Chapter 243, 1/2

Wizardry took hold of the air, and condensed down into an item.

And it didn’t explode.

Erick was already thrilled. He might have succeeded in making an item that would protect the item itself from all possible Knowledge or Anti-Knowledge forces. It was probably too soon to count those chickens, but Erick was still half-counting them.

Erick telekinetically plucked the ‘rod’ out of the mana/Script void, hovering it to his hands carefully. He did not touch it yet; he simply inspected his work. The item was 35 centimeters of wrist-thick gold and runed up and down the entire length. Erick had placed four spherical, internally-expansive mana gems into the rod, but you couldn’t tell that from looking at it. It looked, quite simply, like a rolled-up scroll. Which it was.

While Solomon and the girls delved dungeons, increasing their base mana production through trials of the Dark, Erick worked with magic, mana crystals, and with Wizardry. For the last 12 days, Erick had been at this project. Prototypes had been made and discarded, proofs-of-concepts turning to dust or tumorous-crystal, mana crystals cracking and then being remade in spherical crystal forms because those worked better. Erick was pretty much exclusively working with mana spheres these days, even though he was having trouble sticking advanced spellwork into those, since spheres only had so much space inside of them, even if they were pushed inward forcibly. The Glittering Depths had done a lot to make their mana spheres work, and Erick was nowhere near replicating that level of power. But Erick had learned a lot, anyway!

It had taken a lot of work to get here, and maybe, this time, this project would work.

The four gems inside the scroll included some very specific magics.

[Cascade Imaging], but tuned for all particles, and without any map functionality. Just pure identification.

The second gem was [Identify] and [Force Wave] along with some Aura work, to produce a short-range [Scan]-like effect. The actual [Scan] spell in the Script was kinda shit, and Erick never used it anyway. Simple Book Magic was enough to make this part of the artifact work fine.

The third gem was a very special [Mend], in order to keep it all together. [Mend] worked off of the manasphere imprint of an item, which meant that if the manasphere imprint was disrupted, then [Mend] was severely disrupted, too. Thus, most of the text of the golden scroll was to make the imprint of the item a self-reinforcing [Mend] magic. To do that, Erick had worked with an understanding of the Time Magic qualities of [Mend], stretching the qualifying time of this [Mend] to a more perfect state of the item, here, at the very beginning of its creation.

If this didn’t work how he wanted it to work, Erick would need to make some ‘Selector’ magic that would self-reference to a specific, perfect point in the item’s history, to allow for a [Mend] that always functioned well. But that was a level of complexity that was beyond the scope of this current project.

A lot of functionality was beyond the scope of this iteration of this ‘Scroll of Self-Knowledge’.

The fourth gem was [Renew], because Erick wanted all the mana in the item to work well together, until it degraded.

Because, let’s get real, it was probably not going to work how Erick wanted it to work.

Erick had inscribed an entire treatise into the scroll, declaring what the item was for, and how it wasn’t to be influenced by any exterior forces, how it wasn’t to allow itself to be used by any exterior forces for anything. None of that would affect the wielder. It was to be purely a self-contained item, cut off from the influence of everything; a slice of reality unto itself. A potential blueprint for how a successful crystallization of a True Wizard might appear.

Erick hadn’t touched the scroll yet.

The scroll hovered in front of him, held by his aura and nothing else, a sense of weight to the item, like a lodestone in the manasphere. It was barely charged, but it would be charged soon enough.

Ophiel squeaked.

And Erick touched the scroll.

White lightning flickered from his fingertips to the runes upon the scroll, Benevolence flickering across the entire surface and flashing out from the endcaps—

In a shattering moment, reality reorganized itself. Gold exploded away from the scroll, torn rolls of metal splashing, molten across the ground. For a moment, Erick thought he had failed again.

But the scroll hovered where Erick had placed it. It looked nothing like it had a moment ago.

Brilliant white and shimmering with colors inside every inscription, the scroll hovered, transformed. It was no longer metal at all, but instead white crystal. The whole thing was pure Benevolence, with a bit of Book and Time and other such powers inside of it.

Erick smiled. And then he touched the scroll…

The scroll did not move. Erick poked it again, and the scroll hovered there, unmoving, adamantine in its position.

“… uhh?”

Perhaps some magical wires had been crossed, because the scroll should still be able to move… And yet. To be moved, was to be affected, and the item was strictly made so that nothing would affect it.

Okay. So.

A misfire of Wizardry, if Erick ever saw one.

He poked the scroll. The scroll remained.

He pressed down on the scroll. The scroll remained.

He punched the scroll, and his hand hurt from the punch. Erick had not hurt himself punching anything in a long while. Erick moved on to aura control, to spellwork, and finally to Spatial Magic. Working Spatial Magic inside the Dark Itself was rather damned difficult, and truly working Spatial Magic inside the slime dungeon would require some runic tools and warp-pads like they had between the Geodes. But Erick could manage smaller Spatial Magics himself. Moving something a meter inside a dungeon? Should be doable.

The scroll remained.

Erick tried hitting it with some [Benevolent Lightning], angry-style, to try and leave some scorch marks, or something. And yet, nothing.

Erick put his hands on his hips, and said, “Well I’m glad I fucked up this step here, and not with my actual self.”

He moved on to the next iteration of the project; one that could follow some verbal instructions…

“Though ‘verbal instructions’ is too unclear.” Erick mused, “Perhaps a secondary artifact that allows position-control over the scroll?” Erick looked around. Then he looked back at the floating scroll. The scroll was taking up experimental space on his platform. “… I’m gonna have to make a new platform.”

Erick created another platform away from the scroll, so that his first ‘success’ didn’t fuck up his second attempt.

A day later, when Erick was inscribing another scroll, the first scroll suddenly fell out of the air and crashed to the ground. The Benevolence crystal shattered into so much spent mana then rapidly melted back into the manasphere.

Erick looked at the dissolution of that mana crystal for a long moment, then he went back to his designs, muttering, “I must have screwed up the mana recycling, too, because that should have lasted a lot longer than a day...” softer, “or maybe there was an outside influence that I hadn’t accounted for, and we are chasing an anti-meme… theoretically...”

He paused as he looked at his latest scroll.

“Nope.”

And then he ripped it up, melted it down to slag, and then purified it again through a variety of Condensing spells and particle voids and applied heat.

He went back to the drawing board, all the way back to the basics of magic itself; the question of mana.

- - - -

Erick worked on the kitchen table, books and writings spread out, as he combed over old ideas and wrote down new ideas, based on his new theories of the multiverse and magic.

Debby was making dinner tonight. It was just her, Poi upstairs reading, and Erick in the kitchen. The other girls and Solomon were outside in the dungeon, poking around with the Dark Mirror, making plans for an assault upon the first of the rescue targets in the Dark. They had already consulted the Well in the center of Ascendant City, and after a week of downtime and a lot more personal mana growth, they were ready to get back to it. Mostly.

That first dungeon core breaking had messed them all up rather well, but time heals most wounds.

For the last week, Erick had enjoyed more time with Jane than he had ever enjoyed before, here on Veird, or even back on Earth, though most of that time spent with ‘Jane’ had been spent with a Jane of a different color. One or two of the girls had opted to spend the night in this dungeon house every night, while the others stayed at the hotel. Erick wasn’t privy to the organization of all of that, for there very much was an organization behind the scenes, with the girls deciding among themselves who stayed each night, but he was happy anyway to talk with Jane over dinner, or Debby over lunch, or Abigail, or Beth, or Candice whenever they wanted to show up. Emily was particularly strong minded about Erick’s political choices, and she was all for talking about House Benevolence all the time, to which Erick was thrilled to see ‘Jane’ interested in all of that. She had never been interested in that before.

Parts of this whole arrangement were weird.

All of the girls seemed to have their own ‘thing’ they were interested in. Or perhaps they were finally allowing themselves to enjoy a ‘thing’, and distance themselves from who they had been before. Erick was still discovering what all those nuances were, but Emily was definitely interested in governance in a way that Jane had never allowed herself to enjoy… or maybe she just never wanted to talk to her father about all that. Emily had no such problems… or maybe she had decided to ‘get over’ those problems.

Hard to say.

Erick and Solomon had spoken to each other at length about Wizardry, and about the girls, with Erick getting the normal treatment from most of them, with added parts to each relationship that Jane had never allowed herself to share before. Solomon, however, was getting the ‘fellow delver’ treatment. A simple coworker. Erick could honestly say that he was jealous about that. To get to know Jane as a person, instead of as a daughter, sounded wonderful. At that admission, Solomon just smiled and said that yeah, he would be jealous, too…

Where was Erick again?

Oh yes. With the multiversal theory.

As Erick scratched words onto paper, he thought about how each of the girls could be a reflection from a different multiverse—

“I’m not going out there again,” Debby said, tense as anyone could be, and also trying not to show it.

Ah.

And then there was Debby.

Erick had wondered what was up with her, for she had been tense all day long, so he had decided to work on the kitchen table while she made dinner. He was giving her space to talk, and she was taking that space. She stopped working, and was looking at Erick, waiting for him to reprimand her.

Erick would do no such thing.

“Okay. That’s fine, Debby. Want to stay here and watch from the Mirror with Solomon and I?”

No reprimand?

Erick watched as Debby realized that she wasn’t in trouble at all, even though she felt like she should be. And then she realized that of course she wasn’t in trouble. Her father would support her however she wished to live her life.

Debby smiled a little as she checked on the frying pot, flicking a bit of batter into the hot oil to check if it was hot enough. The batter sizzled; the oil was hot enough. Debby moved on to the wet-battered chicken, to begin to pluck it out and toss it into the pot, as she said, “Yeah. I’m going to stay here. Thanks, dad.”

“Of course!” Erick said, “You know…” Debby was the Jane who had briefly experienced ‘life as Erick’ during the core breaking last week, and now that she was going to stay here, Erick suddenly felt like maybe, just maybe, she might be opening to talking about other topics; ones that Jane never wanted to discuss. He asked, “You want to talk about magic?”

“Yes!” Debby said, with perhaps too much enthusiasm for her. She shrugged, adding, “Uh. Yes.”

Erick tried not to smile too much, elation filling him from toes to his top. “I’m working on Minor Wizardry right now, trying to think of what ‘Minor’ really means in this context, and what I’m arriving at is that all magic is technically ‘minor’ Wizardry. It is said that all of the First Magics came from Wizards, after all. Want to talk about that?” He said, “Or we could work on something you want. What sorts of magics are you up to these days?”

As chicken fried, Debby cast a little bubble of Force that prevented oil from popping in the air. She was gearing up for something big, and it took her a moment to get there, but Erick could already tell she was past the hard part. She casually blurted out, “I’m probably going to go into Lightning Magic. The Truth I had as Jane still works but I can already see it fading some. I think that core breaking was a deeper break than I thought.”

“… That’s possible? I didn’t know it was possible for a Truth to change like that—” Erick corrected himself, “Except in extreme circumstances, which I suppose this counts.”

Debby nodded. “We don’t have many records of repros destroying cores, or experiencing what we experienced, so… Apparently it can change a Truth. I seem to be the only one, though. The others are fine.” She shrugged. “It’s probably just as well, right? We’re searching for some sort of Lightning Magic anyway. Maybe having a Lightning Truth will help with that. And Lightning is kinda fun. Though I never used to think like that before I had that… experience as you.”

“You can be anything you want to be, Debby, and I’ll help you get wherever you want to go.”

Debby smirked a little, looking away. “… Or maybe my Jane-Truth still works just fine.” She added, “But I still want to differentiate myself. So I’m gonna go with Lightning Magic. Got any tips? How about from the ground up, based around your new multiverse-theories?”

Erick smiled as he sat back in his chair, saying, “Excellent!” Erick thought for a moment, then began, “So, thinking about Lightning Magic from a multiversal plane-egress sort of way…

“The Old Cosmology was made of different planes that all existed alongside each other in a cohabitation configuration, in what some might have called the Material Plane. But there was no Elemental Material, or anything like that, as far as we know. If anything, it was all just elements expressing themselves in the Realm of the Dark, so perhaps ‘the Dark’ was the Material Plane, like this dungeon space we’re in right now, but probably different.

“Or perhaps ‘The Mana Ocean’ was the ‘Material Plane’. Everyone was always talking about the Mana Ocean in the Old Cosmology. Whenever the Mana Ocean and the Dark came up, they were usually separate, but there is some discrepancy with that, because I’ve heard Shades talk about the Edge of Everything, where people had to go into the Dark and expand the universe—

“Anyway! That stuff is not this stuff. That stuff is all confusing words and meanings that I’d need to talk to a god to find out about, and it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of mana and magic.

“Anyway: One of those planes —that we know was a dimension— was the Plane of Lightning.

“It was a realm like all the rest, like inside Benevolence, or Fairy, or else wise. Things lived in there. Things used Lightning as the substance of their bodies and minds and souls. Etcetera.

“To express Lightning in the Material Realm was to bring the concept of Lightning to the forefront, through the alteration of one’s personal mana, and pour that Lightning into specific forms which Lightning easily followed.

“Now, there are multiple ways to classify ‘Lightning Magic’, and we’ll go over a few of them. Those classifications are mostly applicable still here, in this New Cosmology, but I imagine that outside of the Script, inside a universe where a Lightning Realm truly existed, Lightning Magics were much more powerful. Or at least the most powerful spells were more powerful because they had a higher ceiling of power.

“All of this is tied into what Poi would call ‘magnitude’ of a spell, which we’ll get to.

“Anyway.

“Base level Lightning Magic is to take some mana and turn that possibility into the possibility of Lightning, through the application of personal intent onto one’s mana. Depending on the purity of transformation of Reality into reality, this level of spellwork can be between mag 1 and mag… I don’t know. 4? 4 sounds good.

“Higher level Lightning Magic would be to change the way lightning functions in this reality, through the expression of one’s personal Reality in such a way as to temporarily override the local reality. I imagine this is where a Truth of Lightning emerges, which results in a whole bunch of effects, from an easier time handling Lightning Magic, to the ability to innately use Lightning, to having a Lightning Form, or stuff like that. A Truth of Lightning would be, in effect, making your soul resonate more strongly with the Lightning Dimension than other Dimensions.

“Extremely high levels of Lightning Magic would be stuff like Domainwork, which is the exclusion of the powers of other people in favor of your own. There would also be traveling to the plane of Lightning, or bringing the plane of Lightning here, to Veird, through a Rift, or whatever.

“The top tier of Lightning Magic available here, on Veird, would be instantiating a [Lightning Storm], and letting nothing else exist at that time. It’d be like the aftermath of that Red Dot attack at Spur all those years ago; that [Fireball] turned all the sand around the city molten, even though the Red Dot didn’t produce nearly enough heat to be able to do that, but it was an Elemental Fire-based Domain/Reality attack, and so it did stuff it shouldn’t have been able to do, like melt sand into black glass.” Erick asked, “Got it, so far?”

Debby had taken out some chicken from the fryer and was in the middle of replacing it, as she said, “Yeah. That’s nothing too different from what I already know so all of that makes sense.” Debby asked, “But how does that relate to the multiverse theory of this New Cosmology? With Particle Magic? Are you just plucking random events from around you that are possible and using them when you cast a [Particle Lightning] spell?”

Erick grinned. “Rozeta often said that Particle Mage is just a Force Mage that she fucked around with a bit to make it work with Particle Magic, and I think that is more telling about what Particle Magic is than I ever realized. She also said that Particle Magic is just advanced [Telekinesis], and with that bit of information, the hows and whys of Particle Magic makes perfect sense.

“See, Force Magic is about setting boundaries of Elemental Force, which is really just telling the world what is happening in a location, through Elemental Force. [Force Wall], [Force Platform]. Etcetera. For those spells, you’re just telling the world that there is a solid Force here or there, or wherever you cast the magic. In those cases, Force means the ‘force to stay here’.

“When you apply this ideology to spells that move, like [Force Bolt], you might think that this theory breaks down. But Force is not actually about solidity, though that is what it is best known for.

“Elemental Force is actually about specific movements of Force, of which other things can be locked inside that Force, or not. This is where you get [Telekinesis] and otherwise. Non-elemental-specific Magic is usually Force-related, but not always. All magic uses some Element within that magic, even [Teleport], which is actually more Time than Force, because Elemental Space doesn’t actually exist, and… And that might be getting too deep in the weeds.”

“You are getting a bit weedy, dad,” Debby said, nodding.

“Right!” Erick said, “Anyway. [Particle Lightning]. The basic Particle version of the classic [Lightning] involves electrical charges made possible through an application of Force upon different items. This is where you get the [Small Spark] spell, which is very small. Or the extremely potent [Battery], which is lightning in a bottle, basically.

“All of that is done through a specialized Force Magic [Telekinesis] that is less a standard application of Force, and much more an instantiation of very nearby and easy to reach multiversal possibility.

“Like how [Call Lightning] made rain as a byproduct, which was because it was a spell that pulled actual rain and power from the sky in order to cause lightning. The rain remained because it was a byproduct of some very expansive multiversal shenanigans, pulling rain out of other locations.

“Like if you have a broken plate. If you cast [Mend] upon one half of a broken plate, the other half of the plate, if it is close at all, will vanish from the world, and the plate will appear whole again.

“Like how [Teleport] is technically Establishment magic given to the masses, but also Force and Time Magic, Particle Magic is literally Establishment magic of what could be; the emplacement of one’s personal idea of Reality onto this current reality.

“Particle Magic is practically the ‘base form of magic’ of this New Cosmology’.

“Particle Magic is also just a very specialized application of Force Magic.” Erick continued, “So to pull back a bit, and to look at how Lightning Magic goes from basic mana altering for Lightning, to Lightning Domains, to the plane of Lightning…

“I have done a lot of Particle Magic, from the basic stuff like [Small Spark], up to [Control Weather] and [Physical Domain]. But looking at this new layout of classification, it appears I have never done any magnitude 9, ‘Instantiation of the Physical’. I’m not even sure what such a thing should look like. Perhaps what I have done with [Call Lightning] already counts as ‘instantiation’, or maybe I’m way off.

“Anyway.

“All of this neatly explains why singing to the mana produces results, and why some people can ‘hear’ mana. It’s because they can vibrate the world to instantiate results from a specific dimension, and they can also hear those different vibrations. Mana itself is still sapient, of course, so it helps with this communication. All magic is about communication with realms.”

Erick stopped. He waited.

And Debby thought for a while, as she put some more battered chicken into the fryer. Eventually, she asked, “What would a… Physical Realm even look like? I mean… That’s just the one we’re in, right? You can’t really pull from what we’re already in.”

“Ah! See… That’s a good point.” Erick said, “Except we do have a multiverse of physicality. We use that multiverse for Establishment purposes all the time, like for [Teleport]… even if no one does [Teleport] anymore.”

Debby thought for a moment. “Have you ever tried Establishing lightning? Not going through any sort of sideways-[Telekinesis]-sort-of Particle Magic? Just straight-up lightning manifesting?”

Erick smiled, saying, “I’m never going to do that. That’s too close to the Sundering for me.”

Debby rolled her eyes, exactly as Erick expected Jane to do when he spoke of being the cause of the Sundering. “You didn’t cause the Sundering, dad. There’s absolutely no way. And besides! Wouldn’t ‘Establishing’ lightning just be like… You point at a target and a cloud that was never there in the sky suddenly bolts the target? That’s the most your ‘Small Wizardry’ could do.”

Erick shrugged. “Still not gonna chance it.” He added, “I have considered a Particle Magic [Teleport], but I’m honestly not sure how to make that happen except through pure Wizardry, because the ‘macro level wavelength collapse’ idea I originally had about [Teleport] was functional, but also incorrect. I know that I only got as far in the Worldly Path as I did in the beginning because I was able to brute force the magic with Ophiel—” Ophiel squeaked that he was a good helper, and Erick repeated that yes, he was, then Erick continued, “—and I brute forced it, and the Script allowed it, because that’s how the Script works when you get close enough; if you get 90% there it gets you the other 10%. It wasn’t until at the end of the Path, that I was learning about other planes, that I truly understood what I was doing, and was able to complete the Path.” He added, “So as for a true ‘macro level Wavelength-collapse [Teleport]’? No idea. Not chancing it right now, anyway.”

“Just turn some bricks of stone into bricks of gold, then,” Debby said, “That seems like high-level Particle Magic to me—” And then she looked around, waving her hand in the air, saying, “All of this is actually us inside the Dark, anyway. So if you can only do real Particle Magic outside of the physical realm, then here we are. Try it here.”

… Erick suddenly paused.

For something occurred to him.

“You’re suggesting that you can only do real Elemental Magic outside of that Elemental Realm?”

“Well sure… But now that you talk like that, I am less sure.” Debby said, “It makes sense though, right. You can’t really do Fire Magic if there isn’t something to contrast with that Fire; something to burn.”

Erick decided to voice his concern, “If you can only do real Elemental Magic outside of that Elemental Realm, as in ‘you can only overwrite reality with a Reality that is not reality’, then can you only do real Particle Magic outside of the ‘Particle realm’? Could the Sundering have only come from outside of the Old Cosmology… Hmm.” He paused. He frowned a little. “But I can do the best Benevolence Magic inside of Benevolence. That’s where the Benevolent Sky is.” He said, “I’m not sure your theory tracks, Debby, but I’ll keep an eye on it.”

Debby thought for a moment, then said, “I suppose the Lightning Storms on a plane of Lightning are probably a lot bigger than the ones on the community plane.”

“Sounds right to me— OH!” Erick said, “But if it is possible for magic to go from the realm it is on, to other realms, and retain the strength of the original realm, now that… Now that could have caused the Sundering. An attack from the New Cosmology directed at the Old Cosmology, using New Cosmology Wizardry.”

Debby smiled. “Add it to the list!”

Erick reached over and added another bullet point to the ever-growing list of ‘Sundering Suspects’. Below ‘Vengeful God’ and ‘Memetic Knowledge Threat’ and ‘Xoat Waking’ and all the rest, Erick added, ‘A Particle Magic attack from the New Cosmology, using Particle Magic Establishment magic’.

Erick said, “I’m not sure which one I’m more uncomfortable with; the Xoat stuff, or this latest one, which is just a refinement of ‘Erick did it, somehow’.”

“I’m sure we’ll add in some non-you points as soon as we start getting into the Dark again… Or at least the other girls will.” Debby said, “I’m not breaking a core ever again.”

Erick smiled. He wasn’t comfortable with core breaking, either, mostly due to what it did to his daughters and to Solomon. Erick changed the subject, though, because Debby was uncomfortable, “I would like to be vindicated as not having caused the Sundering.”

Debby asked, “Is anyone in power actually saying that?”

“A thousand hate letters per day are a power all their own.”

Debby looked stricken for a moment, reminding Erick of all the times when Jane had witnessed him being in danger from gangsters back home, or here on Veird, or when she realized that he had been doing something dangerous, and she had not known until now. Like in all those times he talked to her about every Shadow’s Feast, or about any of the other major events in his life.

Debby asked, “Are any of those threats credible?”

“I don’t get many actual threats, but Burhendurur investigates those covertly when they do come up. For a little while in the beginning, a few different organizations discovered that the House personally investigates every threat, so they were using those threats to jump ahead in meetings with me. Most of the time I dismissed those line-jumpers and canceled their meeting for wasting everyone’s time. Sometimes I helped them, though, which is why we got line-jumpers.” Erick said, “Very few of the threats I get are anywhere near credible; they are just the ramblings of undereducated and scared people. Enforcement and the Office of Mail does a good job sorting stuff on their own these days.”

“I hope you’re getting thankful letters, too.”

Erick smiled. “Oh yeah. All the time, from all over the world. I tried personally answering all of those letters once upon a time, but that was way too much, so the Office of Mail does most of that these days. They do pick out 10 letters per day for me to read personally. I think my favorites are from the Sovereign Cities.” He asked, “But what about you! You’re the big shot in the Dungeoneering Guild— Ah. Wrong question.” Erick realized he had fucked up a little.

Debby moved past it, shaking her head. “It’s fine. I’m not sure who I am going to be, but Jane is gonna continue doing that, and I’m gonna be… I haven’t considered the future too much.” She shrugged, threw some more chicken into the hot oil, and said, “On the plus side, I get to experiment with that whole ‘immortality through abandoning your past with [Polymorph]’ idea. Now that will involve a changing Truth… Maybe.”

Erick smiled softly. “House Benevolence will always be here for you as long as I’m around. We have programs for all that stuff, too, though not directly; it’s through Stratagold.”

“Yeah I’ve spoken with Sitnakov about all that before and…”

The conversation meandered, from magic to the future to everything else. Eventually, dinner was ready, but Debby placed the hot food under [Ward]s for no one else was ready, and soon Erick sat with Debby at the kitchen table and spoke of magic, and Erick’s burgeoning Wizardry-Classification system.

Eventually, the girls came back from investigating the Mirror and the Well with Solomon, and Poi came down from his work rooms above. Dinner was great, and there was a lot of it, for Erick [Duplicate]d the best bits of chicken to make enough for everyone, as he usually did. It was a lot easier to make a normal portion of food and then copy it for 10 people, than it was to cook for 10 people every night.

[Duplicate] seemed like it might be mag 9 magic, now that Erick was thinking about it.

“Nope,” Poi said, “Only mag 8.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit? That big?”

Poi nodded.

A whole new conversation started about magnitude.

- - - -

“So we’re going to start searching for the Sundering causes today,” Erick said, to the gathered gods. “It’s mostly going to be a crap shoot if we can actually reach wherever we’re aiming, but if we can manage to crack open a path through the Dark into the desired lands, then we’re going ahead with the search. We haven’t proven that we can actually do that yet, but that’s coming up, too.

“Anyway.

“We have 3 targets lined up. All of them are massively major artifacts.

“The first is the Lifeblood Heart. From my understanding from my daughters and the Well, it’s an Elemental Stone, Air, and Water artifact, along with a smattering of smaller life-aligned powers, created however long ago in the Old Cosmology, and guarded by the Order of the Sacred Pulse. It’s like a Benevolence fountain, always creating life, but a whole lot more. It was the infinite mana artifact of a powerful Creation Wizard.

“The second is the Prismatic Key. This one might be the best option for further exploration of the Dark. It’s a key that takes you wherever you want to go, and makes the land on both sides of the resultant [Gate] habitable to life on both sides.

“The third option is the Censer of Destruction, which is a Destruction Wizard artifact that can destroy whatever is burned inside of it.” Erick said, “Unless you all have different suggestions, or specific suggestions, then we’re going for those. When we get them, we’ll hand them over to Rozeta and the Script. Except for the Key. That’ll let us search for other items easier.”

Erick finished, and waited.

This particular meeting of the gods took place on the grounds outside of the slime dungeon, just there in the clearing, upon the grass. It wasn’t a formal thing; it was pure business. All Erick had done was call up to the sky, and they had answered.

Rozeta, Phagar, Koyabez, and Atunir had calmly listened while Erick spoke.

And then Rozeta looked to the others. “The Heart.”

“I withhold my opinion,” Phagar said. “But the Key would be useful for you.”

“I’m partial to the Censer,” Koyabez said. “I know of it, and it is a very minor Destruction Wizard artifact, told of in stories of people looking to destroy the indestructible.”

Atunir said, “The Censer would be the safe choice. It wouldn’t actually help with Primal Lightning, though. For that, I suggest we consider the Lightning Shield.” She looked to Erick. “It was one of the many artifacts that helped us escape the Primal Lightning back then, but it was destroyed in Ar’Kendrithyst 800 years ago in a ritual of the Dark. Sininindi has the pieces of that—”

Sininindi, Goddess of Storm and Sea, stepped down into the clearing.

Atunir continued, “And if you can’t find the Lightning Shield in the past and bring it to this present, then perhaps you can Paradox that artifact back into existence through Sininindi’s assistance.”

Sininindi said, “I was having Quilatalap make that item, actually, along with a bunch of others.”

Everyone looked to Sininindi.

Sininindi said, “He knows the artifact because it was in his custody for a short while, before the Shades destroyed it. So yes, I have charged Quilatalap with remaking that treasure and others as a part of his dungeon work. Perhaps in a few months Erick can journey into there, as he had done to your dungeon, Atunir, and rescue the true Lightning Shield from that ritual.” She spoke to the group, “As for current searches in the Dark, I recommend a search for the Foregone Octagon, or the Book of Class, or the Enchanter’s Guile.” She looked to Erick, adding, “The Enchanter’s Guile is probably the best option for you to grab from the Dark. It will assist you with making artifacts of your own.”

Atunir nodded. “A fair choice.”

Phagar nodded, slightly less sure, along with Koyabez.

Erick said, “That is a good target, too.”

Rozeta frowned a little, saying, “I would prefer the Heart. Doubling Veird’s mana production would solve so many smaller problems and completely negate the need for dungeons, allowing us self sufficiency right now.”

In a slightly-exasperated voice, Atunir said, “Even if they managed to find it, the mana pressure alone would force them away. That’s the singular problem that the Order of the Sacred Pulse had with it; they could never truly defend it, or anchor it to a location, because it kept flying away from them… and everyone else.” She explained to Erick, “The thing doubles the mana production of all life near it, and so it has a way of always flying out of hand.”

From the looks of everyone, Atunir was right on the money with her assessment.

Rozeta still said, “I still want it. We can stick it in orbit, and if it simply pushes itself away from Veird, then that’s fine, too.”

“… Hmm.” Erick said, “Well maybe we need a containment system for the Heart before we retrieve the Heart. I’m not sure how many chances we get at stealing a specific item from the Dark, but I’m assuming one time, and one time only.”

“The Heart can’t be contained,” Phagar said, “That was one thing that was always true of that item. Leave it be for now.”

Erick said, “Then the Key or the Censer.” He looked to Atunir and Sininindi, adding, “Or the Lightning Shield?”

Sininindi said, “Give me a few months and there’s no need to risk the Dark for that item.”

Erick instantly said, “If you make it, then it might be the cause of the Prophesied Storm.”

“Doubtful,” Sininindi said, leaving it at that.

Phagar said, “I suggest the Key.”

“You’re not refraining?” Rozeta asked.

Phagar said, “I will refrain, but add that the Key is the best choice.”

Koyabez said, “Going after the Key would be going after a Paradox; there’s no telling what you would walk into. I suggest the Censer again, because the Censer allowed for the creation of a bastion of complete safety, where nothing evil was allowed to exist. If you do manage to find that place in the Dark, and it’s real, then there will be absolutely nothing dangerous at all about the location, and the artifact you pull from it will be endlessly useful, especially if you manage to pull some infinite Banned mana item from the Dark—” He added toward Rozeta, “—like the Heart, with its infinite mana generation along a hundred different axes.”

“We can deal with a little banned magic, but you do raise a good point.” Rozeta said, “I still suggest the Heart, because the benefits outweigh the costs. But really it’s up to Erick.” She looked to him. “The Script will accept whatever you give it, and all of the stated items will be useful.”

Unsaid consensus passed around the gathering.

Erick nodded, then said, “One final question on the nature of Wizards and Gods. Would it be correct to say that gods set the over-reality to which we all live within, while Wizards set their personal reality, and pull possibility from side realities into the over-reality, for use in the over-reality?”

There were a few queer looks among the gathered gods.

Phagar said, “Sounds reasonable to me.”

Atunir nodded. Koyabez nodded a bit deeper. Sininindi agreed, but with a slight tilt of her head; she did not fully agree.

Rozeta said, “It’s a bit simplistic, but yes. That’s largely correct. I would add that the clearer the ideas and methodology that a Wizard has regarding side-realities, the easier it is to pull from those side-realities.” She added, “But to rephrase in classically-accepted wordage: The more you know of how magic works, the easier it is for you to impose your Reality upon reality.”

Erick found himself chuckling once. “I believe I have said almost that exact same phrase before.”

Atunir said, “It’s a Paradox Wizard’s understanding of reality, for sure, but it is not incorrect.”

Sininindi said, “That was my general disagreement with the statement.”

“It’s not incorrect, though,” Koyabez said, “It is functional, and all Wizards approach that final Truth differently. I am glad to see that you are getting closer to True Wizardry, Erick. I have ten thousand things I would ask of you and ten thousand reciprocations I could offer once you achieve that sort of power.”

Phagar spoke up, “I have ten thousand requests as well, but they’re all about maintaining the current timeline since it seems to be working out the best for everyone.”

“I wouldn’t want to go time traveling yet, anyway,” Erick said.

Everyone in the clearing relaxed a little at that, except for Phagar, who was as perfectly poised as he always was, since he knew all of Time forward and backwards and sideways. For all the rest of the gods, Wizards were sources of chaos that were hard to read.

Rozeta said, “If you do ever get to time traveling more than an hour at a time, I would ask you to keep that shit away from Veird. We’ve had enough messes regarding that for one Cosmology.”

Erick nodded.

And the meeting was over.

As fast as the gods had come at Erick’s call, they departed, like golden wind and fire and lightning, dispersing back into the manasphere.

Erick turned toward the left, where a group of adventurers had hunkered down under as much invisibility and otherwise as they could muster, but which Erick still saw through. It was a man and two women, all in armor, all ready for battle, though that was just a stress response. They had heard the voices and tried to creep up for the last few minutes, before they stalled out at the edge of the clearing. They had seen who was talking. Now, they stayed where they were, practically frozen on the spot, the man and the woman having pissed themselves, while the other woman had not.

“Not sure who you are, but it’s dangerous around these parts these days,” Erick said, as Ophiel descended to stand next to the adventurers. The three of them locked eyes with Ophiel, and the three of them went absolutely frozen in terror. “… You three okay?”

No response.

Erick scooped them up in a [Gate] and dropped them off at Aniduun, breaking all of their invisibility spellwork in the process. Once they realized where they were —which took a moment— they freaked the fuck out for a good five minutes before they got themselves under control again. Erick moved on. The three adventurers were not Erick’s problem.

- - - -

Inside of a massive tunnel in the Underworld, located deep below the northern pole, or at least where the ‘northern pole’ would be on Veird, Jane and the sisters stood about a hundred meters away from the target destination. It was hard to see from this angle and in the absolute dark of this deep land, but there was a dungeon entrance beyond that ridge over there. It was a very new dungeon.

Jane wasn’t sure this was going to work, but they were here, courtesy of Ophiel and her father. Ophiel hung around in the air above, providing some light in the dark and a connection to base.

They didn’t have much time, so Jane got on with it as fast as she could.

“We’re going after the Censer, as you all know,” Jane said to her gathered sisters, except for Debby, who stayed at the dungeon. “We’re probably not going to find it, but we should be able to actually reach the targeted location from here. When we get there, we’ll destroy the core as fast as possible. Within the exposed Dark, we will find a path to the Censer…” Jane paused. “What?”

Ophiel had swung close. He spoke with her father’s voice, “The Mirrors are showing that the target has moved. Want to try this area anyway? Make an honest go of exploring the Dark, for real?”

Jane muttered, “That was faster than it should have been.”

The group paused in thought.

Emily was the first to speak. “This is more of a chance to pull anything real from the Dark at all, so yeah. Let’s dig in and see what we can find, and if we can actually bring any of it back.”

Abigail said, “I’d like an anti-anti-memetic monster form.”

Candice frowned at her, saying, “You weren’t even able to wear that shackle for an hour before you ripped it off.”

“You didn’t do any better,” Abigail said.

Beth said, “It’s fucking weird that none of us could wear that bracelet for very long.”

All of her sisters had tried wearing the Bracelet of Memory, the anti-anti-memetic slave shackle that disallowed the wearer from forgetting anything at all, and all of them had done poorly with it. Jane included. Jane didn’t remember her time wearing the artifact very much, once she took it off, but when she observed her sisters with it, she certainly remembered all of the others being very eager to remove the Bracelet.

“We’re probably constantly infected with anti-memetic magics; yes,” Jane said, going over the same talk that they’ve had for the past week, when they were doing everything except for actually progressing on the main quest. “But that doesn’t matter right now.”

For all that they all originated from Jane, Jane was already seeing a lot of variation among them. Chief among that variation was that they all wanted to goof around just a bit too much for her tastes, thus the need for a group-talk before any big missions. But they were still copies of her. All it took was a slight look and a call to action and the group organized again.

Jane continued, “We’ve done small forays into the Dark before, but we’ve always pulled back from actually going into the places we’ve seen. Even if we aren’t going after the Censer this time, it will still be good to actually try the Dark, for real.” She looked to Ophiel. “Dad. Can you tell what is in the Dark around this dungeon now?”

“Yeah, but it’s been changing a lot. One moment,” Ophiel said, followed fast by, “The dungeon itself is a tunnel system, but the Dark beyond is… A place of metal? No. Of glass. Yes. Solomon and Debby are saying Glass, and I agree... Maybe Elemental Crystal, actually; so Light and Stone. Maybe some Metal, too. Hard to say— No. Wait. It’s moving on again. Some sort of water or slime— Oh! Oozes and slimes? Looks like ooze— Back to being crystal—”

The second Jane had heard ‘ooze’ Jane instantly rushed forward, speaking over her father’s voice, saying, “We move fast! We want that.” Even if the Deeper Dark changed before they got there, finding oozes and slimes was a very good thing to go for. Oozes and slimes were great Familiar Forms. As she ran Jane fell apart into an ooze made of black goo; a curse ooze, the advanced form of the curse slime. It was the only monster that was truly capable of surviving in the Dark for any proper length of time, and it was their first line of defense against the absolute destruction of the Dark. With a bit of [Greater Shadowalk] manipulation, Jane raced off toward the dungeon, calling out, “Tell us if it changes!”

All of her sisters were already following, all of them having had the same idea, at almost the same moment, all of them turning into curse oozes...

- - - -

… Erick stood upon the white ridge of the slime dungeon, watching his five girls, like blobs of super-animated black goo, race into the dungeon. They rapidly left Ophiel’s sight and appeared upon the Mirror in front of Erick, inside the dungeon. Erick kept his senses split between Ophiel, hovering above the dungeon, and with himself, watching his girls rip down into the dungeon, which was a whole bunch of random tunnels made of stone. All of the girls followed the flow of mana directly toward the core.

Erick was only controlling one Mirror. Solomon and Debby controlled the other two. Together, the three of them watched the dungeon space, and also the Dark surrounding that dungeon.

From three different angles, Erick watched as his girls assaulted the core room, where they absolutely demolished a rock golem, before attacking the core and shattering it into pieces—

- - - -

—Erick stood within fire and light. The ground was flame so thick it was solid. That flame stretched out to the horizon, where geysers of fire looped up into the absolute black sky, before coming back down like liquid annihilation—

- - - -

— his daughters were doing something that Erick didn’t fully understand. Standing atop the ridge of the Slime Dungeon, Erick watched them work amid the crushing depths of the destroyed dungeon. The Black fell inward, a hole between moving continents closing fast, crushing them utterly, and yet not at all. The girls became one with the Black, with the Dark, their ooze forms allowing them to be separate, to survive. They spun magic into the Dark—

And the Janes flopped into the Deeper Dark, accomplishing something else that Erick didn’t fully understand. Erick assumed that Jane was learning stuff outside of his purview, probably from Fallopolis or Lapis or some other Shade. Whatever the case, the Janes crossed a discrepancy in the world, and ended up in the Deeper Dark, or the Dark, Erick wasn’t sure. They were inside a land that was not simple Dark at all.

Trying to comprehend what he was seeing, and how he had seen it, was taking Erick some time.

There had been a Blackness in the crush of continents, and then the crush was gone, and now the girls were inside a larger space of the Dark beyond, and yet, that larger space of the Dark beyond did not really exist at all until the girls had invaded that space.

Before the girls had arrived on scene, and according to the Mirrors, the larger Dark beyond the tunnels was a bunch of nonsensical dream imagery. That’s why Erick had had such a hard time describing what he was seeing in the Mirrors. And then the girls had arrived, forcing their way forward, and then opening up the space on the other side. They made that space quite real… Or at least it was real where the girls had shown up?

Hmm.

Far as the Mirrors could see, the girls had landed on a land of black rock and crystal spikes, where black slimes with glowing-white cores held upon those ridges, like the capping stars on many different Christmas trees made of black crystal. Ponds of black slimes, all without shining cores, held here and there below those crowning slimes, all of them trying and failing to climb the slick crystal. But sometimes, here and there upon the black crystal landscape, multiple slimes had managed to reach the topmost ridge, and stay there, like multiple kings of the mountain. Here and there, groups of three or four star-core slimes decorated the night with their tiny lights.

Everything else was black.

Erick was still focused on how the black-ooze girls had managed to create this space out of the death of the tunnel dungeon, but the girls focused on the task at hand. They grabbed some slimes like they were children ripping at the innards of a broken pinata.

The five girls managed to grab about twenty slimes, some with bright cores, most without, and then they rapidly began to retreat, doing something else that Erick didn’t quite understand.

From the outside, it looked as though the girls had crashed into a black space in the air, or some sort of shadow, and that there was no way back at all. The continents had crushed together, after all. There was no tunnel dungeon to fight through to get back to this reality. It was like they had been thrown into Fairy; without knowing the ways in and out, or having an actual entrance or exit, one could easily get trapped there for all eternity.

But the girls somehow found the hole in the Dark that they had created, and then they widened that hole, before slipping back, through the black, dragging slimes with them—

They vanished from the Dark Mirrors—

—Through Ophiel, Erick watched them emerge into normal reality.

Except the girls all popped into the stone which made up the Underworld, about twenty meters below where the tunnel actually existed. For a moment, Erick panicked again, because it was like they had suffered a ‘[Teleport] accident’. But they all instantly transformed into Stone and stonestepped with their slimy cargo into the open air of the tunnel space.

And then the girls were out. They had survived. They had stolen prizes. They were whole and not dead at all.

Erick chuckled in utter relief. No one had died.

He whispered, “They made it.”

Solomon breathed out, shaking with relief.

Debby gave a tiny, nervous chuckle. “See! Nothing to it! I knew they had it in them.”

Erick almost panicked again, because Debby was 100% lying. Solomon noticed, too.

They let it go.

Inside of the massive Underworld tunnel, Abigail turned from ooze back into person and did some magic around the new slimes to check on them. Each of them was the size of a black basketball, while only four of them had shining white cores. And then, they were less than that. Erick wasn’t sure when it had started, but it had probably started the very second the girls had pulled the slimes into this reality. Slowly, surely, all of the slimes started to fade. The girls all noticed this, and a few of them tried to turn back into black oozes, to corral and bolster the slimes through Dark Magic, if such a thing truly existed, but the slimes were all turning into shadow, to fade away into the darkness of the room, like so much cotton candy disintegrating inside water.

The star-cored ones lasted moments longer, but they too disintegrated.

For a moment, every participant in the experiment all just looked at the spot where the last star-cored slime had lingered the longest.

“So that didn’t work,” Erick announced.

“Bah.” “Dammit.” “Didn’t work.” “How could it work?” “I’m not sure.”

Soon, the girls were back in the dungeon for a debrief, though they had already talked extensively among themselves in the ten minutes it had taken them to get back. Their consensus, as far as Erick could tell, was disappointment.

“So the slimes not surviving was kinda expected, because they weren’t fully instantiated. But I, like most of you, assumed this would just work.” Erick said. “I assumed that anything you plucked from the Dark would survive, but these specific realities apparently don’t mix like that. So we’ll likely have to do an instantiation sort of thing. For living things, we’re probably going to have to do something similar to what happens in the Glittering Depths, to allow dungeon NPCs to gradually become real people. Maybe I need to get that Name Finder back from the House, if we decide to go after people. Maybe we need some shadeling fugue assistance experts, too. Maybe someone from Ascendant Town can help? If we go after people, anyway.

“For inanimate things, you’re all going to have to learn a bit of Wizardry, to instantiate those things yourselves, like how I made this All-Seeing Eye around my neck, or Wheatly, which Solomon now wields.”

The golden bracelet around Solomon’s wrist briefly glittered in recognition of his name, but then Wheatly realized that Erick wasn’t talking to him, so he stayed wrapped around Solomon’s wrist. All in all, Erick liked the name ‘Wheatly’, but the girls kinda frowned at that name.

Solomon patted Wheatly, then shook his head a little at the girls.

Emily gave a defensive roll of her eyes. “That name is ridiculous.”

“It’s a fine name,” Solomon defended.

Erick continued, “But first thing: How did you tunnel into the Dark? I saw what you did, and I could understand most of it, but if you could put it into words that would be good. Are you girls using Dark Magic?”

Solomon nodded, also wanting that answer.

The girls looked at each other, questioningly.

Debby said, “We have no Dark Magic.”

As though a breaking point in a conspiracy had been reached, Candice casually announced, “Melemizargo was explicit about us not having Dark Magic unless we became Paladins, and we’re not doing that.”

Erick nodded, inwardly very happy for that announcement.

Jane answered, “We just did it? We don’t need Dark Magic. Just a curse ooze form.”

“It was a sort of squiggle and a pop,” Abigail said.

“Not a whole lot of mana cost, either,” Beth said.

Candice said, “We made ourselves one with the Dark.”

All of that was less than conclusive.

And then Debby said, “They focused their body and Prismatic Mana in a Dark way, or as much as possible, and when inside the Dark, this created reality out of Reality long enough to allow them to slip into the Dark’s over-reality. This had the effect of creating a path between the destroyed tunnel-dungeon space, and the slime crystal land, while also creating the slime crystal land just beyond. We’re not Paladins of Melemizargo, but when you get good enough with Prismatic Magic, you can fake some of the restricted magics easily enough.” In a quick and informative sort of way, she added, “Anyway: The Dark has an over-reality that is more dreamlike than Fairy, which he allows us to make dungeons out of now and then. These dungeons seem to be insulated from the greater over-reality until we break a core and force the disruption of connection, forcing the reintegration of the temporary over-reality granted by the core, into the greater over-reality kept together by Melemizargo.”

Everyone stared at Debby a little.

Solomon indicated Debby with an open hand, while saying to everyone else, “Now that makes sense. Why can’t you explain it that way?”

Erick silently agreed.

Jane complained, “I’m not a mage!”

Emily complained, “I didn’t get anything from my memories as a boy.”

Debby chuckled. “You weren’t the right boy.”

Erick interrupted further talk, saying, “I am glad today worked out, and I’m incredibly glad that we don’t have to do this experimental sort of push-into-the-Dark again, because, now that I know how it works, I’m going to find a way to make these tunnels without risking anyone’s lives, and without destroying cores.”

Jane frowned. “Cores are just advanced slimes that aren’t real until a repro or another sapient life gives them that sapience. They’re not real people, dad.”

“We can —and will have to— destroy more cores,” Emily said. “It’s the only way to access the real Dark. And it’s not like we’re sacrificing people.”

“Ah ha! There.” Erick said, “That’s the problem I have with this. It’s just like when you killed the Soul Slime and sacrificed it to Melemizargo. That’s what allowed him to take that sacrifice and make these dungeon cores in the first place, and though you’ve apparently gotten over that, I have not. I don’t approve of sacrificing anything to anyone. And so we’ll find another way. Besides! This way obviously isn’t working—”

“Dad,” Jane said, “This method will work, and won’t require you to work any Wizardry. It’s okay that we didn’t manage to catch it this time; it was a calculated risk.” Jane’s exasperation appeared as she said, “This ‘hunting’ method is the safer way than the ‘bridge building’ method.”

“Well you can just be exasperated, Jane.” Erick added, “And Abigail, Beth, Candice, Debby— Well actually you seem on board with the idea— And Emily. All of you can be exasperated, too. Now that I know how this whole thing works, I’m going to solve this problem with magic!”

Eyes rolled.

Jane asked, “How, though? You didn’t have any good ideas before. What changed?”

“The core-killing tactic relies on you hunting very-mobile fractions of missing reality, and as we have already seen, they move too fast to actually catch. So I want to go back to the original idea; to make tunnels in this dungeon, into the Dark, to find our targets. I’m going to turn one of these [Scry]ing Mirrors into a Doorway.” Erick smiled, saying, “Maybe I can even make a ‘Prismatic Key’—”

Debby instantly said, “I would like to help.”

“Of course, Debby!” Erick said.

“I thought you said you couldn’t do that?” Jane asked. “You couldn’t make tunnels that long?”

“That was before I finally understood how you girls became one with the Dark.” Erick added, “And we won’t be making long tunnels. We’ll be switching from a hunting strategy, to a fishing strategy. I’m going to make a lure.”

Solomon said, “How about a new Rule for the dungeon, too.”

“Yes!” Erick said, “Great idea. We can split up the methodology of such a Wizardry between several smaller parts, making the whole thing easier and more robust.”

Debby got into it, saying, “A lure system doesn’t have to be a ‘lure’ system. It could be a ‘checking-the-nearby-Dark’ and a ‘locking system’ to keep the chosen reality nearby.”

“That can be a Rule, too,” Solomon said, “Another Rule will solidify the floor-system of the dungeon, and allow for the instantiation of a ‘second floor’ in the dungeon, that leads to the location of the item we’re searching for. I’m almost 100% positive that locking a piece of the Dark to this dungeon’s outside will cause problems of Dark intrusion into this place, which will just kill us all. So, we’ll have to put up Rules for that, too. But...” He looked to Erick.

Erick picked up what Solomon was putting down, “So that’s where the Wizardry comes in; that’s where I make a Prismatic Doorway. The Prismatic Key we’re searching for links two places in the universe together, creating a temporary [Gate] between them and solidifying the land on both sides to habitability. But the Doorway I make will be bridging almost no space at all, maybe just a meter or two, with the primary power of it contained to the instantiation of reality.” He looked to the girls. “Much like how you girls made that black crystal land real through your presence.”

Erick had expected push-back on his whole proposal, for what he was doing was taking over a lot of Jane’s current purpose here at this Sundering search. Predictably, Jane, and all the others, did get a certain hardness to their sights as Erick laid out the ‘new plan’, threatening to go above and beyond what they were capable of at this moment. The whole scenario mirrored how he was ‘good at magic’ back when they first landed on Veird, and how Jane had struggled with all of that, eventually causing a rift between them that was still healing, to this day.

But Jane had grown since then.

Jane strongly said, “The reason we don’t want this dungeon directly involved with the hunt is because if there is a catastrophic event during the search, it will spill out elsewhere, from here. What is your plan for that inevitability? For getting caught up in an apocalypse?”

Beth added, “Today was a simple journey into a crystal slime land. But it won’t always be that.”

Candice said, “When we go searching for Primal Lightning, we’ll find Primal Lightning.”

Erick easily said, “Which is why we’ll search for a bunch of useful artifacts before we go after the lightning. Sininindi has even offered to help us get the Lightning Shield, which was one of her things that was instrumental in fending off the Primal Lightning that struck Veird. But, yes.” Erick said, “When we do go after the Sundering itself, we’ll have to delve into remote locations and all of Veird will have to prepare for side effects. But for artifact collecting, we start here.”

Jane and the girls relaxed a fraction. Jane gave a small nod. “It is dangerous to delve into the unfettered Dark, so sure, dad. I approve.”

Erick felt himself grinning—

Jane moved on, “So did anyone experience a break when we broke the core?”

The girls gave a few shaken heads and verbal ‘no’s.

Erick said, “I was on a plane of fire with geysers of flame everywhere. Nothing besides that. Only lasted a fraction of a second.”

There was a small pause of thought at that admission, but it did not last long.

Solomon said, “Nothing this time.”

Debby said, “Nothing for me, either.”

Jane smiled and announced, “Then I think we’re cleared. No need to worry about Dark Dreams.”

Erick was really glad that no one pushed back too hard on his declaration to streamline this whole searching-the-Dark process. He was a little bit pissed, though, that no one was saying they were glad to not chase the Dark and to kill cores in the process.

So Erick decided to say, “It was kinda scary watching you all delve into the Dark like that. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

Jane brushed him off, saying, “We knew what we were doing.”

The other girls looked a whole lot less sure.

Erick pointed out, “Well it looks like you’re the only one who was sure, Jane. Abigail, Beth, Candice, Emily. You all had a different experience. Was it because of the smaller amount of personal mana generation you all share? While Jane is at half a million, or something like that? That generation surely insulated you from the affects of the Dark degradation. But you all were falling apart there in the Dark, weren’t you.”

Jane looked to the girls… And she paused. “Oh my gods. He’s right, isn’t he.”

Abigail firmly said, “It appears that there is a qualitative difference between having 500,000 mana generation versus 100,000. I felt like I was about to collapse at any moment, there in the deeper Dark. The slimes, once taken out of the Dark, did collapse. Transferring between realms was not as simple as you made it look, Jane.”

Debby spoke up, “I’d like us all to go to the house for a proper debrief because I saw some weird shit happening in there that I don’t think anyone else caught. Did you all see how the slimes with star-eyes were all looking at one part of the sky overhead? They were looking at something specific. I didn’t see it, but it was there.”

A moment passed.

Erick said, “Let’s go to the house and everyone can talk about everything, from start to finish.”

- - - -

Over the next hour, each of the girls gave a full breakdown of what they saw and how they moved. Technically, Erick should have done the debriefing separately, to keep the testimonies from interfering with each other, but he wasn’t about that right now, and neither were the girls. Once those testimonies came out, there was actual talk.

That talk didn’t get very far.

But it did make Debby slightly angry.

Erick sighed, as he said, “No one else saw what you saw, Debby.”

“I know,” Debby said, through a carefully controlled frown. “And you know what? That’s fine.” She made herself relax. “Maybe it was a delayed response to the core breaking— I know what I saw… But I admit… It might have been nothing.”

Erick suggested, “Maybe it’s time for one of us to wear the Bracelet of Memory full time?”

Poi said, “It wouldn’t help. If there is some sort of grand anti-memetic threat happening then that person would try to get us to understand something outside of our understanding. When that proved impossible, the person would simply take off the Bracelet and return to the ‘normal’ that we’re experiencing right now, because the weight of responsibility of knowledge would simply be too much for them. This neatly explains why the Bracelet is so reprehensible to everyone who wears it, beyond just the fact that the wearer never forgets anything once they put it on.” He looked to everyone, and said, “Someone will have to be that person, though. Eventually. Not right now.”

A moment passed.

Erick said, “It’s very annoying that even the gods don’t seem immune to the anti-meme.”

“Maybe there is no anti-meme, and we’re gaslighting ourselves.” Solomon said, “The only reason we think there is an anti-meme is because no one knows what caused the Sundering, not even the gods. But sometimes information has simply been lost, never to be retrieved again.”

Everyone gave him a look.

Solomon raised his hands defensively, saying, “I’m just saying.”

Jane spoke up, “We should try the Bracelet experiments again. We all only wore it for an hour. Perhaps we can learn things through the length of time we experience while wearing it.” She explained, “Perhaps we can have a pair of timers, and the wearer can talk about what they see to an observer, and when the wearer is talking about the anti-meme, they can stop the timer. The experiment stops when the observer’s timer wears out.

“If there is an anti-meme, then the wearer’s timer will still have time in it, since they will have stopped the timer when the observer stopped reacting to them. The experiment could be a simple statement of ‘go’, passed back and forth between the two participants.” Jane said, “Like a pair of us can just pass a verbal command to ‘go’ between us, and when it stops, they stop their timer.”

Another moment passed.

Poi said, “It’s a good idea. If it works then we can maybe pass clues about the anti-meme to normal parties, though I have concerns that the theoretical anti-meme is too strong to allow such an experiment to produce actionable results. Perhaps it is a Time-based anti-meme, considering even Wizard-level Time Magic stopped working properly back when the Sundering struck the Old Cosmology.”

Jane nodded; yeah, her idea of an experiment had holes in it, for sure.

Poi nodded, too, as he continued, “But an experiment of that nature is something we should delay, anyway. We’re not ready to confront what might be behind the Sundering right now. We won’t be for quite some time.”

Erick said, “A fair assessment.” He smiled, announcing, “So let’s leave all that until we’re ready for it later, and get to work on changing this dungeon into a fishing boat.”

Solomon began, “So for the new Rules, I was thinking...”