, like [Undertow Star], or [Prismatic Ward].

Happily enough, Erick had figured out how to make Solid Wards of all types, bypassing the Script’s restriction on only being allowed to have one Solid Ward in his Status.

That old quest of Sininindi’s, the one where she asked for an artifact of [Control Weather], and instead Erick had made Yggdrasil… Erick could simply make that artifact these days. And he had. He had also made an artifact of [Luminous Beam], which had caused a lightshow to vanish into the depths of the Darkness all around the dungeon, along with artifacts of a bunch of his high-tier spellwork, made into mana crystals first, and then stuck into metallic holders and directors of that crystallized power.

None of those artifacts worked for very long when they were brought back into the Script.

The high-tier ones and all the Solid Ward ones instantly broke. Sometimes explosively.

And then there was the other problem. The tumor problem. All of those ones that actually managed to stick around had a lot of trouble working inside mundane atmosphere, with ‘tumors’ of metal forming on every edge of the artifacts, while flat spaces sunk inward, the metal there being cannibalized by the rest of the artifact to create crystalline growths.

Erick sat back and had a think.

He looked down at the recycled metals, and at the space in front of him, and then he looked down at his own body.

Ophiel sat on a small bird perch to the side, also looking at his father.

Erick explained to Ophiel, “When I first crystallized my body, I did it inside a lot of specialized Domain-work, becoming Benevolence and then rapidly turning myself into a giant crystal. When that was done, I switched over to my Other Status, becoming both a person and a crystal, in what I had thought was a normal way for Wizards to be.

“But then when I switched back to my Other Status —the one I crystallized— I was a person in that form, too. My crystal transformation had not stuck. Looking back on it… I was still connected to the Script back then, and…”

Erick listed off some suspected problems,

“I had 2 Statuses/Forms already, but as a True Wizard, I should only have one that is Paradoxically two.

“I have Script-installed magic inside of me right now.

“I am still connected to the Script.

“The Script doesn’t like mana crystals, or True Wizards, and I’m not sure which it dislikes more; hard to say.

“I have you and Yggdrasil both inside of me, too, and I’m not going to make either of you become permanent parts of myself, nor am I going to destroy you or allow you to be destroyed.

“I’m not sure if a True Wizard is just a crystal, or a crystallized person. When I asked the Well that question about Wizards I saw that floating crystal with the brain and blood vessels walking with that one god in the Old Cosmology’s Grand Wizard’s Tower, so maybe ‘a crystallized person’ is a better description of a ‘True Wizard’. But, no. A True Wizard is supposed to be able to be themselves and an immutable force, just like a Shade. Or at least that’s what everyone says. So who the fuck was the brain-in-a-crystal? I don’t know. An anomaly? Possible.

“And then there’s the particle/mana problem, with all these particles interfering with mana, and all that.

“Those are just the physical problems.

“Mentally, I don’t think I want to be able to change the world at a concentrated whim.” Erick said, “But that’s what a Wizard is…”

Rozeta believed that Erick could end the Forever War with enough of a windup and a good enough swing at it. Like holy shit. Just… Change how the world worked!

Erick frowned at that ‘mental hangup’; what an inadequate way to classify the desire to not be able to fuck up everything on a whim—

Erick looked at himself, at the piles of metal, and at the no-Script, no-particle space in front of him again. He felt an inkling of a truth settle down.

“Ahh… Hmm.” Erick said, “Other Wizards just became Wizards when they wanted to, or needed to. I might be self-limiting through the use of Particles and normal magics, self-imposing limits, so that I cannot fuck up anything too badly with an accidental Grand Wizardry… Or maybe that’s wrong, and Wizardry is actually difficult, and I still have lots of road to go to understanding all of this. Perhaps I should be less full of myself.”

Ophiel twittered on his perch, “Dad have trouble?”

“Just the usual trouble, Ophiel,” Erick said, “Trying to know and categorize the unknowable and infinite.”

Ophiel chimed in violins. “Infinity big.”

Erick smiled. “Yes, infinity big.”

… But infinity could also be small. Erick thought about the Glittering Depths, and how they had made internally infinite mana crystals that transformed into ironcrystal when exposed to the normal Script. But with some Wizardry, those ironcrystals could be transformed into real artifacts that could exist and work anywhere.

He hadn’t really tried to make internal mana crystals yet, had he?

Erick grabbed some more platinum and remade the entire [Force Bolt] experiment.

But this time when he made the crystal, he tried to… He wasn’t sure. Push in the crystal? Invert it, somehow? The spell creation chambers back in the Glittering Depths did most of the work of ‘opening up’ an infinite space inside the crystal, as it was still liquid, but there were no spell creation chambers and internal infinities to work with in this dungeon.

After two minutes of attempts, Erick achieved success.

The mana inside his aura, inside the empty space, gave way into itself.

There, hovering in his aura in the void, was a dollop of Force, looking like a perfect glass sphere.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t put any sort of actual [Force Bolt] working into it, but that was fine. Erick joined the gem to the wand, twisting platinum around the sphere, forming a handle. And then Erick spoke words similar to the words from before, asking for ‘Bolts galore’.

The wand flexed a little, and then settled down.

Erick did not wrap his own hand around the wand this time. He empowered his aura, gripping the wand, opening a sluice for his mana to flow through into the maybe-artifact—

The wand drank deep. Force Bolts flooded out of the tip, into the air, and kept right on flying until they lost coherence in the black sky above. Erick closed off his aura, and the Bolts stopped.

He pulled the wand out of the void—

Instantly, the wand began crusting over again, the platinum pitting and growths growing on the edges. It took ten whole seconds of exposure to the Script for the clear sphere in the hilt to begin breaking. By the time the wand stopped working it was little more than a spike of crusted platinum, almost broken in half. And then it did break in half. Hard to say if the gem failed first, or if the wand did.

Erick ignored the wand in the next attempt. He simply made the sphere.

Exposing the sphere to the Script was like exposing a worked mana crystal to the Script; it survived.

There, in his hand, sat a nearly-clear sphere of Force crystal, with the insides barely cracked in a fractal pattern. Ten seconds passed, and then twenty. A full minute passed, and the cracks inside the gem didn’t move at all.

It had worked…

For a definition of ‘worked’.

Erick smiled at what he had done, though it wasn’t much of a breakthrough.

Worked mana crystals could survive the Script, as long as they were very minimally made things. Erick’s accretion-counter mana crystal he had gotten from Fairy Moon still worked. So did his alarm clock. Those were less ‘solidified magic’, though, and more physical mana turned into a working object.

The difference between a worked mana crystal and a magic mana crystal was the difference between a calculator and a person, and only one of those things seemed like it would be of any use in becoming a True Wizard.

And yet…

And yet, they were trying to make artificial intelligence back on Earth, weren’t they? Those were just solid-state ‘people’… who were not really people?

There was something there...

“Maybe True Wizards are immutable because they create themselves in a solid, immutable way, as one would make a calculator out of rocks, or whatnot.” Erick rolled the ball of Force in a hand, musing, “Maybe it’s like why oozes aren’t affected by Mind Magic; they’re simply incompatible. Soul and Mind Magic wouldn’t work on a Wizard, or a Shade, because they are soulless, mindless things, that only appear to have souls and minds? Artificial people? Are Wizards simply dead, and self-animate? Like a lich? Like Quilatalap? Quilatalap is immune to Mind Magic, but not Soul Magic.”

Erick had a think.

It lasted a while.

And then he snapped the Force sphere between his thumb and forefinger, saying, “I’ll have to be a different sort of Wizard, then. One not made out of rocks… Or maybe I’m wrong about how all of this works. And yet...” Erick watched as fragments of the crystallized sphere of Force began to fragment further, like a pile of diamonds growing larger all on its own. That growth lasted until those fragments reached a tipping point, and began to evaporate like normal mana crystals. Erick thought toward his own mana; his ‘Benevolence’. “Before I made Benevolence, I theoretically could have made any sort of Element. I could have made Benevolence differently. In that action, I took unknowable and unworkable infinity and wrangled it down into my Truth, and thus made it workable, and stable.

“Maybe becoming a True Wizard requires going further; giving up the infinities of the unrealized options of mortal life, of growth and change into anything at all, in order to gain a plurality of actual options… Like giving up [Telepathy] capabilities and other such powers in order to gain immutability from outside sources...”

Erick’s voice trailed away.

“But every Wizard is different, right?

“And Wizards can still cast magic… Which means that they maintain their Wizardly mana production, which means they’re not dead. So they can still grow and change however… they want… Hmm.

“… Quilatalap is technically both dead and alive.

“Maybe all Wizards are actually liches; entirely self-created people, with biology just because they feel like they need that biology?”

Erick’s thoughts turned in other directions soon enough, as he went back to messing around with inwardly-created mana crystals. His thoughts had been turning around this way and that way for the last few days, as he played around with reality in order to understand it better.

- - - -

Poi pulled the brisket from the oven then set the foil and wax paper covered meat onto the kitchen counter. He let it stay there, as he looked over to Erick, sitting at the kitchen table. “Giving up ephemeral options to gain real options is what everyone does all the time. From kings to street cleaners.”

“But that’s different from becoming a lich-like entity,” Solomon said, sitting across from Erick. “… And yet not really different at all. Like… What is consciousness? Back on Earth, but with the Intelligence I have now, I would have said that consciousness is an emergent system, only present because of the number of neurons and connections in the brain make it so that we think we’re alive, but really we’re all just a bunch of instincts and genetic code making us think we’re sapient.”

“Yes, but now we know we have souls,” Erick said.

And Solomon nodded, saying, “Yes. Now we know souls are a real thing… But are they? Really? You and I both know that there were a lot of ‘soulless’ people on Earth.”

Erick laughed.

“I mean it, though. Like, for real.”

Erick stopped laughing.

Solomon said, “Not to get too depressing about it, but did we have a soul before we were sitting there in that dark room, looking at that gun, trying to figure out how far we’d go to make a life for Jane? When we were trying to figure out what our solutions meant for those around us? I can tell you right now that I certainly don’t remember any sort of introspection on our lives before that point. We were just going through the motions; whatever life threw at us, we tried to figure out how to ride the waves. That’s what I mean when I say ‘soulless’; just a stimulus-response sort of person. The kind that doesn’t even see the harm they’re doing until they’re made to see that harm, and empathize.”

Erick recoiled a fraction at Solomon putting it like that. “It’s really fucking embarrassing to think that we didn’t have a ‘soul’ until life made us ‘grow’ one.” Erick frowned a little. “That’s not something that we actually believe, either.”

“Maybe not an outright belief,” Solomon said. “But certainly a possible-belief. Because, like I said, we knew a lot of people who certainly acted soulless back on Earth, without any regard for anyone else. Sure, some of them, like us, were trapped by circumstance and trying to find any way out of those circumstances that might actually work. But a lot of people just never considered that other people were still people. We met a lot of them as a social worker.”

Erick wanted to disagree, but he could not.

Solomon continued, “And then we came here to Veird, and we met Shades. And then there was Bulgan, even before he was a Shade. Complete psychopaths.”

“Not all psychopaths are evil; they just don’t see other people as people. It doesn’t mean they’re soulless.” Erick said, “That’s a stereotype that we don’t need to perpetuate.”

“And we don’t perpetuate it, in public.” Solomon said, “But in private, we know those problems can be fixed with magic, and that the soulless can gain a soul. Heck! A lot of psychopaths lead perfectly normal lives, probably as a result of complicated stimulus-responses that engender within them a soul.” Solomon said, “In the Earth-sense, maybe Fallopolis gained something like a soul when she realized how badly she had fucked up calling the Great Purge onto Spur, thus ruining all of her tormenting fun forever more, and thus she had to preserve Spur and even Silverite because to do otherwise was to invite the Quiet War into her life, and she hated that even more than she liked tormenting people. But she still tormented others when she felt like it, when she could. All the rest of the Shades didn’t gain shit until we forcefully Empathy’d them.”

Erick frowned at Solomon. “Are you taking this hardline stance to be helpful, or to simply say all the hateful things that we’ve been bottling up all this time, because now you can?”

“Both.” Solomon said, “Also, if I could go back to Earth and Empathy every single CEO and high-ranking government official and anyone of any physical authority at all, I would. Now that would be a great use of that [Cascade Imaging] Super Magic that people always think we’re going to break out if their leaders speak out against us too much.”

Erick leveled a ‘Really?’ glare at Solomon. “We don’t need more reasons for people to hate us. We already get hate mail every other day.”

Poi spoke up, “From what you’ve told me of Earth, maybe a [Cascade Empathy] would be a good idea.”

Solomon laughed—

“Holy shit, Poi,” Erick said.

“Power is how every single world works. And you have power.” Poi said, “And you’re a great king. Good kings are one-in-a-billion, and they almost never gain power; it’s always the cruel ones who gain the most power.” As Poi moved to make the potatoes, he said, “Historically, Wizards are always good people, until circumstances turn them into terrors, of course.

“Personally, that’s a much more interesting topic than ‘when does a person gain a soul’. The answer to that varies by culture, with some tribes in Nergal believing that souls don’t exist until you get Matriculated into the Script. Even a sapient’s baby’s soul is little more than that of a particularly smart slime.

“Every living thing has a soul, but so what? Some people use their souls to break and kill. And that’s a more important philosophy to think about.”

Erick sat back in his chair. Solomon hummed.

Poi said, “To get back on the topic of Wizardry, from True Wizards to just the fact that a person is a Wizard at all, which is perhaps the most interesting idea to consider.

“Time and again, in all the history known to the Mind Mages, the people who are Wizards are always good-ish people. They always try to help others, to make the world better in their own ways. Some succeed. Others fail, and they fail hard, like The Anarchy Wizard almost did. On the surface Holo wanted to escape Veird and the problems of this world, but he was prepared to kill everyone to do it. And then, later, the Blue Wizard tried to avenge him. So those people went bad, but before that happened, they were just normal people trying to figure out how to live under the power of the liches of Quintlan.

“As a base fact, Wizards are always good people.

“And yet, Wizards are Wizards due to an overabundance of the Dark inside of them.

“If it’s the Dark putting power into people to make them Wizards, then what does that say about the nature of the Dark and how it tries to influence the universe through Wizards? What does it say about the Dark that the Dark makes only ‘good’ Wizards?”

Erick had literally never considered that angle at all. He was left completely speechless.

Solomon blinked a few times, and then he smirked and said, “That almost sounds like something a Xoatist or Cultist would say, but I’ve never heard anyone make that sort of connection before.”

Poi chuckled, then said, “Let’s take it a step further, too. Because the Dark doesn’t empower just Wizards. The Dark also empowers dragons. Melemizargo is a dragon. Every avatar of the Dark has been a dragon. But base-dragons are practically the antithesis of what it means to be a good person. Greed, tyranny, hoarding, etcetera.

“So why is the God of Magic and the Avatar of the Dark a dragon? Why has it always been a dragon?” Poi asked, “Is this another case of evil people rising to power over good people? Or is there something else at play going on there? Is the Dark truly just about might makes right? Most dragons are not Wizards, after all. The number of natural dragons who are also Wizards is a very, very small number, restricted to just 3 known examples in all of Veird’s history. There’s Melemizargo, of course, then there’s Idyrvamikor, who was Melemizargo’s grandson, and now there’s you, Erick. And you didn’t start off as a dragon, so you don’t even really count.”

Erick thought.

Poi chopped up potatoes and threw them into the pot.

Solomon sipped his soda, as he stared off into nothing.

Erick said, “Most ‘Wizard Kings’ of the Old Cosmology were just dragons, too. They weren’t actually Wizards.”

Solomon said, “But anyone can become a Wizard, just like anyone can become a dragon. Theoretically, anyway. You just have to gain enough personal mana generation and then have an ignition event. Dungeons didn’t exist in the Old Cosmology, so it would be harder, of course—”

Erick finished the thought, “But even in the Old Cosmology and here in the New Cosmology people could always ‘Wizard themselves’ to have more mana generation by stealing that generation from others. And from there it is a cascading event.”

“Exactly,” Solomon said.

Erick said, “So were the Old Wizards actually good people? Or… Not?”

Poi said, “Historically, on Veird, people who could become Wizards were usually ‘good’ people. Largely. According to your talk with Rozeta, the same was true for the Old Cosmology, and stealing mana generation from others was considered highly taboo and worthy of being murdered for if it was discovered that a Wizard participated in that practice. From what we know of the Old Cosmology, I suspect that the murdering of Dark-thieving Wizards was a rather routine sort of thing, like Rozeta’s Paladins going after rogue Wizards here.”

Erick nodded a little.

Solomon said, “I think it’s safe to assume that Old and New Wizards are all basically good people, until circumstances turn them otherwise.”

“Most people are basically good,” Erick said.

Solomon added, “Until circumstances turn them otherwise.” He looked at Erick, “And some people are evil until turned otherwise. Like Fyuri, or—”

Erick sighed, waving a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“I don’t like thinking about it either, but if this inability to become a True Wizard is truly a mental block, then you gotta think about your relationship to power, Erick.”

“… That is true.” Erick looked at the resting roast that Poi had made. “Is that for just us? Or should I [Duplicate] it for the Janes, too?”

Solomon rolled his eyes as Erick dodged the question.

Poi said, “[Duplicate] if you want more, but the Janes aren’t joining us tonight.”

As Erick reached over with his aura to make a whole lot more roasts—

Solomon said, “I’ll be so happy when they actually pick individual names. I heard them talking about it a bit today but they just couldn’t decide.”

“They still haven’t picked names?” Erick copied the roasts four times while Poi narrowed his eyes at the copying, visibly wondering why he was copying that much. Erick said to him, “Leftovers were important and I like your roasts.” He said to Solomon, “I really expected the name-deciding to happen within a day.”

“Me, too,” Solomon said.

Poi said, “They’re mostly done picking names, and it did only take them a day.”

Solomon and Erick both raised eyebrows, asking in unison, “What are they?”

“They’ll tell you themselves.”

- - - -

“So dad,” Jane said, standing with her father outside of the dungeon house, upon the orange/white stone. The other Janes stood just beyond her, in a line, each of them looking different from the other. From the cut of their hair, to the color of their hair and eyes, they were each superficially different, highlighting the differences they chose to make about themselves. Solomon and Poi stood behind Erick, a little bit away, while Erick stood with Jane in the middle of the gathering. Jane continued, “I know we’ve already all met, but…” Jane gestured to the girls, smiling a little as she said, “I’d like you to meet the girls again.”

“Abigail.” Her hair had a green sheen to the black.

“Beth.” She had gone blonde, in sharp contrast to everyone else’s black/brown shoulder-length hair.

“Candice.” Her eyes were orange.

“Debby.” Her nails were red, and she looked like she was wearing lipstick, but that was just a bit of a change to her face.

“Emily.” With purple eyes, and close-cropped purple hair, Emily said, “We’re still the Arachno Squad.”

Erick felt so many weird emotions—

Erick rapidly came to a happy conclusion, saying, “Nice to meet you all! I’m so glad I have so many daughters!” Making a joke, Erick smiled and said, “I might be a king, but my dowry responsibility can’t handle too many lavish weddings.”

The joke did not land well.

Jane said, “We can pay our own ways, dad.”

Now that Erick would not abide; she was lying to him, and in a rather awful sort of way.

Erick called her out, “That’s a lie, Jane.” He looked to all his daughters, and said, “I haven’t actually looked it all up, but now that we’re here, and now that I’m seeing you all for the first time, I can tell that none of you have set up bank accounts or other mundane things, because none of you expect to live. So yeah, you can ‘pay your own way’, but only because you don’t expect to have to pay anything at all. No weddings, no house payments, no food bills, nothing.

“Tell me if you have bank accounts and I’ll stop talking and apologize.”

The girls looked called-out; none of them said a word.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” All of his girls looked completely normal; stoic, even. But Erick knew Jane. They were all breaking inside. Erick allowed them a moment, by turning back to Solomon and Poi and saying, “You’re going to survive this, too, and you also need bank accounts and all of that—” He turned back to his daughters. “Just like you all need bank accounts, so that you can have lives after this Sundering search. War is not life. War is what you have to get through sometimes in order to have a life.

“We’re going to get through this. All of us.

“I need you all to understand that.” Erick said, “You are not just copies of Jane. You’re all my daughters, and I will treat you accordingly.” Before he broke down himself, or any of the girls could break down either, Erick rapidly added, “I might not have as much time to smother all of you as I tried to smother Jane, though. But that’s okay, right? I assume that’s okay because—”

All five of his new daughters rushed Erick and wrapped him in their arms, and then Jane came over and did the same, all of them crying small tears—

And then Poi shoved a reluctant Solomon forward, to join the group hug. Solomon was welcomed with open arms and small words about being an uncle, or some other confusing name for whatever the heck this was. None of that really mattered. All that mattered was that everyone here was a real person, with ‘real’ memories of who they thought they were.

Jane’s voice cracked as she said, “Let’s— Let’s get to work?”

“Exactly!” Erick said, “Let’s go get all of you signed up with bank accounts and otherwise!”

That’s not what Jane had meant at all, for she wanted to get back to delving. All the others wanted to get back to delving, too. But Erick barreled on ahead, pointing toward the black hole in the house-cavern roof, as he spoke of getting out there and getting some paperwork done. He had 5 new daughters, 1 brother, and 1 extra friend who needed connections with the outside world in order to—

“I already set up a bank account for myself, Erick,” Poi said. “But I haven’t done the same for any of you. So go on ahead and I’ll stay here.”

Erick paused, his hand dropping a little. “Ah?”

Right. One dungeon master had to stay with the dungeon at all times. Ah. Shit—

“Go, Erick,” Poi said, smiling, and being completely serious about that command.

Poi went back inside the house.

And then all of Erick’s daughters were at the forefront of Erick’s mind, and his ‘brother’ Solomon was ready to go but reluctant to take control of the situation, and so they all went out to town.

It was a weird, fun, different sort of experience, with Erick talking to each of his daughters as they felt like talking to him, which was a lot, or talking to Solomon, which was also a lot, or to each other, which was also a lot. There were six of them, for Rozeta’s sake; it was a lot of talking, at dinner at a really spice-heavy restaurant at Aniduun by the ocean, and then more talking with Mage Bank people in town, and then adventurer/delver registration at the guildhouse.

- - - -

Six hours later, Erick split off from ‘the squad’, the girls going back to their hotel to plan for tomorrow and sleep, while he and Solomon went back to the house in the dungeon.

Poi smiled as he called out, “Sounds like you all had a good time!”

“It was so strange,” Solomon said.

Erick said, “But great!”

“Fantastic, really.”

Erick said, “I almost wanted to check in on Ezekiel, but… He's doing good, right?”

Poi nodded. “He’s doing fine. Already has a life for himself. He’s determined to be ‘the backup’, though. He doesn’t want to get involved with this.”

“… Okay,” Erick said. “I suppose…” His voice trailed away.

Solomon finished Erick’s thought, “That’s what’s best for everyone, even if it’s not the best for him.”

“When this is over and no one has died,” Erick said, “We’ll all go see Ezekiel.”

Poi smiled a little bit, as he nodded.

Later, when Erick was laying in bed and trying to sleep, he thought of what it really meant to have 6 daughters. It was a lot of work. He knew he never could have managed such a thing back on Earth. But here… It was kinda nice.

He wished them all the best that life had to offer.

Today had been a good day...

Erick hoped that tomorrow wouldn’t rapidly devolve into tragedy, for all the girls and Solomon were at 15,000 base mana generation. That wasn’t enough for deep dives into the Dark, but it was enough for smaller forays, and that’s what the girls were going to do tomorrow. Solomon and Erick would stay ‘home’, and watch from the Dark Mirrors… Which they still had to make.

That should go fine, though. If it didn’t, then the ‘schedule’ would be delayed by a day or whatever, and that was fine, too.

- - - -

Inside Solomon’s mage tower, under the light of the dungeon core sun, Erick stood beside Solomon and Poi. The Arachno-Squad was still getting ready for the day, out there elsewhere. But the guys were here, planning the next move.

Solomon spoke, “Rule change.”

A black box with white lettering appeared.

- -

new rules available for instantiation .

mana per new rule.

SPEAK NEW RULE HERE:

[_______________]

Final upkeep cost of new rule is .

Accept new rule? Yes / No

- -

Erick and Solomon spoke at the same time, their voices echoing each other, “Portals of Sight to pierce the night, allowing light on all Dark plights.”

The black screen flickered and shifted.

- -

new rules available for instantiation .

mana for new rule.

SPEAK NEW RULE HERE:

[Sighting Mirrors]

Final upkeep cost of new rule is .

Accept new rule? Yes / No

- -

Solomon said, “Instantiate the Rule.”

- -

Rules:

7: Sighting Mirrors into the Dark.

~Notification: The Dark sometimes stares back.

- -

Solomon dismissed the new notifications, saying, “About as ominous as we expected.”

“I expected worse,” Poi said.

Erick and Solomon both stared at the man in complete disbelief. Why would he tempt Fate like that?

Poi smirked, saying, “How bad can it be?”

Erick walked away, saying, “Well now you’re just trying to tempt Fate.”

“Fate is already here, Erick!” Poi said, still smiling. “You should try making some Fate Magic inside those no-Script spaces.”

Erick stopped in his tracks.

Solomon went wide-eyed.

Poi nodded. “Yup. Might even work, too.”

Erick turned back around. “… You know… It just occurred to me that maybe what I’m missing from this whole True-Wizard-thing is the inclusion of all magic; not just what I can currently access.”

Solomon smiled, saying, “That thought just occurred to me, too, brother!”

And now Erick was surprised for a different reason. “We’re going with that terminology?”

“I’m trying out ‘brother’, yes.” Solomon added, “And I’m going to try out some Time Magic inside a no-Script space, too. It might work perfectly inside there, and you can pull me out if something goes horribly wrong.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“That sounds like a great idea, or a great way to accidentally [Onward] yourself toward infinity.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fiiiiiine,” Solomon said.

Erick gestured toward the outside. “A Sighting Mirror, first?”