Chapter 244, 1/2

The dungeon was set, the memory on the other side of the gate would hold, with all 9s listed on the timer above the path. The path lay directly in the hallway of the grand cathedral that held the Censer, so there was some worry that one of the memories of people would accidentally walk through the gate and end up in the dungeon. But that didn’t happen. The people on the other side didn’t even notice the existence of the gate, and when they walked away from the Censer on a collision course with the gate, they simply walked through the space as though it did not exist.

Because it didn’t exist; not for them. For them, this dungeon, this modern time, was immaterial and false. They were made of Darkness and mana and memory, and a whole lot of Elemental Dream, too. But then again, all the Elements within the Dark’s reality were real. They were certainly more real than the Particles on this side of the gate.

Erick announced the next task, “Now we just have to figure out how to bring things from that side onto this side. We’ll start with some of the trinkets on the walls and all of that; try to figure out how to turn Elemental Stone into granite, which is mostly oxygen, but also silicon and aluminum and potassium and all of that junk. Now would be a good time to research the Grand Translation magic at the start of the Script, I think.”

Solomon opined, “Or you could just try some Wizardry. Maybe based on some [Physical Domain] Wizardry, to inject some physicality into it all.”

Erick nodded, saying, “That sounds like a good base understanding of it all; yes. Especially for the Censer itself. That thing looks like it might be pure Destruction… And adamantium. Whatever adamantium was made of back then, anyway. It certainly wasn’t osmium like it is now.”

Debby said, “Well maybe it was, actually. There was that theory you bandied about regarding the Goddess of Knowledge and how she had to have known what Particles were, if people were transubstantiating between the Old Cosmology and other Cosmologies all the time; Planars and such. They even sacrificed her in order to get at that knowledge, so she had the knowledge, at least there at the end.”

Erick considered that very valid point. And then he said, “Well yes. She was the source of the Grand Translation magic. Perhaps she knew lesser Translations, too… Or someone did. Or someone still does… Or maybe not anymore, because Knowledge was Sacrificed and no one codified Particles until I came along.

“As far as I know, people who come into Veird from elsewhere are codified in the Script, and the Registrars have Translation Magic to facilitate communication, but people aren’t transformed into other forms. I don’t believe that the Script has any innate Grand Translation magic anymore, so we have to figure this out ourselves. But we could just ask someone? Hard to know without asking someone...” Erick hummed. He continued, “Anyway. I made that pure-Benevolence scroll a few weeks ago. Maybe I can reverse the process. I might have to, actually, since I’m getting the feeling that that sort of magic was truly Sacrificed for the greater good of Veird.”

“You know…” Solomon said, “I kinda think that’s why it took so long for Particle Magic to be made.” As people looked to him for explanations, Solomon said, “We’ve already gone over it once, but perhaps there is no memetic threat. Perhaps the Sacrifice of Knowledge is truly what stopped advancements for so long.”

Debby frowned a little, saying, “No. There’s a memetic threat out there. I am sure of it.”

“Well yeah,” Solomon admitted. “I’m pretty sure there is, too, but there is value in pursuing less obvious answers to questions about the current state of the world. So let’s all keep an open mind.”

Erick could find no fault with that, and it looked like no one else could, either.

Poi moved on first, saying, “I can already tell you that no one knows how to properly Translate mana into particles, and that the Grand Translation magic that was used at the beginning of the Script is no longer a retrievable function of the Script, because that functionality was lost sometime between the Death of all Halves and the Rage Wars. A lot of stuff was lost back then.”

Erick said, “Oh. Well...”

Poi continued, “There have been a lot of attempts at regaining… Ah. Well that’s something obvious I didn’t think of. Maybe we do still have Grand Translation Magic in the Script after all.”

While Poi had spoken, Erick’s mind spun into a thousand directions, eventually distracting the sapphire scaled man. As others looked from Poi to Erick, they wondered what was up.

Erick simply said, “The Grand Translation is just an instantiation of possibility into solid form based on this reality. In the greatest sense, we already have examples of this happening in this very day, like how Familiars become real people, or how shadelings crawl out of the shadows. One day soon, maybe 3 months away, Ophiel is going to become a real soul and he will create a real body at that time.”

Ophiel flapped his wings on Erick’s shoulder, asking, “I will?”

“Yes you will,” Erick said, “Which leads me to believe that either the Script still has Grand Translation magics in it —highly likely; almost assuredly— or it’s easy for mana to create real things, when in a proper environment. So! Here’s what I want to do: Leave the Censer on that side for days or a week, or whatever, while we research Translation Magic. We might not have to search for long, though, because I am reasonably sure that I can make a Translation happen, even without knowing the exact way all the particles go together. All I have to do is guide the Script and Particles over into that side of reality, while also calling on the mana to support such a translation.” He said to Debby, “This would probably be that mag-9 Particle Magic we were talking about.” He said to everyone, “It would be a multiversal pull using the possibility provided by mana as a baseline resource and the underlying nature of the current visual and mana-soaked reality as a catalyst or sounding board toward getting the real thing.

“I think I could send out a pulse of power, probably using [Physical Domain] like Solomon suggests, into an item, in order to make that item recognize itself along the parameters of this universe. Like using a picture of a thing in order to make the thing.”

Erick felt he was touching upon some universal truth in that statement; perhaps quite literally.

The others were less convinced.

Poi gave a concerned-yet-hiding-it, “Okaaaay.”

Solomon said, “You’re considering that ‘particles’ are the ‘mana’ of this universe, and thus a translation is possible through the possibilities provided by a multiverse just on the other side of sight.”

“Yes!” Erick said, “You get it!”

Jane spoke up, “Now I’m not one to usually suggest this, but perhaps you should just talk to Rozeta about this. Or Quilatalap. Or any of the others. Use them as a sounding board before you go doing the same with reality itself.”

“Well yes,” Erick said, “I could do that. But not yet. We’re not really at that point.”

Solomon said, “And besides. All this shit is basically just [True Resurrection] magic, anyway, and you already know how to do that.”

Erick side-eyed him, saying, “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“Explain how,” Solomon said, challenging him.

“Those people beyond the gate can be Soul Magic’d over here, sure. But artifacts often do not have souls, and so using Soul Magic on them and expecting it to work would be like eating soup with a toothpick,” Erick said. “Souls are easy to build bodies around. Souls want to be inside bodies. Artifacts have complicated magical reinforcements that are completely disconnected from each other. You couldn’t build a car from a headlight. But you could build a car from a blueprint and metals and a bunch of actual work.”

Solomon said, “Aye, that’s a complication. But do you really think that these items don’t have souls? That Censer is probably even an artifact that makes its own mana; it certainly looks culturally significant to me.”

“… Point,” Erick said.

Debby spoke up, “Bodies are super complicated, but souls can build those all the time. This is a Healing Magic problem, isn’t it? Perhaps we do need a god’s help in this part.”

Erick thought. Solomon considered.

Candice was kinda checking out of the magic conversation, for she muttered, “I thought we had gotten past the most difficult part.”

Beth said, “This was never going to be easy.”

“I think it’s interesting,” Emily said, “But I’m not sure I can help right now.”

Jane tried to cut through the gordian knot, “Make the dungeon do the work.” She added, “Or really, Melemizargo.”

Erick instantly said, “The problem with that is that no one will accept such artifacts.”

“They’ll barely accept them anyway,” Solomon said, “The chances of them working as they’re supposed to work and being what we want them to be are higher if we get divine help, yes, but then we’re beholden to gods.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“And that’s not good,” Debby said.

“Oh! I just thought—” Erick suggested, “What about working along an Elemental Dream axis in order to reach a targeted Reality and bring it to reality? Like summoning a fae through Fairy? Or an angel or demon through Angel or Demon?” He gestured to the land beyond the gate. “That is a Dream, after all.”

Before the conversation could tangle further, Poi spoke up, “Let’s circle back to your original statement: Let’s bring some trinkets from that side to this side and try to make them real before we go after the Censer.”

Beth was very ready to get past the talking stage of this ordeal, so she instantly said, “On it!” as she started walking fast toward the gate.

Erick shouted, “There are—! … Still people on that side. Hmm.”

Beth was already through the gate, up and over in the Dark Dream within a handful of moments.

What happened next was surprising in many different ways.

The Cathedral of Destruction was what the place was known as, according to the words coming from the priests and otherwise as they gave their speech, as they watched over the continued destruction of some sort of artifact, which filled the land with knee-height heavy black smoke. There were a lot of simple facts displayed there, as all of that happened. But one of them suddenly stood out to Erick, as more important than all the rest. Those people were speaking Ecks. That fact hadn’t quite registered to Erick, or the others, until now, for some reason.

The entire ceremony had been in Ecks.

Erick knew the language they were speaking on the other side. This ancient language was known.

How the fuck?

Which made it all the more terrifying, in an existential sort of way, when Beth stepped onto the floor of the Cathedral, ignoring the smoke layered across the ground, headed straight for a pew, where some loose papers were stored in a slot behind the pew ahead. Those prayer papers were an easy target; they looked mass-produced, and there were a hundred pews in the cathedral that held similar papers. They were a good base for a repeatable experiment. She grabbed those loose prayer sheets—

And a priest at the Censer called out, “Ma’am! Worship isn’t for another cycle! You shouldn’t be in here!”

Beth acted fast, “Sorry, sir!” She plucked the papers and was already on her way out, saying, “I didn’t mean to interrupt! Don’t mind me; leaving right now.”

“Ma’am!” The priest came down from the side of the Censer, saying, “You can’t take—” He stopped still. He stared, watching as Beth stepped into the air, walking up the stairs of the Gate. To him, what Beth was doing had to be some sort of blasphemy, or something, for her to be walking into the air, maybe; Erick wasn’t quite sure. Or maybe he could see the gate? Erick hoped the fuck not. Either way, the priest knew something was up. The priest roared, “GUARDS! Seize— What… Where did she go!”

Just like she had gone too fast for Erick to tell her otherwise, Beth was already through the gate and down the other side, gripping papers in her hands. She looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was following while she handed off the disintegrating papers to her father.

No one was following.

Erick took the papers in his aura and flicked a spell of Time into the air, making a bubble of Stopped time atop the ‘papers’. The papers stopped disintegrating. Mostly. But they were also just mana, and like all broken spellwork, they were trying to return to the manasphere. Erick left it there for now; it would keep for a moment while he dealt with the fallout of Beth’s theft.

The priest and his guards, and then a second priest who had been out of view, all started shouting about what they had just seen, or not seen. The priest rushed forward, down the aisle toward the gate, but he stopped halfway to where Beth had vanished.

The guards mercilessly advanced. The guard on the left was a woman with pointed ears and blood-red eyes, who had some sort of short staff in her hands. She swirled the smoke at her feet and the smoke swirled at her command, flowing forward like several tendrils, headed to the gate—

And passing right through, as though the gate was not there.

The second guard was a man with a halo of silver hovering around the back of his head, looking like a thin razor, or a sword made into a circle. He telekinetically took the razor into his hand as he rushed forward, passing through the gate-occupied space and then beyond. Erick heard the man call out ‘I don’t see them!’

“Fucking shit,” muttered the priest. “Were the parishioners followed? Was that a demon?”

“Absolutely not,” came the voice of the razor-ring man, who was still out-of-frame, and whom Erick now recognized as an alvani; a human/angel man. Before the Old Demons had caused the Death of all Halves in order to make the demon/human incani, the only sort of hybrid of souls that used to be able to exist between those old powers were of the angel/human variety. Or other angelic flavors. Angel/elf was a common one, too. The razor-ring guard stepped back into view, demanding to know, “You felt the Dark and the mana pouring off of her, didn’t you? She was a Shade of the over-god.”

The elf woman instantly fired back, “Do not speak such blasphemy without proof. All she had was a strong manasoul and…” The woman angrily gestured to the space where Beth had vanished. “And some sort of hiding magics. Maybe she was a Wizard-in-training.” She said to the priest, “I don’t believe she was a demon.”

The alvani man said, “I felt a fraction of Vile from her, but there was so much…”

“Hard to say,” said the elf, completing the man’s thought.

The priest stared hard at the land in front of him, as people poked their heads into frame, far down the cathedral. The priest breathed, then said, “I think it was a demon.”

The alvani man shouted, “It wasn’t a demon! It was—”

Erick tuned them out, because Jane was talking.

Jane asked everyone, “Anyone else suddenly finding it fucking terrifying that we can understand them, but they’re speaking other languages? And that we didn’t even think about this with the others with that Purity fountain, who spoke some other language, too?”

Abigail, Beth, Candice, and Debby all tensed.

Emily, Poi, and Solomon, did not.

Poi said, “I’m already trying to understand what happened there. All I can tell right now is that Erick realized this half a minute ago, then I was next, and then Solomon, and now everyone else. There was a clarity of thought that was achieved, that had not been there before. I have no idea what it means.”

The priest and his two guards on the other side of the gate continued to argue about what they had seen. Nothing important had changed there.

Solomon gestured to the prayer sheets, frozen in time. “And those are legible. Wheatly. Come out now.”

Solomon’s staff flashed to fullness beside him, hovering gently, the white crystal at the top glowing softly, as the image of wheat fields held reflected on the silver surface. Words were also on that surface, carved deep and strong. Solomon was already reading the surface, and Erick was, too.

Solomon said, “Don’t see any words I recognize as words, except for the ones I put down myself; ‘Repent all sinners and be spared’.”

Erick didn’t see any words he recognized either, so he moved on to the sheet of paper. It was completely legible. He gestured at the paper, “That’s a prayer to Destruction Itself. No one will be saying those words out loud except me, maybe, in order to instantiate the Censer to this reality. And not right now.”

The argument beyond the gate was reaching a crescendo.

The priest shouted, “This is intolerable and unprofessional! Not only did you two see the anomaly but you let her go! I was the one who actually acted—”

Ring-man said, “And if you would have been calmer, she might have stuck around and we would have gotten answers.”

Smoke elf spoke, “Stop,” and the knee-high smoke rippled with her voice. The other two went silent, but not out of fear; but because they respected her. The smoke elf calmly said, “Might have simply been a fair folk. We can send a letter to Wizard Hewer, with our three accounts of what happened, and then we wait for him to show. In the meanwhile, we secure the area and increase the guards on the Censer, as we would do for any anomalous activity that happened around a Destruction.”

“Ughhh,” Erick and Solomon groaned at almost the same time.

Candice voiced, “That means that if we wait to steal it, it’s just going to get harder?”

“Probably,” Poi said.

“Would another Wizard even be real?” Jane asked.

“I wouldn’t risk it,” Poi said.

Solomon asked, “Chance speaking to them? Try to prevent them from doing anything drastic?”

Emily said, “Sounds to me like they have to actually call their Wizard. He can’t just appear like you can, dad. We might have a window of opportunity here that will close later.”

Emily was right, and everyone else knew it, too.

Erick thought for a moment.

He looked across a gulf of eternity and reality, from the present, to a memory of the deepest past that could be real under the right circumstances. There were many ways to create the ‘right circumstances’. There was that Name Finder artifact from Crystal Archmage Imara, from Greensoil. That red cube was good to use on people. Erick had used that small red cube upon the Riamites who wanted [Reincarnation]s. But before the Name Finder, there was the simple act of experiencing the Other and making it real through constant exposure. The Name Finder was a fast-ways to make that realization happen, but the normal method was the second one. From shadelings coming out of their fugue and realizing they were in a new body and life, to what was happening to Ophiel right now as his soul was gradually being made real…

The smoke elf’s words were grating to the priest and the ring-man’s sensibilities.

Their argument started up again.

Anyone watching the argument quickly found out that something like ‘a person appearing and then leaving without any traces’ did not happen in the Cathedral of Destruction. The smoke elf tried some old-school mana tracing, as one would use for anyone [Teleport]ing in the Old Cosmology, but her trace ended at the gate, and she had no idea what that meant. ‘It shouldn’t be possible!’ she said, more than once. All in all, they had very little methodology for dealing with what they were dealing with.

Some priest on the other side of the cathedral, watching all this happen with the others, had already calmly walked away, saying they would send the signal. No one seemed to be in a real rush, though.

There was time to talk about next steps.

Erick asked, “Beth? How was your mana sense on the other side? Cause mine ends about at the gate, or a little bit beyond.”

Everyone’s mana sense ended at the gate threshold.

Beth said, “It came back once I was through the gate, but it was wonky. Very short.”

All the other girls nodded at that. They had all experienced the land beyond the gate the other time, when it was focused on that Purity Fountain.

“Aura control?” Erick asked.

The girls all said variations of ‘not much’. Beth agreed that this situation here was like the situation before.

Jane said, “Control in the body was easy, but mostly I just attuned to the Dark as much as my slime form allowed, and tried to constrain the mana into my body.”

Candice said, “All that flesh-flaking was our mana destroying our impure body from within.”

“Expelling our particles, yeah,” Beth said. “It’s still the Dark over there.”

Erick nodded, and said, “Well let’s see if this works… and if it does, these people are probably going to awaken as real. So that’ll be fun.”

The group tensed, except for Poi—

As Erick stepped toward the gate and threaded his aura outward, forming a thin line of white glows. His aura reached the gate, and the strange surreality contained within. It was like dipping his toes into ice and knives, and not like either of those two things at all. ‘Pain’ was not the feeling here. More like Erick was touching something that was not meant to be touched.

His aura proceeded anyway, through the gate, flickering lightning—

“Something comes!” said the priest, rapidly backing up from the empty air, almost running back to the Censer. He stopped halfway there.

The warriors had other ideas. More violent ones. The smoke elf rolled smoked at Erick’s aura, disrupting his power all the way back to his side of the gate, while the ring-man’s angelic-powered ring whipped forward in some sort of attack. That ring vanished as it passed through the gate. And then the ring reappeared, slicing back through the space again, in the other direction, to return to the man’s hand.

The elf whispered, “An intangible [Gate].”

The ring man nodded, preparing himself for the worst.

Erick frowned. And then he manipulated his aura to form the words for ‘peace’, which would have been impossible because he didn’t know the words for ‘peace’ in whatever language they were speaking, but ‘peace’ was upon the prayer sheets that Beth had stolen. And so, Erick showed them ‘peace’, disregarding the fact that there was a large disconnect happening right here between how languages got in his head and how they had gotten on the other side, and how all of that worked.

… Mostly disregarding all of that.

The smoke elf almost attacked again, but her smoke pulled back at the last second when she saw the words ‘peace’.

She demanded, “You hear us?”

“… Uh.” Erick looked at the prayer song. “I can’t answer that question based on the information I have.” He looked to Poi.

Poi spoke, “I’m working on it.” His tendrils were through the gate. The people on the other side didn’t seem to sense them, either, which was some sort of miracle or something. “Okay. I’m getting it. What do you want to write?” Erick wanted to ask about how he was making his tendrils invisible, but— Poi answered, “I’m making them not able to see me, but they are on very high alert. I can’t reach the guys in the back, and they’re going to call in reinforcements soon. I'll give you 2 minutes.”

Erick told Poi, “Say ‘I can barely hear you. We’re in another realm.’ We’ll go from there.”

Poi supplied Erick with the words he was looking for, and Erick repeated those words in his aura display, just beyond the gate’s other side.

The warriors tensed as they read, turning solid in the face of an unknown threat—

Poi pulled back. “I got the full language. It’s called ‘Imperial’. They’re in the Endless Empire, in the Farundari Stretch of the Radiant Depths. Year 12,400 according to their calendar—”

“Why are you here? Who was that invader from before? That woman?” the smoke elf asked, her voice slightly louder than before.

Erick had a thought, Poi supplied his words before he even needed to ask, and Erick wrote out, “Your realm is dead. You have been subsumed by the Dark, as a memory. We’re here to rescue you and the Censer, but mostly the Censer. We are still working on how to do all of that, but those are our goals.”

Jane asked Poi, “Do they even have minds to read?”

Poi said, “I don’t know how it works either, Jane.”

Erick left the message there. The people on the other side instantly started debating amongst themselves.

There were suddenly other concerns for Erick, though.

Erick said to his family, “For some reason, as we talk with them, the barrier is getting thicker and deeper. But also thinner, paradoxically. There’s a bigger depth, but the thickness of punching through that depth is easier. Also: according to my All-Seeing Eye, their souls are brightening. I’m pretty sure I could [True Resurrection] all of them if they got close enough to the gate. So that’s one half of the translation problem solved but I still have no idea how to instantiate the Censer.”

“You’d have to [Reincarnation] both of them, too; not just [True Resurrection],” Solomon said. “Alvani cannot exist on this side. Elves are non-grata.”

Jane asked, “Are you really going to bring the people to life?”

Candice added, “They’re not real right now. We do not have to take on this security risk.”

Erick was starting to think Candice was the bloodthirsty one, but they all were like that. Candice just let it show more than the others, when she could.

“Yes we do have to take on this security risk

,” Erick said, “Besides! Who else would know how the Censer functions best—”

The very second Erick announced his true intentions, something shifted in the very foundations of existence. The Dark surrounding the slime dungeon flexed. The black ocean roiled—

Fallopolis stepped out of the air, onto the grounds beside Erick’s family. The Shade of Civilization wore a masculine-cut black suit and she held her black kendrithyst crystal staff in her left hand. Her wild, curly white hair bobbed as she stepped forward heavily, her bright eyes happily shining white, as she said, “We are glad you are making the decision to rescue people from Dark Dreams, Erick. Please allow me to witness this event, and to help with the aftermath.”

The gate deepened as Fallopolis spoke.

A pathway became apparent.

On Erick’s side, nothing physically changed. Not really. But Erick’s aura control around the gate space got a whole lot easier, and a whole lot of shit simultaneously happened on the other side, for the elf and the alvani instantly backed up, taking hard stances. Erick wasn’t sure what they were seeing, for he wasn’t sure what he was seeing either.

Erick said to Fallopolis, “They’re going to Candlepoint if they—”

“Ho!” called the elf, “I hear you now!”

“We’re not going fucking anywhere!” roared the alvani.

The shadows of the past backed up, and started arguing again.

Erick put up a sound barrier, then asked Fallopolis, “Any idea how come we know the language?”

Fallopolis smiled a little, saying, “Tsk tsk, Erick. Making Wizardry and not fully understanding it? How ever will you cope with the mystery!”

“Don’t deflect,” Erick said, “This is serious. This is a memetic hazard. How do we know this language? How is Poi able to work Mind Magic on them at all?”

Fallopolis shaped right up, saying, “You separated this dungeon from the Script as much as you could, but the Script has some basic functionality with translations—”

“Well that’s one question answered,” Solomon said.

Fallopolis continued, “But not on this level that you’re working. I’m pretty sure the gate is somehowinherently full of Translation Magic. I have no idea why you only recognized this until now. I thought that was the point; translating things. But magic does cross the 10% divide quite often if you’re 90% there.” She turned toward the gate, saying, “All magic is about communication, too, so I’m not exactly sure why you’re that surprised. You not recognizing that you were working Translation Magic is peculiar, though.”

Erick touched the Lidless eyes hanging around his neck, beside his All-Seeing Eye. “Not very effective, eh?”

Debby pulled the Bracelet of Memory from her pocket and snapped it around her wrist. She winced, her eyes darting around for a moment before she settled.

Candice had the Crown of Self hanging from a loop on her belt, but now she put it on her head. She said, “Havuhohpwt oijqwe pjpati oqu.”

Everyone looked at her.

“The area Translation Magic isn’t working for you anymore,” Fallopolis said, somehow simultaneously in Imperial, and Ecks, the two strings of sounds coming out of her mouth like she was a dubbed actor and the audio techs had forgotten to remove the original soundtrack.

Candice shrugged. This was fine.

Poi said to Erick, “They’re artifacts and we’re in the Dark, Erick. Their effect would only ever be minimal… Though I only realized there was a translation effect after you did. So— Ah. Later.”

The guys on the other side had stopped arguing, so Poi went silent with his point.

The elf spoke up, and Erick released the sound barrier, “Can you prove you are the Dark?”

“I’m not the Dark,” Erick said, and his voice reached them. “I’m just a Wizard, poking through the memories of the Dark, searching for things to salvage from a destroyed universe.”

As terror crept across the faces of the elf and alvani, the dungeon flexed again.

The pathways between Old and New widened, and like the brush of a thousand ephemeral silks, Erick felt a wind billow from the gate. Lightning flickered here and there, dancing in and out of the space, linking both sides together.

And suddenly the people on the other side looked through the gate, and saw Erick and his family. And also Fallopolis.

The elf surrounded herself with smoke—

But the alvani’s armor began to flake away. He yelped and leapt backward, crashing through wooden pews as he retreated, yelling, “It’s an attack!”

“It’s not an attack!” Erick called out, “Our realms are just incompatible. You’re in the Dark, like a shadeling.” He rapidly asked Fallopolis, “They know about shadelings, right?”

Fallopolis rapidly answered, “They’re powerful people and they know magic; they should.”

Debby whispered, “That alvani is bleeding now. A lot. Is that because of the stuff?”

She meant the switch from when the Old Demons broke the Script in order to make incani, and disallow alvani.

Fallopolis answered, “Extremely, yes. It takes an act of the Dark to keep alvani alive over here. Priestess was only able to remain together because of His actions, and only as a skeleton.”

The alvani guarded himself beside the Censer, a good forty meters away. Blood flowed freely from him, while an acolyte tried to heal him. The healing wasn’t working too well, though. The alvani cried out in pain, and the acolyte stopped, saying, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! The gods— I don’t feel them anymore!’

Well, Erick thought, that would be because the gods you’re praying for don’t exist over there.

A double handful of people huddled behind the Censer, and near the alvani warrior, well past the edge of the mixing-of-realities effect, or whatever it was that was happening between this side and that side. The elf stayed closer, though. Elves weren’t removed from Veird by the Death of all Halves; they were removed from Veird because of systemic genocide against them.

The elf stood still, gauging what she was seeing. Erick’s mana senses now extended about that far, so she was probably sensing Erick just as much as he was sensing her. Her body was entirely made of mana, while her soul was thin, but growing stronger. A lot stronger, actually. She would soon meet the same fate as the alvani if Erick didn’t act soon, tho—

“What is wrong with your bodies?” the elf asked. “You’re made of nothings.”

Erick said, “We’re made of various forces that are present in this Cosmology, which are not present in your Cosmology.”

The priest, who huddled by the Censer with the alvani, called out, “Wizard Hewer is on his way! You better leave, or you face Destruction Itself!”

Fallopolis softly said, “I doubt it. The stabilized memory is only a cubic kilometer. Nothing will enter that space from the outside. If they come out on this side without being fully out of their fugue then you better be prepared for some raging shadelings, Erick. Or don’t let them come on this side too fast.”

Erick listened to Fallopolis, but he also watched the elf. Something very interesting was happening to her. As the woman listened to Fallopolis her soul magnified tenfold, that ephemeral thing that lay just below her skin and within the core of her body —for she was an accomplished mage, with a true core— turning from a mist to a thick cloud. By the time Fallopolis finished speaking, Erick now knew what he was looking at. He had seen the exact same thing happen to shadelings a thousand times, as they woke up from their shadow fugue.

Right on cue, the elf looked around, her eyes going wide as she blinked rapidly. And then she went hard, slowly stepping away from the gate as power flowed from her core to grab the smoke all around her, prayers falling from her lips, “What is this trickery—”

Fallopolis called out, “Girl! Take a look at your armor! Your skin. You’re in the Dark. You’re flaking away. As soon as you become fully cognizant, you will die if you retreat deeper in the Dark.”

The smoke elf paused, briefly eyeing her arms. And then she stopped and watched as a layer of silver armor flaked away from her gauntleted right arm like a scab floating away in the bath, revealing that her arms were already wounded with unfelt destruction pulling her apart.

“It’s a trick!” called the ring man. “Get away from there Shalia! Wizard Hewer is on his way!”

Fallopolis instantly said to Erick, “That’s not going to happen. That space is contained over there. Just as all their gods don’t exist over there, there is no Wizard Hewer capable of reaching that land.”

Shalia stilled. She stared at Erick, and then at Fallopolis, then back to Erick, calmly asking, “What is this?”

Erick said, “Your soul is developing far enough for you to see yourself and the world around you for what it is. With every passing moment, I can mana sense more of your world over there, and you can do the same for mine. No doubt you see that right under me is stone, but also nothing; the Dark is down there. It is the same on your side. I see about two meters of stone under your feet, and then it’s the Dark, roiling and shifting with memories and magic.” Erick said, “The light coming from those windows up there is false.” As Erick said those words, the cathedral darkened, the light of day fading beyond the windows. And now Darkness crept in, replacing the glass in the windows entirely. It spilled forth like slow tendrils. “And now your world is collapsing. Everything beyond what we have focused on is a memory. Despair if you wish, but know that there is hope. Come to this side and be reborn. And we want the Censer, too.”

Erick made sure they knew what he was really after. It might help to save them, or not. People were suspicious when you tried to help only them, but if you gave them a demand with that help, then they were more apt to believe your words, especially if you truly were after something else and only happened to meet them, in their time of need.

Shalia delayed, tensing—

The alvani man shouted, “He’s a demon, Shalia! Get away from him!”

Shalia stepped back and her silver armor suddenly frayed, blood spooling into the air, all becoming shadows.

A lot of questions occurred to Erick, as he watched the elf woman slowly disintegrate. Why was she falling apart, and not the ground, or the pews, or the walls or the ceiling? Why were the solid, dead things made of mana, surviving better than Shalia, with her soul? But the second he had that question, he answered himself. Shalia had a soul. The rest of the world over there did not… Maybe the Censer did? Erick wasn’t sure. The Censer seemed to be holding up fine—

Shalia’s right forearm broke into fragments of nothing, though her soul remained where it had been. That soul was the only thing holding her hand in position, though there was no flesh between it and the rest of her arm. Shalia stared at that fragmentation, her eyes hotly recognizing her mortality.

“I never meant for this transposition to cause pain or harm, but I can already see that’s where we’re headed.” Erick said. “Let me save you, Shalia. Let me pull you and all the others from this memory of the Dark.”

Shalia’s hand fell off. And then her knee began to disintegrate—

“Time’s up, Erick,” Solomon said, before he declared, “J, A, E, C; capture and rescue. D, B, stay and support.”

Jane, Abigail, Emily, and Candice all rushed forward, moving as an invasive unit. Beth and Debby went slightly slower. The girls moved at incredibly enhanced speeds, but Solomon’s aura moved faster. With lightning-rimmed light, Solomon sent power through the portal—

Erick briefly considered interrupting. He weighed the pros and cons of stopping this invasion, this violence. But Solomon was right. Erick understood what his brother was doing, so that he didn’t have to, so that he could remain the positive force, while Solomon did what was necessary. Erick was thankful for that, because he had been half a moment away from doing exactly what Solomon was doing.

—and Solomon’s power latched on to Shalia like a clutching fist of Benevolent Lightning. Solomon pulled, simultaneously crushing Shalia’s brief attempt at resistance and securing her soul within his lightning, for the woman disintegrated completely when she passed through the gate. All of the mana of her body vanished into the manasphere of the dungeon.

And then Solomon manually cast [True Resurrection], flashing Shalia back to life, into a physical body that was completely at home in this reality. He flashed a [Reincarnation] across her body next, taking several seconds to set her to rights, to take away her elvish body and give her a human one.

Fallopolis and Erick casually watched that happen.

And then Erick turned his full attentions back to the gate, to watch the girls' invasion.

People screamed. They tried fighting back.

The priest stood beside the Censer and called out words of power above the carved metal cauldron, but nothing happened. This distressed the priest almost as much as when Jane tackled the alvani warrior and tangled the disintegrating warrior up in webbing wrought from her hands. Jane threw the bundle of a person twenty meters, into Debby’s waiting power, who then handed it off to Solomon’s waiting aura, nearer the gate. Jane moved on to help Candice grab the priest behind the Censer. The four girls at the front moved fast, subduing and capturing, while the other two transported people out of the Darkening cathedral. Some got away, rushing forward into the Dark, unable to see the Dark ahead of them. Others shied away from the waterfalls of black coming out of the windows, only to fall into the girls’ webs.

Within two minutes there were 9 bundles of webs on this side of the gate, and Erick was resurrecting and reincarnating them right alongside Solomon.

By the time the girls came through with the last person, the land beyond was falling apart and all the rescued people had been made viable for life on this side of reality.

Some of them had been harder to bring back than others. The alvani warrior’s cocoon had completely collapsed by the time Beth shoved it through the gate; it held almost nothing, and only half of the man’s rapidly disintegrating soul. Erick had managed to bring that man back through some manually cast magics, transforming him into a normal human. Erick had needed to do that sort of transformation twice, for there had been another alvani within the Cathedral of Destruction aside from the ring warrior.

Before Erick knew it, all the girls except for one had come back through the gate.

“DEBBY!” Erick commanded, “Get your ass back here!”

Debby stared at the ceiling and at the Censer. She was wearing the Bracelet of Memory right now and she was seeing something on the other side that no one else could see. But at Erick’s voice, she obeyed. Debby raced through the gate, back into the slime dungeon.

The cathedral had been a land of white stone, filled with smoke from the Censer of Destruction. Now it was a land decayed by Dreams turning into Darkness. Stained glass windows had been replaced with portals to liquid black ooze that waterfalled into the cathedral like streams of absolute black honey that was also —somehow— alive and cloying.

The Censer remained untouched by all of that.

The timer above the gate remained at all 9s, but at Erick’s glance, the timer also showed all 0s. It rapidly showed 9s again, and then flickered in unknown symbols.

Erick knew what he needed to do, so he did it. He splashed his [Physical Domain] through the gate, bringing a Particle understanding to the other side, as he glanced at the [Stop]ed prayer sheets hanging beside him. In a flashing moment, Erick condensed what appeared to be an hour-long sermon into a quick, powerful poem,

“In cauldron’s embrace, destruction is grace

“Power and mercy, enveloping space

“Guided through pure faith, smokey aftermath

“With steadfast resolve, walk this righteous path.”

Erick’s words became an echo that vibrated along a corridor created by his power, aimed directly through the gate. Blackness splashed away from that corridor, and white light latched on to the Censer like a 10-meter wide tunnel bored through reality, to envelop the 7 meter wide artifact of power. The stone underneath the Censer fractured and broke. But the Censer remained, hovering.

All the cathedral fell to Darkness.

And the Censer flowed outward, toward Erick, to pass through the gate, its curled, white weave darkening, flashing solid as material appeared from Elsewhere, turning mana into real metal. Into black adamantium. The white stone under the Censer was unimportant, not a real part of the artifact, so that stone simply vanished, like spellwork breaking, mana returning to the manasphere.

Erick took hold of the Censer with his aura, holding up the artifact with his power, as he guided it to the side, to sit alone upon the rim of the dungeon. Erick let go of the artifact.

It sat there, black as adamantium—

And Erick felt a weakness creep into his very being. He had run another marathon, apparently, though he only felt it when it was over. He breathed hard, relaxing a little. After a moment, he stood tall. He turned around to the sleeping forms of the rescued people.

All of them were humans, resting under conjured blankets and atop conjured beds. All of them were probably not in the bodies they wanted to be in, but they were alive, and real, and somewhat comfortable, and that was what mattered. For now.

Erick informed the girls, since they might not know, “We’re not bringing back elves. It might cause Aloethag to abandon the orcols, and for the orcols to rage.”

Jane said, “We know.”

“But is that even really possible?” Emily asked, unconvinced.

Fallopolis answered, “Your father speaks of the eternal threat of elves returning, which is why everyone kills elves wherever they are found.” Fallopolis gestured to Shalia and the other elf that had been a part of the rescue; a man of red hair and red eyes. “You should kill both of them and sunder their souls if you wish to keep this threat from becoming as real as they have become. It is the only way to be sure.”

Erick seriously asked, “Is an elven soul too much?”

“Hard to say, Erick.” Fallopolis said, “I am merely giving you my professional suggestion, gifted in an attempt to preserve the stability of this world that you have built.”

“… Fuck.” Erick decided, “I’ll chance it.” He glanced toward the gate, and the riotous black colors of the land beyond. The timer above the gate was gone, having hit all 0s and then blinked away, and now the cathedral was gone, too. Erick hadn’t paid much attention to the final memories of that place, as they fell apart into nothing and Darkness. But now, Dream-like scenery once again flowed. “That’s enough for today.” He said to Fallopolis, “They’re all coming with me back to Candlepoint to the Wake Up House. I’ve got the resources there to bring them up to date, and so I’m going to do that.”

Fallopolis bowed a fraction, saying, “Then it will be as you say, Wizard Flatt.”

Poi interrupted, “We need to talk about all that just happened, but before that, we need the priest awake. We need him talking about the Censer in case there’s some unknown danger about having it just be here. Even if he doesn’t answer, he will mentally answer, and I will know if we’re in some sort of immediate danger.”

Erick turned to the priest on the floor, then said, “Understood. Wake him up.”

Poi flickered with a few new tendrils of thought and tickled the mind of the priest, undoing the [Sleep] he had done earlier. Because of their recent Rule changes regarding the Script, Poi didn’t have access to mana from the Script, but since he was connected to the dungeon, as a dungeon master, he had access to dungeon mana. That was more than enough for him to cast all his magic he needed to cast.

Everyone else had cores that contained the mana that they naturally produced, based on the sizes of those cores. There was minimal Script interference in this place, but they were still connected to the Script; the Script still stole their natural mana regeneration. Therefore, waking these people now probably wasn’t too much of a danger.

They should have 0 mana, or near enough to 0 mana.

As the priest woke up, Erick saw him reach for the part of himself that could contain and control mana, but instead of grabbing for a source of power within his soul and body, all he touched upon was intangible nothing.

A certain sort of tension escaped Erick in that moment.

The capture of the Censer and its people was nearly done, and nothing had gone too wrong.

The man panicked as he looked around and saw the sleeping forms of his friends and coworkers, or however it was for their working relationships. He saw Poi, a dragonkin of an odd sort. He saw Erick, Solomon, and the girls, and was afraid. And then he saw Fallopolis, and hope kindled in his heart.

“Dearest Shade of Darkness! I beseech you for salvation in this Trial of the Dark!” He was on his knees, angled toward Fallopolis, as he said, “Tell me true if what I see before me is real, or a demonic threat. Tell me the nature of my Trial.”

Fallopolis tried not to grin at being instantly thought of so positively. Something like that didn’t happen all that often. Possibly never, considering how Shades had been received on Veird for more than 1400 years. Fallopolis easily adopted her elderly-grandmother persona as she kindly, softly, told the man, “Your Trial is just beginning, but take heart, all the demons as you know of them have been dead for a long, long time.” She gave the floor to Erick, saying, “And this man is perhaps the greatest Wizard you will ever meet. A true source of good, this one.”

Erick didn’t wait for the man to fully process that. He said, “You’ve been rescued from the Dreams of the Dark, and given a new life here on this lifeboat of a planet known as Veird. We’ll get to what all of that means later, but for now—” Erick gestured at the black cauldron that was the Censer of Destruction. The priest stared at it for a hard moment, uncomprehending, then he realized what he was looking at. “—I believe I have successfully stolen the Censer of Destruction from that memory. It doesn’t look as it once looked, and the reasons for that are beyond the scope of this conversation. But, even now, looking upon it with my mana sense, I can tell my theft worked. Never mind the color; it’s still adamantium. Is there a danger with the Censer that I need to know before I hand it over to the local gods?”

The man collected himself fast… And then his eyes flickered to Fallopolis, and then the girls, and then Solomon, before landing on the Censer and then up to Erick. His face turned harsh. He spat, “You’re no Wizard! And that’s no Shade! You’re an impostor and this is all some sort of Fae trick—”

Poi knocked him out, tendrils of thought invading the guy’s mind while other tendrils turned solid enough to gently lower the priest back to his bedroll. “The Censer needs to burn something or else it burns the world around it. It appears to be burning the manasphere right now, though, so I suspect it’s fine for transport into other hands.”

Erick asked, “It only burns what’s left inside of it for a while, right?”

“Yes; confirmed as much as I can confirm.” Poi said, “It’s just about the best, controlled Destruction sort of artifact out there. Or at least it’s the one the Dark and the Well were willing to show us.” Poi said, “I’ll meet you at the Wake Up House, Erick.”

Erick nodded, and then said, “So? Preliminary plans? What are you girls going to do?”

There was time again to relax a little, but Erick wouldn’t feel truly secure until he got this thing into proper hands, and then had some proper downtime afterward.

Plans were set, people decided to go or stay, and while that was happening, Erick delivered the Censer to Rozeta, who waited above the dungeon, looking happy in her white wrought form. She was not the only happy wrought in the forest clearing.

Tasar the Summoner, the green-black human-woman-shaped wrought archmage, who had accompanied Kiri on her Worldly Path for the first half of it, and who was Erick’s friend, also stood ready to take the Censer. She smiled as she touched the black artifact, saying, “Congratulations on the Paradoxing, Erick. We have thousands of old things that are too dangerous to attempt to destroy ourselves. This… This will do a lot. It will free up a lot of resources, mostly in the form of guards ever-guarding locations or things.”

Erick smiled a little. “Glad to help.”

He almost mentioned Tasar’s lack of [Familiar], saying that now maybe she’d have time to actually commit to one. But that would be tactless, and she was probably on the Worldly Path right now, so she wouldn’t want to make a [Familiar] before she was done with that; a [Reincarnation] to Benevolence and assistance with making her first Gate Node would erase any [Familiar] she had brewing.

Rozeta chuckled a little, stepping forward, saying, “Congratulations, Erick. And thank you. It was a question whether you could do it or not, but of course you could.”

Erick felt a certain tension unwind a little bit more.

“It was kinda iffy here and there, but it worked out, and we’ll be working out the kinks soon enough. If you have specific items you wish collected, we might be able to find them, but we’ve only had luck locating big events, or important items. This particular artifact had nine tag-alongs, so that’s a complication I didn’t foresee happening, and which we’re dealing with. I’m taking them to the Wake Up House as soon as we’re done here.”

Tasar simply nodded.

Rozeta said, “I’m sure you’ll do right by them. But anyway! You should find the Enchanter’s Guile, if you can, like Atunir suggested. It is perhaps one of the best ones you can take right now, for it will allow you easier Wizardry.”

“Sure.” Erick nodded. And then he moved on, “I do have a question about language and how come we were all able to understand Imperial before we knew we were actually speaking Imperial.”

Rozeta paused, her brow furrowing. “Ah…” She thought. She relaxed, and said, “Your Wizardry with the Gate is a Wizardry of communication. So I would guess the language-understanding-capability was simply an emergent action of your Wizardry, and the Dark… I see you had questions about the Grand Translation, too?”

“I did.”

“That magic still exists, but not nearly as strong as it once was… And that’s about all I can say on that in such an unsecured location.”

Erick smiled a little. “That’s sort of what Fallopolis said already, but it’s good to hear it from another source.”

After a few smaller comments back and forth, Rozeta opened some [Gate]s of her own, to guide Tasar and the Censer along to where the artifact of Elemental Destruction needed to be.

When Erick came back into the dungeon, it was to see Poi have some quiet, angry words with Debby about taking the Bracelet into the Dark. She was lucky that it retained functionality even in its brief foray past the gate. The Bracelet was off her wrist right now and sitting on the kitchen table with the other Mind Magic artifacts.

Erick said, “I just want to know why you paused coming back home, Debby; why you lingered that long past the gate.”

Debby looked admonished, as she said, “I don’t know what happened. I took off the Bracelet already and my memory fragmented, as it always does. This time seemed worse.”

Poi said, “I don’t think you should wear the Bracelet anymore, Debby. It is an extremely strong Mind Magic artifact, with unknown side effects.”

Debby almost argued with him. But she did not. She simply said, “Okay.” Then she looked to Erick, asking, “We going to the Wake Up House, now?”

“Do you want to come? I thought only Emily was coming with me?” Erick looked around. “… But she’s back at the hotel in the city?”

The only people in the house right now were Erick, Solomon, Poi, and Debby. Jane and Abigail were out with the sleeping people, watching over them where Erick had left them, talking to Fallopolis about what had happened with the infiltration and all that. Beth, Candice, and Emily were all back in the city, going over plans for the next operation.

… Well they were all moving faster than Erick was comfortable with. What ever happened to taking a break after a big win?

This was a big win, right?

Solomon said, “Emily is going through some oddness right now. I think the next time she actually talks to any of us in a big way she’s going to be male.”

Debby gasped a little. “Oh my gods. She is?” She corrected herself, “He is?”

Solomon looked sheepish for a moment as both Poi and Erick Looked at him. And then Solomon blurted out, “How have you not noticed yet, Debby? And it’s ‘she’ until otherwise said.”

“… I have been figuring out my own shit,” Debby said. And then she strongly added, “Anyway! I want to see the Wake Up House and be there when all these people wake up. Emily said that she wanted to stick around here; she told me to tell you that.”

Solomon nodded. “Next time she’s around you and only you, expect a talk, Erick.”

“Heard and Understood. I’ll be sure to make that sort of situation happen a few times.” Erick took a moment to just stand around, enjoying the win. Then Erick moved on, “Let’s get going.”