From the desk of Erick Flatt, to whom it may concern:

A single day has passed since that unfortunate interruption of the start of the war, but here we are, back at it again! Many of you might have noticed that I have been all over the place recently, and mostly in the sky. If you looked out there right now you would probably see me in at least 5 places at once.

That is because I am in at least 5 places at once, but I am also here, on Veird.

I’m a fae, now. That means something, I am sure.

What means more, is that Plan Surround and Consume is working. I have been fighting the Primal Lightning out there at every step of the way, and that has probably looked strange to everyone here, with Lightning happening where it ought not to happen and then suddenly not happening at all. In some places, the Red Lightning even flowed backwards.

That’s the nature of a Wizard War.

Nothanganathor’s attempts to disrupt the plan are just that; disruptions. We are winning, and I have spent about 3 weeks doing that sort of winning for us, while less than a day has passed here on Verid.

Soon it will be time for everyone else to step up to the line and take their swing. And it won’t be hopeless! It won’t be a death sentence, as some of you are saying.

We have big plans for those of you that wish to fight. I am writing this letter to tell you that you have the full capability to rise up and fight yourselves… After a little bit of help from the Pantheon and House Benevolence and myself.

We’ve already begun deployments of that power among many people. I am sure many of you receiving this letter have heard of that. We’ll tell you all more in the following week.

As for the current events of the war, all that Lightning you see coming from the Edge of the Scheme of Fenrir are 90% automatic attack magics. Nothanganathor is, of course, actively throwing each bolt and I am directly fighting against him in a contest of wills each time, but the contest of wills is, so far, a routine series of attacks, and I am easily able to counter all of Nothanganathor’s bolts of Primal Lightning.

Is he lulling us into a false sense of security?

Perhaps.

I am not going to take the bait and commit to a larger attack at this moment. Plan Surround and Consume is perhaps a day or five away from completion. It is going slower than it had in the beginning, because the system was getting bigger. A lot bigger. And that necessitates a whole bunch of coordination magics and the complete revamping of the Northern Spellsurge Mountains into a singular focus.

Currently, the planetoids are crashing into sunlights and devouring them, to become sunlights themselves and light up the void for all the people on Fenrir, forming a net of interconnected planetoids that are both generating mana —mostly Benevolence— and actively suppressing Malevolence in the area.

The growth is already spiraling hard. One planet has become two, and those two each made another planet, making 4, which then doubled again, to 8. We slowed down the rampant growth to add more stabilization to the system, to make the planetoids grow into true planets, larger and more solid in their construction.

Soon, they will envelop the whole of Fenrir.

The calculation to that deadline is kinda simple.

The entire outer surface area of Fenrir in square kilometers is calculated by the surface area of a sphere, which is A=4πr^2, at a radius of around 150 million kilometers. Meaning Fenrir is around 3x10^17 million square kilometers. The distance between the surface of Fenrir and the height of the Seeds is mostly negligible, so the space the Seeds have to cover is pretty much 3x10^17 million square kilometers.

Each Seed is spaced out from each other Seed at a distance roughly equal to the distance that used to exist between Veird and its moons, meaning each Seed is covering a sphere of the sky over Fenrir that was more easily calculated based on the simple area of a circle, which is A=πr^2. So at a radius of 380,000 kilometers, that means that one Seed, when fully grown, covers about 4.5x10^11 square kilometers.

We don’t want the Seeds to simply be a single layer deep, though, with no ability to bolster each other. And so, we have plotted for triple coverage; making the necessary area to cover three times as large as the original 3x10^17 number. Or 9x10^17.

Figuring out how many moons we need is a simple calculation of:

9/4.5 and 10^(17-11)

or

2x10^6

Or 2,000,000 planetoids.

Which is about 21 doublings.

Not too much, really! We could have done that in a single day, because each Seed is already repaying back the mana used to cast it in under an hour.

Each planet is easily paying for itself and every other planet down the line. If we were deploying this system on our own, without the threat of Nothanganathor out here, then we could have had some rather exponential growth and land creation.

At 15 hours into Plan Surround and Consume, the [Seeds of Atunir] had reached 10 doublings. Over a thousand Seeds. The next doubling came in at 17 hours, making over 2000 Seeds.

I have been out fighting the Red and securing the Seeds for 3 subjective weeks, but only for a single Veird-day. At 24 hours, when this note was written, we were at 15 doublings, or 33,000-ish planets.

The 2,000,000 mark is not very far at all.

Pray for our success, and know that you are contributing to our success.

If you are a True Believer of Atunir, as is natural, then come to the Spellsurge Mountains and pray for our success yourselves. Leave your uteruses behind if you don’t want to get pregnant, though. Check with the clergy of Atunir if you are safe to approach, or not. Or, if you do wish for pregnancy, then come on up here and achieve a dream.

In a week, after Plan Surround and Consume is finished, there will be Very Big News about empowering people to fight for Veird themselves, and it’s not that update to all the Benevolence Spells out there that some of you have already noticed. It’s so much more than that. You will have the power to affect your world, on your own terms. Soon.

Sincerely,

Erick Flatt

- -

“So how about that letter from my father?” Jane asked, as she lay beside Sitnakov, in her rooms beside the Blue Corps headquarters in Ar’Kendrithyst.

Sitnakov, white as snow, breathed deep, his chest expanding far and then falling down as he breathed out, thinking. Jane lay there with him, his arm around her body, both of them not doing much of anything at all. He was warm and solid as metallic flesh. His solidity usually didn’t phase Jane but she was still feeling a little weak from her Personal Script, inundating her body and transforming how she interacted with the world, so there was a soft comforter between some of where they touched.

Her Personal Status had filled up completely and she had even switched over to it a few times, but mostly not. It was still tender. Still made her body freak out in little ways. Rozeta had prescribed rest for at least a day, and so, Jane was doing that.

Sitnakov had come to her to talk about the letter, but then one thing had led to another and now they were here, in bed together.

“Yeah… That letter. He offered me a Personal Script. Didn’t take. He offered it to a lot of people… He said he’d announce it in a week, but it’s already out there. Talk about lighting a signal fire.”

Jane laughed at that. “He really did light a fire, didn’t he.”

“He did.” A pause. “You got the PS, right?”

“I did. Made me a bit weaker, as you can tell, but it’s already better. Be fully better by tomorrow. Maybe 5 hours.”

Sitnakov let out a sigh of relief, his big chest deflating some. “Good. I like you being sturdy.”

Jane smiled at that. Being called ‘sturdy’ wasn’t every girl’s dream, but she liked it a whole lot when Sitnakov said it.

Silence took over the warm room, and it was nice.

Softly, Sitnakov asked, “Want to go see the Northern Mountains?”

“Kinda, but I’m supposed to stay away from great magical influences.” Jane poked Sitnakov’s chest. It was like poking adamantium that was trying so very hard to be flesh. “You can be an exception.”

Sitnakov chuckled. He craned his neck a little to look at her, asking, “We should probably stay away from the Fertility Goddess’s grand ritual, anyway. Wouldn’t want our handholding to end up with you pregnant.”

“Ha! We can’t have…” Jane had been about to say that they couldn’t have kids anyway, but… “I suppose, me being a dragon would bridge half of the gap, but you being a True Wizard could also… Hmm. Is that enough to bridge a gap? Even with you being wrought? We hadn’t really… ever talked… Hmm.”

As Jane talked, Sitnakov gave a soft chuckle. Jane loved that deep, warm sound.

And then Jane realized.

Her heart beat hard.

Oh.

Shit.

Was this a Big Conversation?

Jane realized this might be a Big Conversation.

Sitnakov had asked about visiting the ritual site, and then kids, and now...

Sitnakov said, “We’ve been doing this for a while now. I think I love you. Would you ever want to have kids?”

Jane had an eternal moment, laying there against Sitnakov. Her heart raced. Her head felt heavy and light at the same time. She had to check herself to make sure she wasn’t having some sort of cascading biological reaction that could end up with her dead, or worse. She even brought up her Personal Script to see if there was a problem.

Jane Flatt, [35] [Current Location: Layer 789; Veird, year 1453]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 59%, 31%, 9% [Full!]

Reson allocation rate: 1%

Darkness Level: Archmage

Fractal Level: Blind

Benevolence Level: Store Manager

Soul: 114; 721,500 per day / 8.3 per second

Body: 60

Mind: 19

Overall Stability: ↑ [+8.2, -0]

Mp: 114,000/114,000, ↑ [+4.9, -0]

Hp: 60,000/60,000, ↑ [+2.5, -0]

Pp: 19,000/19,000, ↑ [+1.5, -0]

Resons: 100/100, [+.1 = +.01, -0]

There was no problem there.

One thing that Jane really liked about this new Status is that it told her when things were wrong, and what kind of danger she faced. One thing she did not like about it was that she was still figuring the whole thing out. It wasn’t very cooperative—

“Jane?” Sitnakov asked, quietly.

“I know I love you,” Jane said, the words coming easily. “My body was just… acting weird.”

Sitnakov breathed deep, gasping a little— and then he heard the rest of Jane’s words. “Sorry. You said to take it easy—

“No no— You’re fine. Nothing happened… Well. Yeah.” Jane huffed a laugh. “You threw me for a loop. But… Yeah.” Jane looked up at Sitnakov’s face. He looked at her, questioningly. Jane said, “Yeah. I want kids eventually, if that’s actually on the table. I didn’t know that you did, though.”

Sitnakov relaxed and tensed in equal measure as he smiled brightly. “Yeah, I do. And I’d like to have them with you.”

Jane asked, “What would they even be, though? Adamantium wrought? Orcol-sized dragonkin? Human?”

Sitnakov declared, “Adamantium wrought. I think I could swing it. There would be some rituals to get it done. Wrought reproduction is not like fleshy people’s— Well. It is, in some respects. Some.”

Jane snorted a laugh. “It better not exclude all the fun parts.”

“Of course not!”

Sitnakov did not elaborate, though.

“You’re not going to elaborate?”

“Nope. Not until we’re married and praying to Atunir.” Sitnakov waggled his eyebrows. “Unless you want to go visit the northern mountains and give both our dads heart attacks?”

Jane smiled at that. “Come on.” She sat up and got up, saying, “Now you got me wanting to go see it. I’m ditching the uterus though while we’re up there.”

Sitnakov seriously nodded. “That might prevent pregnancy.”

“Ha! ‘Might’?”

“It’s a big fucking ritual, Jane.” Sitnakov stared off at nothing for a moment. “It’s…” He looked to Jane. “I really do want to go see it with you.”

“Big sights get my blood pumping too, big guy.” She added, “And I guess I can just morph into a dude for a whil— mmrph!”

Sitnakov rose from bed and wrapped Jane in a hug, kissing her deeply. Jane did the same for him.

The moment lasted longer than either of them expected it to last, and it was great.

Jane was in love.

Finally, breathlessly, Jane was in love, and the man she loved loved her back. Suddenly she started crying and laughing and Sitnakov asked what was wrong and they ended up back in the bed, talking small words that were so very large.

- - - -

Jane stepped out of a portal alongside a deployment from the Blue Corps and House Benevolence.

Sunny, Kiri’s [Familiar], eyed them all, and then bounced in place. The little girl was shaped like a long dragon these days, Kiri having long abandoned the couatl-disguise that her [Familiar] used to wear all the time, since she herself was a dragon. Sunny shut the big [Gate] that had taken the team here, and then briefly bounced in the air in front of Jane and Sitnakov.

“Thanks for the ride, Kiri. Sunny.”

Sunny twirled and then vanished into a little [Gate] perfectly sized for her, vanishing like an illuminated noodle sucked into a white hole.

Karonditus, the engineer team leader of this excursion, asked them, “So we don’t need to care about having you here, right? You’re not in charge right now?”

“Correct,” Jane said.

The Blue Corps was a conglomeration of various political entities that was less like a real power, and more like an organizational structure, making sure everyone knew what was happening. Karonditus was technically from House Benevolence, and he was here with a bunch of tech to settle some of the overloading problems of this ‘Seed Ritual’ up here at the Spellsurge Mountains.

Such a thing would have taken maybe 5 people, with some cartloads of stuff.

They had 37 people in their entourage. No one had wanted to deny the leave of those who wanted to come up here to see the largest magic on Veird since the creation of Fenrir.

Jane said, “We’re here to see the sight as pilgrims, just like all these extra people in your over-inflated team.”

Karonditus chuckled. “What do you mean, sir— Oh. Uh. Is it ‘ma’am’? Or… What?”

Jane said, “Whatever you want.”

Jane had needed to get rid of her uterus to visit this place safely, so she did that with [Perfect Polymorph], allowing her to assume the guise of a man she referred to as ‘Jake’. Sitnakov was just himself, standing to the side, all white instead of black.

The Northern Spellsurge Mountains loomed a few kilometers ahead, like craggy walls of silvered rock. A pass in the mountains was the road into the various facilities inside, and that’s where thousands of pilgrims walked into the place, under a glittering golden sky.

The ‘natural’ auroras of this northern pole had long since vanished ever since the day of Fenrir, when the Shells of adamantium layered over Veird’s original Surface. They had only been in existence for 10 years before that, though, because they required a magnetosphere and Veird didn’t have one until Jane’s father had drawn up plans for one.

The auroras were back, though, and different. Golden hues filled the world overhead like a dance of sparks and a wash of mist. And down here, the songs of priests echoed in the mountains, like an open-air church.

It was an absolute miracle of an experience.

Jane’s heart was thumping hard at the power in the air, and the people, and the divinity of it all.

Sitnakov was stunned, eyes fixed on the sky.

Almost everyone in the company was similarly stunned, but Jane and Karonditus had needed to keep their heads about them as the ‘leaders’ of this little trip.

“Looks like we have some checkpoints to clear, Karonditus. It’s your show here. Get it moving.”

Karonditus nodded seriously, and then he raised his voice and drew the party’s gaze. “Attention! Everyone with a uterus! If you get closer to the mountains you will likely end up pregnant if you even touch a man. Hand holding counts as touching! All of you women-looking people know what you’re in for, yeah?”

“Yeah yeah!” said Charon. She was a woman from the University of Candlepoint with a Script-given Class of Managineer. She was one of hundreds like that. She started walking forward with one hand on the floating cart she pulled behind her. “I got it clipped before I came here. I’ll get it healed back tomorrow.”

Karonditus hummed, unsure.

Charon rolled her eyes. “The priest I talked to said it was fine!”

A few of the women in the party were already holding hands with men; they were obviously couples seeking blessings.

Jane wished them the best of luck.

And then Jane started walking on the mountain path, up to the mountains, under the golden sky.

Sitnakov stayed with her, looking up as he walked, whispering, “Beautiful.”

Jane smiled as she looked over Sitnakov. The golden glows of the sky were the only light all around. That gold reflected off of the silver-ish mountains, casting everything in brilliance, while Sitnakov stood out like pure gold himself. “You’re beautiful.”

Sitnakov smiled wide and then he picked up Jane and kissed her for a brief moment.

Jane loved that about him. No matter what she appeared as, man or woman of any race or species, he had no problem expressing his love with a simple kiss, or some small, nice words.

They held hands as they walked into the mountain pass, alongside hundreds of other people, most of whom had been dropped outside the mountains through portals just like their team had been dropped.

The songs of singers deepened.

Together, Jane and Sitnakov walked under the monastic song of priests who stood on the sides of the mountain pass and wore woven-wheat hats and robes. The song echoed. The world reverberated. Jane was walking into the world’s largest cathedral—

Something poked out of the ground over there, and Jane recognized it. It was a thread of wheat, too small to be called a stalk, and yet it was growing fast, becoming a stalk of wheat. That was when Jane looked ahead, and saw even more stalks of wheat poking out of the ground.

Ahead, the crowd cleared as the pass ended and space opened up.

They exited the mountain pass into a field of golden wheat, under the bright gold sky, into a vast, vast valley between the mountains that was supposed to be made holey with deployment tubes, but was instead made holy with fields of grain and the song of ten thousand or more singers, gathered here and there, praising Atunir and her bounty. Far, far overhead was the first planetoid that her father had planted in that sky, with the help of the Goddess of Field and Fertility. It was as big as a moon, now, and it shone down brilliant white in a sea of gold.

Jane felt her heart hitch.

The entire party stilled, all of them transfixed in the moment. It was absolutely heavenly.

Some woman broke down crying to the side, thanking Atunir as she held her belly. Jane wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard baby cries among the hymnals. Another couple of Karonditus’s repair mission broke down in shared tears as that woman held her belly. Somehow, some priests came out of the field of wheat and ushered people whatever ways they needed to go.

Somehow, Jane and Sitnakov walked across the golden field.

She found herself holding Sitnakov’s hand, standing in front of an archway that led into the mountain complex itself. Karonditus and his main people were there, 5 of the team pushing floating carts down into the tunnels.

Sitnakov squeezed Jane’s hand a little bit, smiling and gold, as he asked, “A bit of a rush, ain’t it?”

Jane started laughing for joy, and Sitnakov joined her. Their laughter and happiness seemed to be a part of the songs in the air, along with babies crying and the sounds of wheat pushing up through the rocky stone mountains.

- - - -

It took a minute of walking for Jane to regain her composure, though she was still feeling off-kilter —in a fantastic way— by the time they entered the main facilities. Tenebrae’s Rocklings stood in pairs here and there in the wide, wide tunnels, checking everyone out. A few of the older Rocklings were wearing clothes instead of their simple rock bodies, and those ones directed people where they actually needed to go.

Jane walked toward the center.

All around her, wires from the entire rest of the place journeyed like collections of colored snakes, cordoned off to the sides of walls and out of the main paths. They were doing a lot of sudden reconstruction here, and nothing was getting put away as it should have been put away.

Priests were also putting up altars here and there, with big beeswax candles that dripped white wax and burning sticks of incense that drifted smoke into the air. Paladins in armor prayed with their swords and priests and priestesses prayed with folded hands. Bands of wheat were turned into bracelets and hats and prayer mats everywhere. Choirs of children sang hymns in hallways and old men and women sang songs in grand, newly-carved rooms that echoed.

And then Jane reached the center, and dad was there.

A few big people were here.

Standing right beside the main [Spellsurge Weave] for the entire project was Tenebrae, tall and green. Over there was Archmage Riivo, of Archmage’s Rest, down by Stratagold. He was an iron wrought. And then there was Jane’s father, tall and looking like a kind king, with a crown of black horns to match his black hair. Jane barely saw anything else in the room because now that she saw her father, everything else fell to the sides.

He was a weight upon the world… and yet not at all? Jane couldn’t feel him. Was it just a lightward? Jane and everyone else could usually feel him when he was around, like how you felt when a god was around, but different. Atunir was heavy in the air so maybe that’s why Jane had missed him.

Also, he didn’t show up to Jane’s mana sense at all.

“Dad?” Jane asked.

Dad turned and then, like a light switching from off to on, he smiled wide and he was Present in the moment. Just like that, his usual weight upon the world was back, and then he relaxed and Atunir retook the area. He now showed up to mana senses, though, so that was good.

“Jane! Almost didn’t recognize you. Good show not showing up with a uterus. Everyone who has a uterus is already pregnant, especially if they come this close.”

“Yeah. I heard,” Jane said, as she looked around. “Sitnakov wanted to come, and so did I.”

Sitnakov nodded to Erick. “Sir.”

Archmage Riivo spoke up, “Ah! Sitnakov, my boy! What brings you here?”

“I had to see it in person,” Sitnakov said, and then he went off with the Archmage, to talk of the magic and what was happening and other such stuff. Jane would get back to him later.

Jane asked her father, “How long till full saturation?”

“Politics gummed it up, so it’ll be another full day, at least. Maybe less,” Erick said, as he gestured to the map in front of them.

The [Spellsurge Weave] map of Fenrir and the planetoids hung in the air before them, like a holographic white sphere 5 meters wide with tiny pinpricks of golden dots all around it. It glowed, absolutely beautifully. The entire rest of the room also glowed, but in a different sort of way. The room had been transformed into a temple loaded with monitors and candles and tubes filled with wires and incense burning, smoke wafting and filling the air with the scents of applewood.

A lot of machines were hooked into the Weaver… as much as metal and exterior magic could hook into the Weaver, anyway. What really bridged the gap between the Weaver and tech were the several altars to Atunir, positioned around the map equally. A few different monks and paladins were attendance around those altars, around the Weaver, heads bowed and lips mumbling in prayer, as they sat upon pillows that were really prayer altars themselves. Litanies of hope and good fortune and desires for good growth spilled from those monks, to flow into the [Spellsurge Weave].

The initial Weave had become a lot more than what it was. It was now an artifact and nexus of power, all on its own, doing tens of thousands of things at once, from negating the prayers of those down on Fenrir that were invariably picked up by the sights of the sun/moons in their sky, to alerting Jane’s father when direct intervention was necessary.

Even now, as Jane stood there, she watched her father watch the map.

The little glowing gold planetoids around the representation of Fenrir would sometimes flicker Red, and then go back to being gold. If Jane didn’t know better, she would have thought it a trick of the light, there was no trick at all. There had been a problem, and then it had been solved.

Erick was out there, solving those problems right now, even as he was in the command center, watching it all happen.

A few very important numbers floated to the side, giving the overall readout of the machine. One of those numbers was the full coverage readout, saying ‘1.6%%’, and ‘Time to next doubling: READY’. So they could double right now? Jane kinda wondered why they weren’t doubling when they could, but her father had already explained ‘politics’, and so it wasn’t her concern anymore. Another readout read ‘Integrity: 94%’ with breakdowns for ‘Spell coherence: 99%’ and ‘Tech resilience: 95’ and ‘Divine Purpose: 87%’.

That divine purpose was kinda low.

Jane looked further to the sides. [Scry] orbs held in the ceiling, beyond protective glass and spellwork all over the place. They were tiny eyes looking in from all across the world, linking masses and rituals out there on Veird to the Goddess of Field and Fertility and this working right here. Churches all across the entirety of Veird were tuned in, but it wasn’t enough for full integrity.

That’s why Jane hadn’t really felt her father. He wasn’t really here until Jane was here, drawing his full attention. Most of his attention was out there, where he worked.

They needed more true believers here, in this space, but that’s what the massive influx of people outside on the mountain paths were for. The problem was getting solved.

That was probably all the explanation of ‘politics’ had meant.

Erick answered Jane’s questions even though she hadn’t asked any, “Parts are getting replaced, the spell itself is holding, and I’m out there doing what needs to be done. We’ll do the doubling in a few more minutes; 87% is good enough. When we reach 100% coverage we will have the metaphysical advantage in this war, and then we can begin to crack Fenrir’s Scheme and then take that land over. You’ll be involved heavily in that, Jane, along with everyone else who has a Personal Script. I expect godly resistance and the Personal Script should be able to help mitigate much of that threat, but it’s literally too much for me to handle on my own, so you’re gonna have to do that. I’ve already deployed thousands of PS’s to the Valkyries, too. Once we crack Fenrir’s Scheme, we’re also likely going to need to move to save the people there from dying to the vacuum of space. Once we take Fenrir back, then we’ll secure Nothanganathor’s cage, and then Nothanganathor himself. And then we’ll continue until the cage becomes just simple real estate.”

Jane gave no response. She just thought.

Tenebrae harrumphed, then he walked away, back to work.

Erick softly asked Jane, “So you’re shaped like a guy today. That’s new for you?”

Jane laughed at that, though she tried to keep it as respectful as she could. They were standing to the side of a very, very large divine ritual, and a lot of people were all over the place. She whispered, “I actually attended a party at House Benevolence once in a body like this one, just to see if I could pull one over on you. Burhendurur caught me before I could get anywhere near you.” She added, “Also, this isn’t that new. Evan is a guy all the time.”

Erick smiled. “How is your Personal Script coming along?”

“It’s going great… I think.” Jane wasn’t willing to be nearly as open as her father with regard to certain things, so she said, “The thing we talked about. The scenario will be ready soon. Another 5 hours, and then I’ll be ready to tackle it. Candice is feeling a lot better as well. She’ll be there as well.”

Erick breathed deep, then smiled softly and nodded. “I look forward to seeing the experiment.”

Jane chuckled a little at that. “See you later. I’m going to go find Sitnakov.”

Erick nodded.

Jane walked further into the complex, the paladins and priests singing deep and strong, their songs echoing through the tunnels of the Spellsurge Mountains, turning the entire place into a monastery to the Goddess of Field and Fertility. Golden wheat poked out from between especially dense piles of wires, and rocklings poked at the new growth, trying to understand it…

Jane looked at the rocklings.

Rocklings were shaped like child orcols.

And Sitnakov wanted kids.

Jane theoretically wanted kids… ya know, eventually. Not right now. Maybe in a few years, when they were back to fighting monsters instead of existential universal threats? Yeah. That would be a good time for kids.

… Oh holy shit. Was that really ‘a good time for kids’? Did that mean she was really considering this?

She was.

But Jane didn’t know how wrought made kids. She always imagined it was some sort of slime-budding process, but Sitnakov liked sex and everything worked for him as it would on a normal guy, so… Who knew? Maybe dad knew how wrought made babies?

He probably knew how wrought made babies.

She wasn’t going to ask him.

If she asked him, then he would know how serious she was getting with Sitnakov—

“Jane?” asked a curious voice to the side.

A large blackrock woman stood in the hallway, holding hands with two rocklings, one on each side. She was Obsidia, one of Tenebrae’s first generation [Rockys], back when Tenebrae was human. She looked a little different, but yeah, that was Obsidia. The rocklings holding her hands were half the size of an orcol, so they were already almost as tall as human-shaped Obsidia.

“Obsidia!” Jane happily said. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“Ha!” Obsidia laughed. “I didn’t recognize you, either. Looks like we both abandoned our uteruses to see the ritual.”

Usually, one didn’t comment about what they saw with their mana senses, but this was a weird time, with weird specific concerns.

Jane smiled. “Yup! I’m here with Sitnakov checking the place out. What are you doing here?”

A rockling leaned toward Obsidia, whispering, “Who is that man?”

Jane smiled softly at that.

Obsidia said to Jane, “I’m having some time with the cousins, you know.” She said to the rocklings, “So you know Erick Flatt, the Wizard of Benevolence and my boss at House Benevolence, right?”

Both of them had various childlike reactions of ‘Yes we know him!’ and rolling of the eyes.

Obsidia said, “Well this is Erick’s daughter, Jane Flatt, and she’s in a [Perfect Polymorph] disguise right now so that she doesn’t get pregnant just being up here around this ritual.”

One of the rocklings instantly looked appalled and surprised—

The other one told the first one, “It’s [Perfect Polymorph], you rockhead! She didn’t kill anyone to get that form…” And then he paused. He looked at Jane. “… You didn’t, right?”

Jane nodded, smiling the whole time. “Correct. This body is my idea, just based on shape and general ideas; no specific person.”

“TOLD YOU!” said the second rockling to the first.

And then the first scowled and shouted at his brother, “I didn’t say anything to her!”

“You were thinking it!”

The kids almost started fighting, but Obsidia was there to stop that.

Jane found a thought suddenly lodged in her head. ‘I don’t want kids that fight with each other. How do you stop that from happening?’

She had absolutely no idea how to stop kids from fighting.

Dad had only had one kid, and Jane had still fought everyone she could.

Oh. Gods.

Her kids were going to be terrors, weren’t they?

And orcol-shaped, too…

Oh.

Actually, that made it all better. Orcols healed from everythin—

But they would be adamantium wrought. Not really orcols.

Shit.

What did that even mean?!

Well at the very least, it meant her kids would have a good absolute damage reduction. Hard to get hurt if you simply couldn’t be hurt by normal weaponry.

- - - -

Jane laced up her boots in the prep area of the Glittering Depths, Floor Three, as she went over her Personal Script. It was looking okay. She hadn’t had it for more than a day by now, and most of that day had been sleeping or resting, or the trip to the Spellsurge Mountains. There were still so many things to poke around with her Personal Script, but it was time for a basic field test. Dad’s Benevolence spells would be getting the most workout, today, and the Personal Script would do whatever it felt like doing. Hopefully all good things—

“So you two really are getting serious, then?” Candice was on the bench across the room from Jane, putting on her gambeson. “You and Sitnakov. I heard Dad talking about it earlier.”

Jane’s face went a little red. “… I think we are.”

Candice smiled with perhaps too many teeth, her orange eyes glinting brightly. “Jane and Sit~na~kov, sitt~in’ in a tree—”

“Oh shut up with that shit,” Jane said, though she was smiling as she said it. “How is your Personal Script working right now?”

“Yeah yeah. Avoid the emotional shit. Heard and understood, Big Sis.” Candice laced up her upper body armor with a bit of orange/black shadows snapping clasps shut. “I got my Personal Script automatically accreting for me. How about you?”

Jane was in the middle of tying her own breastplate on, but she suddenly stopped. “… Holy shit? You can do that?”

Candice laughed loudly. “I didn’t manage it, but Evan is having luck with that. Have you not poked at it at all!?”

“Oh… Bah! Well… Good for him. I mostly managed to get it set up nicely.” Jane mentally flicked the air. “See?”

Words appeared.

Mp: 114,000/114,000, ↑ [No Ongoing Damage]

Hp: 60,000/60,000, ↑ [No Ongoing Damage]

Pp: 19,000/19,000, ↑ [No Ongoing Damage]

“Battle readout.”

Candice raised eyebrows. “That’s how you set that up? How about this— No. wait. This is what you need to see first. I did manage this much.”

Mana: 112,000/112,000, [Protecting Health + Psyche]

Health: 63,000/63,000, [Protecting Psyche]

Psyche: 17,000/17,000

Candice said, “That’s the full readout, but the actual battle readout is this one:”

192/192 [Clear]

Jane stared at the absolutely tiny Status. It was beautiful. “What the fuck” All those numbers that came before it were indicative of something truly amazing going on, too. Some sort of pool stacking… So that one covered the other? “You can do… any of that? Have one pool protect the others? I didn’t… Hmm.”

Candice smiled wide.

“Are you making one pool protect the— Obviously you’re making one pool protect all the others.”

“Not quite.” Candice said, “I’m making Mana protect everything until I get low, then they share damage equally.”

Jane almost asked how she had done that, but then her thoughts caught up with her. “But then you take a big hit and you lose a massive hunk of mana?”

Candice nodded. “Yeah. I thought of that problem too, so... You know how Dad talked about Benevolence flowing away and then coming back? I’m trying to accrete for that specific ability, to make it easier for me to ignore Wizardry and fight on the front lines...” She paused. “Have you asked your Personal Script to do anything for you yet? Anything big, I mean.”

Jane shook her head. “I’ve been in meetings and with Sitnakov and doing all sorts of Blue Corps stuff, and it’s only been a day.”

Candice smiled wide. “I suppose that’s the benefit of not taking responsibility for others. I got all the time I want to break this Personal Script wide open. Gotta have something to do when I can’t go on the frontlines and there aren’t any dungeons to break..”

“Ehhh… yeah. It’s been kinda not fun, has it?” Jane added, a bit too strongly, a bit too mocking, “But it’s been great for the world!”

Candice was right there with her, “Gods know that the best thing for people to do is paperwork!”

Jane snorted.

“So how big is your Benevolence Mark? I’m labeled as a ‘New Hire’.”

“Store Manager.”

“Ha!”

Still smiling, Jane finished putting on her armor. “Have you had any real luck breaking your Personal Script? I tried asking it to give me a billion mana, and it simply did nothing.”

Candice shrugged. “It’s kinda… weird. Non-helpful? But still helpful, in its own way? I think I need to upgrade my Fractal Mark level up to anything more than ‘Blind’ and it’ll be able to tell me more… or something. Everyone I’ve spoken with has their Fractal Mark as ‘Blind’.” She paused. “I haven’t asked any Mind Mages, though? Have you?”

Jane shook her head. “Haven’t done much of anything with power experimentation.”

It had literally only been 24 hours since this whole Personal Script business started… But Jane supposed they were in a war, and things were moving fast for those of them who had nothing else to do except explore themselves and figure out new ways to kill things. Candice was seriously gifted in that art in a way that Jane had always thought she had been, but Candice took it a step further. Candice was also alone most of the time, though, so there was a trade off.

Jane was happy with her current life… except for all the war, of course.

Jane looked up at a readout hanging beside the door. ‘Dungeon Readiness: 94%’ and ‘ETA: 0h27m’. She said, “Is 27 minutes enough time to check out my Personal Script more?”

“You could spend a century talking to your Personal Script,” Candice said, very strongly. “It’s… It’s so much more than I ever thought it could be. So do some soul searching meditation to reach it, and speak to it. To them. Not accretion meditation, mind you. Soul searching meditation.” And then Candice dropped the seriousness in her voice and flipped a hand, saying, “Just meditate on it and see if you can do anything broken. Like how about making a [Time Stop]? Unless you got Blessed by Phagar when I wasn’t looking, then neither of us should have that one.”

Jane smiled a little. “I’ve always wanted [Haste].”

“Bah! You always go for the chicken shit magic. Go big!”

Jane rolled her eyes.

“Sit down and meditate! I’ll poke you when it’s time to go.”

Candice was acting kinda weird about this because usually she’d be gnawing at the doors wanting to start the dungeon. She seemed more excited about the Personal Script than the dungeon...

So Jane sat down in the prep room and closed her eyes.

- -

Just when Jane was about to give up with soul-searching meditation —seriously, she was never that good at this, and this was the wrong environment for it— Jane felt the world fall away. She almost woke up because she realized she was asleep, and yet she wasn’t asleep at all.

It was that space between being asleep and awake, when you could choose to wake up or to fall back into full slumber. It was there, in that the dark world behind Jane’s eyes, that the dark turned into something more.

Blue took hold of Jane’s senses and drew her down a path into herself, into a dark blue room that was lit with light and yet still dim. It was another in-between space. And then, she was there.

Jane stood in a room with a dark-blue hologram of herself.

The hologram spoke, “Greetings, User. I am your Personal Script and this is your first full-contact with me. Future contacts will be easier. Before we begin interfacing, know that the only power that I can grant you is what you make yourself. Make a spell, and I will codify it for you. That is my primary capability. All other capabilities of mine can be explained through conversation. Please ask your questions now.”

Jane had no idea where to really begin. So she began with Candice’s ideas about covering weaknesses and resource pool condensation. “I want to set up my Status so my strengths cover my weaknesses. Can you help me with that?”

“Probably.”

“… Probably?”

“Do you know how to make your strengths cover your weaknesses? You’ve gotten a lot of help from this thing I’m sensing is called the Script, but you’ve picked all the low-hanging fruit from that that you can, and how much of that power is your own, anyway? Do you know how any of this works at all?”

Jane was almost floored, but then she paused, and she laughed in that pause. “Oh shit. This is… Yeah. Okay. Let me try: I want all damage to impact the resource pools I have, which are the largest, so that my smaller resource pools are preserved.”

“Sure, if that’s what you want. How, though?”

Jane blinked. “Aren’t you supposed to be… I’m not sure. Helpful?”

“I am helpful, but you have no idea what you’re doing, so I’m goading information out of you in order to get you to do what you want to do. I can’t actually give you power, or much of anything. The Script does that for you, and even in that case you have to talk to someone to get you started and you still have to get your power yourself. As I explained, I codify what you are already capable of doing. Or what you do. So do something, and I will codify it.”

“Okay okay okay,” Jane said, and then she paused in thought. “Okay… Can you tell me what I can do with a Benevolence Mark?”

“According to what you know, Benevolence makes things work out in your favor.”

“… Does it do that for me? Give me… I don’t know. Luck?”

“Not really, as far as you know.”

“Are you only able to know things that I actually know?”

“I don’t know what you don’t know, yeah.”

Jane paused for a second. Dad had made this Personal Script to give power to the people, and yet… Hmm. This was not helping Jane gain power to overcome Wizardry and other powers. But maybe she was just going at the problem wrong?

She tried, “I have to fight a Wizard for the good of the realm and probably the universe. Does that unlock any more capabilities?”

The hologram paused.

It glitched—

The hologram came back brilliant white and rainbows. Her voice was the sound of the world speaking directly in Jane’s ears, “I hear you want to save everyone. I can help with that. Here are some options for you to pursue:”

Words appeared.

Armor of Protection

Sight Beyond Sight

Fateweavers’s Luck

“They are exactly as you expect them to be, except not that at all, and I cannot simply grant them to you. What I will do is attempt to set things up to allow you to figure them out yourself. The speed at which you can create any of these is measured by your Benevolence Mark level, which currently sits at Store Manager. I cannot give you a time estimate for any of them, but I can tell you that Armor of Protection will be the easiest one for you to realize how to make yourself.”

Oh.

So it was like that, eh?

Jane was beginning to understand this whole thing better. She also guessed that Candice had picked ‘Armor of Protection’.

… Did Candice have a larger list of options, or a smaller list?

Hmm.

Other questions needed to be answered first, though.

Jane asked, “Why did you switch to Benevolence white and start being helpful?”

“You were speaking to your Personal Script before, born of the trio of Dark, Fractal, and Benevolence, and seen through the lens of yourself. They are little more than enablers to what you can already do. The Dark is an insane wash of power untold, so good luck dealing with her. I suggest you visit her eventually, but don’t stick around. Fractal is a little better, but she’s blind. Speak with her and see if you can become something more than blind. I am your Benevolent Reflection, only a third of the power behind your Personal Script. I am in tune with the needs of the world, and through those needs, I can give you strength. Considering what is coming down the line we have a lot of work to do. In less dire situations I will likely be less helpful than the other two, unless you were truly strong in Benevolence.”

There was a lot of fantastic information there.

Jane asked, “What does being strong in Benevolence look like? What would I need to be for you to always be this helpful?”

“The leader of a nation of millions or more, who desires to make that nation stronger through Benevolence, or anyone headed in that direction either through fate or personal choice and desire, will unlock me at my full capability at all points in time. Someone truly versed in the Fractal might have better luck pursuing that sort of power. The Dark is the Dark, and good luck with that, though they do give out the most power, so me saying ‘good luck with that’ is not being dismissive. I really do mean good luck with that, because you will get power, but it might not be what you need or want.” Jane’s Benevolent Mark said, “Anything smaller than national-level only activates me to the level you are experiencing now when the threat is large enough that the whole realm is in danger—” She glanced away, then turned back to Jane. “Pick a desired power and mana-alter your mana to Benevolence as much as you can in the following battles for it will be able shield you from reality-based alterations better than what you are currently capa—”

A soft voice called from outside the room, and something pressed against Jane’s shoulder.

Benevolence rapidly added, “I might be able to help you make a second one later! But pick a starter now!”

Jane already knew which one she was picking. “Armor of Protection. I pick that one.”

And then Jane woke up.

- -

Jane blinked several times as the world came back into focus.

Candice was there, looking at her, grinning. “Did you manage anything?”

Jane glanced at the air, where some letters hung outside of a box that only she could see.

Current Benevolence Focus: [Armor of Protection]

Unlocked! Wizardry Resistance! Utilize Elemental Benevolence in all your workings against ultimate threats and parts of that Benevolence will cling to you, to shield you against reality alterations. Base Benevolence Mark affords full protection against <Store Manager> level Wizardry. Warning! Does not work against basic damage. Only reality altering.

WR: 1%

Jane asked, “What does a Wizardry Resistance of 1% even mean?”

Candice smiled wide. “Fuck if I know! I bet the faux-Wizard might trigger it, though, so let’s go find out.”

- - - -

Jane walked into the command center of the Glittering Depths dungeon of Greensoil.

Her father stood with Quilatalap and a few others, while Fyuri was at the controls. The special deployment of the Third Floor was almost ready, and there were so many things about this that Jane’s father didn’t like, but which he had chosen to accept anyway. It was fine that he was worried, but Jane had been here while he had been gone, and the people who worked here were good people.

Jane knew most of the story of this land through secondary sources, since her father hadn’t spoke of much of it while he had been here, and then he had been gone for two years, before he came back and then it was Margleknot Margleknot Margleknot all until a few days ago, when the War started for real. Jane knew about Dungeon Master Rebecca’s true nature as an original inhabitant of this dungeon, and how her real name was Fyuri. Rebecca was good at her job, and she didn’t need to make a dungeon slime repro to become dungeon master here, since she was born here.

Jane thought her a rather competent dungeon master.

Rebecca caught sight of Jane as she stepped into the command center. She poked at the controls, dictating the scenario, but she looked up long enough to say, “We’re about a minute from start. All systems are blue. That bar over there shows the level of worry we should be having over this false Wizard turning real, and it’s reading 1%—” She glanced at Erick. “It’ll never go below that. It might jump and fall 3 or 4 points at a time. Anything over 50% we stop the scenario. Usually it bounces around, and especially if the false Wizard starts seeing stuff that shouldn’t happen. Simply resisting his attacks does not set him off.”

That was enough to answer Jane’s questions even before she asked them, and a few more besides, but Rebecca was obviously focused on Erick more than her. Jane had a more personable relationship with the people of Glittering Depths, but Erick’s memories of this land and Fyuri’s memories and all that previous-life stuff was…

Was something Jane just didn’t want to think about, so she didn’t.

Jane asked, “How are Atunir’s prayer systems helping with stability?”

Rebecca loved that question, because it allowed her to grin and happily say, “The ritual in the north is doing amazing things for the scenario. The Faux Wizard today will be strong, but the dungeon is even stronger. Easily 10 times as much.”

Erick spoke up, “Good.”

He gripped Quilatalap’s hand a bit tighter, and Quilatalap squeezed back.

Jane ignored that.

Rebecca asked, “Shall we proceed, Wizard Flatt? Delve Master Jane Flatt?”

“I just came in to make sure everything was going well.” Jane said, “I’ll head to start.”

Erick didn’t answer. He just smiled a little, and breathed.

Rebecca said, “I’ll start the countdown when you are in position, when you say ‘ready’.”

The screens flickered a bit as the [Scry] cameras moved around and focused on empty lands all around the unmoving Siphon. In the normal Scenario, the Siphon was a kilometer-tall thing of silver metal and cutting edges, sitting in a wasteland of rock. It was broken, and the people of the other land were trying to fix it, so they could continue Siphoning away the world, stealing it and making it their own.

In this closer-to-real scenario, the Siphon was a 10-kilometer tall construct of twisted silver with a Wizard floating around on top. This version of ‘The Third Floor, The Broken Siphon’ was more like ‘The Third Floor – The very-much-working Siphon’, and this one was actively eating away at the land. That land then turned into power to flow across the void to the imperialist world. In both scenarios, though, the destruction of the Mana Siphon was the main goal of the Third Floor of the Glittering Depths.

This version had a Malevolent Wizard at the top.

It was a little extra addition that made this scenario actually worth running by outsiders training to fight Wizardry and such, like Jane today.

Quilatalap eagerly said, “I haven’t seen anyone make it past the front rotors until True Wizard Sitnakov tried this last month. He stopped before he made it within a kilometer of the false Wizard and they risked another Event.”

“Gods,” Erick muttered, as he squeezed Quilatalap’s hand and held it. “People get up to crazy shit all the time, eh?”

Quilatalap chuckled.

Jane headed to start.

- - - -

Jane stood with Candice behind a large boulder on a rocky wasteland. On the other side of the boulder stood the Siphon. It rose into the sky like a demonic screw the size of several skyscrapers, while the land it pierced was riven with cracks and red-colored lightning. Or at least it would be, when the scenario started up.

It wasn’t Malevolence. Only the Wizard controlled that shit, and only in small quantities. The stuff that would fill in those cracks was still Elemental Destruction, though, so getting touched by all that environmental hazard was enough to kill most people. Being anywhere near all of it was enough to kill people, but Jane and Candice were experienced enough in blending into manaspheres and spellwork that they could both survive Elemental Destruction… Most of the time.

It was that aura Jane had gotten from the unicorn that really helped; [Aura of Freedom]. That power went exceedingly well with her [Greater Prismatic Body], allowing her to do both at the same time, because of course she could. Unicorns and their inborn powers existed in the Greater Prism, after all.

All magic did.

Getting to the Siphon would still be a major problem because the Wizard would notice when Jane got within a kilometer of the Siphon, and then the real Destruction would simply appear, through Wizardry, and that wasn’t even counting Elemental Malevolence.

The Wizard only started using Malevolence within 5 kilometers of himself, and that’s when the real danger began. Jane had only ever gotten to the edge of the Siphon itself, and then the Malevolence had started coming down and they ended the Scenario and chucked the Red Wizard into some Destruction. Sitnakov had gotten much further, and then the Wizard started using some True Wizardry, which was why they had needed to end the scenario the last time Sitnakov had tried it. He had only gotten to experience the Red Wizard for 30 seconds; barely any training at all.

Jane could handle herself against Claws and Nothor beasts just fine. She was even pretty good against the Leviathans that had attacked Veird while Erick had been gone. But the actual Wizardry used here was a whole different game. Jane could withstand a lot, thanks to her [Prismatic Domain], but…

Jane was a little worried.

Candice smiled wide as she stretched some, twisting her human body back and forth and limbering up, saying, “What’cha thinkin about?”

“Domains. Power. The unhelpfulness of my Personal Script with regard to giving me all the power in the world—”

“Ha!”

Jane secured her gauntlets as she said, “Like I know how to do some of this stuff that I want the Personal Script to do. Organizing the readout is easy enough. But the original operating system was all like ‘I don’t knooooow. Do yooooooou know how to do it?’ Like yes, bitch, I can probably figure it out, but I wanted to know if you could just do it for me. But then I asked about helping me overcome a threat to the realm and she turned all helpful and white-iridescent.”

Candice smiled. “That’s who I’m working with, too. She presented you with some spell options to pursue, right?”

“I went for [Armor of Protection]”

“Yeah, me too! I’m trying to work it into my resource bars. Have you tried making a spell yet?”

“Nope.”

Candice smiled wider. “You have that [Benevolence Armor] spell, right? You should try making it again, under the influence of the Benevolence Mark. Just— Just—” She had too many words and not enough patience to say them all, so she just blurted, “Try it now!”

Jane chuckled a little, and then she remembered her spell, [Armor of Benevolence]. It was one of the better spells she had made back when the Claws were coming out of the sky and Erasing everyone on Veird that they could touch—

Oh.

Words appeared, but not in any blue box, just in the air. Or rather, just inside Jane’s vision.

Armor of Benevolence, instant, self-range, 100 mana + Variable

Conjure weightless, ethereal armor of Benevolence that wraps around your body and protects you and your things from erasure. <Effectiveness unknown, use with caution> <Primarily works against Red Lightning>

Effect multiplies when acting to help others, or to harm a threat to all.

Creates a barrier of Wizardry upon the user when the threat is great enough.

Normally, Jane could not call up her Status at all outside of the Script, and here inside the Glittering Depths they were very much not inside the Script. And she hadn’t called up her Status at all. She had accessed her Personal Script, somehow, and gotten a for-her-eyes-only readout of a spell in her soul. It read exactly the same as Jane remembered, and with her new Intelligence she was rather secure in knowing what her spell used to say. It had changed when Father had done that Benevolence thing with the fixing of the black boxes inside the descriptions of Benevolence, but everyone’s had done that change.

Jane experienced a new change, at that moment.

Other words appeared.

Power recognized as suitable for Benevolence overhaul in the face of absolute danger. Current environs suitable crucible for growth.

Quest coherence at 95%.

Applying Quest: [Armor of Protection] to [Armor of Benevolence].

Spell is now mutable.

Face your enemies and learn and grow in the face of absolute destruction!

Jane felt power thrum through her soul and a question form in her mind. Was this okay? Did she want this? Was she willing to accept this help with this spell in her soul? Jane smiled a little bit as she recognized those questions were not her own.

She mentally agreed to whatever was going to happen—

A crystal cracked and became unstable; ice became water.

And then that water poured out into the world, to wrap around Jane like a close friend. Glittering white iridescence billowed from her soul into her skin, her clothes, her armor, and her weapons, and then it settled down, to simply be a glow on the underside of her clothes, invisible to all else who might be looking.

Quest Begin: Survive a full attack from the Fake Red Wizard

Difficulty: Archmage+

Complication: Constant mana drain while adjusting [Armor of Benevolence]

Reward: [Armor of Protection]

Mp: 113,480/114,000, ↑↓ [Quest Active. Mana costs doubled]

Hp: 59,789/60,000, ↑↓ [Quest Active. Health costs doubled]

Pp: 18,991/19,000, ↑↓ [Quest Active. Psyche costs doubled]

The words vanished as Jane read them.

This all seemed… pretty great, actually?

Doubling her resource costs was a big fucking hit, but… if it actually worked? Would it work? Could it really take one of her already-made spells and then adjust it in her soul, like how dad worked his own soul crystals on his own?

… Oh shit. That’s exactly what was happening, wasn’t it.

Jane looked at Candice, at the iridescence soaking into her body and armor, too, and at her smile. “You’ve doubled mana health whatever costs, too, don’t you.”

“Yup!” Candice pulled her sword out from its sheath and her smile turned absolutely feral. “Made this whole thing twice as dangerous! It’s fantastic!”

Jane kinda loved Candice’s kill-kill-kill attitude, so she teased, “Crazy Candice.”

Candice’s feral grin turned a little subdued. “We’re going to be in a real battle soon, Jane. Today is an experiment, but next week is… Well I hope it’s killing Oozy Stormcaller. That fucker rubs me wrong. Also his boss, you know, but that leviathan is ancient and evil. Oozy… We might be actually going up against Red Reflections of the Pantheon, too…” She looked at Jane. “You ever wondered if you could take Kirginatharp in a real fight? How about Kromolok? How about Dad? Or even a god, like Phagar?”

Jane’s heart beat hard. “No.”

Yes.

Candice nodded. “I get it. It’s dangerous to think like that. Self harmful. I get it. So don’t worry about that stuff, because I’m going to be doing that. Dad’ll be the one killing the actual Red Gods, though. I’m not that much of a fucking nutter.”

A moment passed after the declaration of Candice.

Jane and her sister got their heads in the game.

Jane breathed deep, and then she let it out, and put a hand on the hilt of her sword. She closed her eyes, and then she opened them. Game face, on. Battle ready, go. [Hunter’s Instincts] burning low, rippling her muscles with power and her filling her sights and ears with deadly clarity. Helmet, on. [Greater Prismatic Body] at low power; mostly Elemental Mystical to make it cost less.

All of this gear was trash gear, because this was not an experiment with gear; it was an experiment with power versus power. Jane and Candice weren’t even spiders right now; they were just a pair of young adventurers, hands to their swords, eyes focused, ready for blood—

Wizardry Resistance: 2%

The number had ticked up.

Why?

Jane flicked her attentions to her Status and adjusted it all to the sides and away, out of her sight. It changed while she was in the middle of moving it, the numbers swirling and adding resons to the list.

MP: 99% / HP: 99% / PP: 99% / <Res: 98 / WR: 2%>

There was something going on between resons and Wizardry Resistance.

Jane would keep an eye on it.

“Ready?” Jane asked Candice.

Candice slammed down the visor on her helmet, her orange eyes glittering brightly in the slit. She hissed, whispered, “Let’s fucking go.”

Jane announced to the sky, “Ready!”

The air was still. The void overhead unmoving in the silence preceding the scenario. The boulders all around were simply where they were; resting in the wasteland. And then, beyond the boulder next to Jane and Candice, something squealed loud as fuck and shattered the chill of the desolation.

Rebecca’s voice sounded through the red-sparking air, “Scenario starting in 5, 4, 3…”

She went silent.

And the world beyond the boulder, around the Siphon so very large and dangerous, ripped to life. The world broke in that ripping. The ground shook violently. Boulders, which were just sitting there, vibrated into the air, and then they remained hovering in the air. The Siphon Battle took place in a land of suspended gravity, because even the gravity was being drawn into the Siphon and fed to the world overhead.

This was an asteroid field and the Siphon was gravity well in the center.

Jane held onto the air with shadows, hiding behind the boulder they had started near. Candice held on the other side.

The Siphon churned to full life.

It was one of the loudest things that Jane had ever heard, and then that sound was dwarfed by the crackle of bright red lightning; Elemental Destruction masquerading as Malevolence.

Jane chanced a peak out from behind the boulder.

The Siphon was a 10 kilometer tall monstrosity of metal that twisted into the ground, digging the ground up and tossing the ground into the air. The broken ground fell into crushing compartments in the base of the Siphon, where Elemental Destruction played the part of Malevolence, consuming the stone and transforming it into mana. That mana flowed up through the Siphon, where it hit a whole bunch of stuff inside and then became a softer scream of red that shot into the sky, across the heavens, to the planet beyond.

Jane had thought it was an amazing thing to witness, but her bar for amazing things was rapidly raising these days—

There, at the top of the Siphon.

A red dot floated around the top, orbiting around the lightning fountain. That was the Red Wizard.

What lay between Jane and the Siphon might have looked like a floating doomscape of ripping red lightning and boulders, with only small ways to traverse the land by hopping from rock to rock, but it was actually certain death for anyone not capable of hiding in the shadows and erasing their presence completely. The Red Wizard was in full view right now, and he could see Jane and Candice at this very moment.

Even when he floated beyond the Siphon, he was still in full view of the entire land around this space. Just a little less so. Enough to sneak past without being seen, but only because of the parameters of the scenario.

Candice charged ahead anyway, well before the Red Wizard passed out of sight, becoming a shadow the extended tiny streamers of blackness that she made purposefully jagged, to mimic the breaking of the land. She hopped under her own jagged blackness like that, and she made it to the next boulder. The Red Wizard didn’t blast her to dust with a flicker of Red from 22-ish kilometers away like he usually did to obviously magical effects within his line of sight.

So that still worked.

Candice had improved her hiding capability, eh?

Jane and Candice were 20 kilometers from the base of the Siphon, so hiding usually worked, but that tactic stopped working altogether at around 5 kilometers to the silver drill. The Red Wizard had absolute vantage over his entire domain, but the stimuli that he responded to reached a threshold that Jane and Candice simply couldn’t hide under once they got close enough. If they managed to make it all the way, hidden the whole time, then they had successfully evaded a Wizard’s senses, which was quite an accomplishment in itself.

In a real battle, they likely wouldn’t be hiding at all, but they needed all the training they could get against this Red Wizard, because once this scenario was used once, it was scrapped. They didn’t want to deal with some tragic person, after all.

Jane followed alongside Candice, making her own way through the floating field of boulders, her tendrils of shadow turning absolutely jagged. The two of them practically jolted to the undersides of floating boulder after boulder. Both of their shadows matched the general shapes of the Elemental Destruction ripping through the land below. Soon, Jane switched to [Prismatic Body], and disguised herself with actual Elemental Destruction. Candice did the same. Rapidly, Jane and Candice matched pace with the red lightning ripping up the land below, following it forward.

Ten kilometers passed in about a minute.

Jane almost never glanced at her Status inside a dungeon, instead relying on the senses of self and environment that she had honed over many years of this sort of job. Also, dungeons usually didn’t have the capability to show off a Status, so that made not caring about her Status real easy, and checking one’s own core for the ‘feel’ of the mana inside was a better indicator of what was left in the tank, anyway.

Jane’s core felt fine, but she had a Status now, right there, just beyond her vision.

MP: 97% / HP: 99% / PP: 99% / <Res: 98 / WR: 3%>

Yeah. That tracked. It was about 3,000 mana to work [Greater Prismatic Body] for a single minute, without taking Elemental Mystical into the equation to cheapen costs, and Jane was running double costs thanks to this Benevolent Mark Quest, so that about canceled each other out. Adding to that, Jane had about 500 mana coming in per minute from her Darkness. So she had around 110,500 Mana left.

… This was so much different than normal.

Jane kinda wanted to gasp at how much different.

Usually, she came into a dungeon with 10,000 mana, since that’s what she could hold onto in her core. Since she was disconnected from the Script, that would be all she would have, except for what she naturally regenerated herself; so 500 mana per minute. She would have to ration her resources a lot, usually between [Greater Prismatic Body] and [Prismatic Domain], manually casting all of her magic and being as conservative as possible. She’d be weaving a lot of Elemental Mystical into her workings, too, to make everything cheaper. That’s how it normally went.

But this was a test experiment for the Personal Script, too, and the Personal Script said she had 97% resources, at over 110,000 mana remaining, and she was regaining 8.3 per second, because she had stuffed all her regen into Mana…

And it was all working exactly as it said it was working.

Holy shit.

Her father had really multiplied her mana pool by over 10. By eleven-ish, actually. Jane didn’t really believe it until that moment right there, when she was in battle and on any other normal day, she’d have been down to 6500 mana left, out of 10,000 starting.

If that was literally all that the Personal Script did, then it would already be a miracle. But it did more than that.

In that realization, Jane felt something.

She felt it.

Here on the edge.

Here, between Destruction and Wizards, Jane felt a path forward that did not exist, and which still didn’t exist, but she had been given a sword when all she had ever been able to make herself was a knife. And now, she would create. Carving, cutting. Slashing. Slaying.

She wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

They were five kilometers from the Siphon.

It was a metal Yggdrasil-trunk and the top was a burning conflagration of Red. The Red Wizard was a dot in the sky, like a star orbiting a geyser.

Candice broke cover first, experiencing the same thing Jane was. She turned from red Destruction into a flying woman with arms wide open, laughing at the enemy, flying straight up and for the Red Wizard. She roared, “Hey, loser! Come and hi—”

The world Ended in Malevolence where Candice had stood, t-posing at the enemy.

A hole drilled through everything.

And then the Ending moved, slashing back and forth, erasing the rocks and dust and even the Red Elemental Destruction that flowed through all that ground. The Ending trailed up and right and then flashed down, like it was chasing something. And it was. Jane saw it now. Spots of White among the void, like gathering sparks—

Wild, free laughter filled the air as Candice reformed out of white light in front of the erasure, like sparks coming together and becoming flesh, revealing that all her armor and clothes and weapons were gone. What remained was a woman wreathed in orange brilliance. She had been Unmade, and then she wasn’t.

And then she stopped running and her sword shone like the sun. With a great swing she batted away the erasure— And her sword absolutely crumbled and she almost muttered ‘oh shit’ but she didn’t have time for that. She kept running, dodging sudden erasures here and there, dodging something that she could see and that no one else could even envision. She pulled out a shield—

She angled her shield and then batted away something—

Brilliant, black-Red lightning splashed away like scattered molten metal, sparking in the air as it dissipated into infinity. Its presence sent an illumination across the land, like the brief reveal of a spotlight, revealing ten thousand more [Red Bolt]s coming for her. They had been invisible, and perhaps they hadn’t really existed at all until that moment. But now Jane saw the Wizardry-based attacks of the Red Wizard.

Jane wasn’t about to let herself be upstaged that easily, and Candice needed some breathing room.

Jane lifted from the tumble of Elemental Destruction and rock and pulling gravity, facing death head on, and telling it, “Take your best shot, you fucking bas—”

Red.

Jane somehow found herself holding back the world with all her strength, [Prismatic Domain] empowering [Greater Prismatic Body] empowering [Prismatic Domain] in a churning rush of all the colors of the rainbow, but especially white. Iridescent white glittered, forming a prow against the power flowing at Jane, allowing her to do something that she had never been able to do before. Survive. The Red was filled with the demand that Jane not exist anymore, but Jane understood that demand, and told it to fuck off.

Somehow, Jane had been reduced to her core and her desire to live, and that was it.

Jane had no eyes to see, no senses to feel, but she saw words anyway.

WR: 4%

WR: 12%

WR: 17%

WR: 38%

WR: 78%

MP: 88% / HP: 94% / PP: 97% / <Res: 63 / WR: 100%>

When Wizardry Resistance hit 100% the Red cleared from her vision and Jane found what remained of herself several kilometers away from where she had taken the first hit. She was a glittering white core. Less than a body, more of an idea. Her aura still held around herself, prismatic power forming a prow that pushed back on the Red, but that prow was shredded in turn. Those shreds formed white sparks that folded around her core, like white fireflies returning home. Power filled her, and Jane pulled her body together herself, right in front of the oncoming Red.

She could see the attack now. She already knew what she was going to see, because she knew how this battle program worked and they were still at low levels of variance from the Red Wizard, but she was still surprised to be able to actually see. Wizardry made the attack impossible to parse, but now Jane had some sort of Wizardry of her own.

The attack was a thin Beam of red, not even as thick as three fingers. A ‘simple’ [Malevolent Destruction Beam] spell wreathed in Wizardry that made the Wizard’s call to Destruction simply how the world was; that Jane was harried by this magic and unable to do anything about it. That was how the Red Wizard ‘Erased’ people with a simple flick of his fingers.

They were in a dungeon, though, and the dungeon rules overrode the real danger of Erasure down here—

Words appeared. Jane read them without reading them, for she felt their effects a lot more than words could convey.

[Armor of Protection] achieved!

Armor of Protection.

You are you.

Automatic activation upon experiencing hostile Wizardry. Upon achieving 100% Wizardry Resistance, Armor of Protection fully activates for a minimum of 5 mana per second, protecting you against Wizardry-based attacks. Indirect protection is less expensive than direct combat. Will drain Resons if Mana is insufficient. Will break if you have nothing left to give.

A chime sounded and Jane was still getting run down by the Red Beam, but then dark blue armor layered across her entire body and a sword of the same material appeared in her right hand. A shield appeared in her left. Everything glittered bright white and also blue. She slammed her shield into the beam and the beam Broke like so much ended Wizardry.

Bright white letters appeared in her sight.

Bonus Quest: Survive

Difficulty: Wizard

Complication: Constant mana drain while adjusting [Armor of Benevolence]

Reward: [???]

Candice was already flying forward, through the sky like a tracer round, aiming at the top of the silver Siphon, while darker Red lights swarmed her like angry bees. She batted the Red bees away, splashing them apart like so many Red-Spark-filled water balloons—

The Red Wizard pulsed at the top of the Siphon, like a supernova released from a distant star. Red crashed outward in a thick wave of power. Candice stood her ground and she did her best to deflect the Red Bolts that swarmed, but she was overwhelmed. The Bolts struck at her shield because she whipped around fast enough to do that, but that shield began to crumble. Her sword broke three times, getting shorter and shorter as she slashed away three Bolts.

Jane moved to her side, barely getting there before the Red Wave, using her sword to slash through the remaining Bolts attacking Candice—

Jane realized a few things in that moment of slashing apart the Red Bolts, in preparation to weather the Wave with Candice. The Red Wizard had broken containment when no one was looking, because those Bolts were not particularly strong, and yet they were wrecking her sword. They had already wrecked Candice’s protections. They were not simple Wizardry. Jane’s contact with the Beam that had been attacking her was nothing like what was attacking Candice.

These ‘Bolts’ were works of magical art.

[Dispel], [Anti-Force] Tricking Magic, Elemental Destruction, some sort of shredding intent and anti-Metal magics. Yes, there was Wizardry in there to tie it all together —somehow Jane could sense it through contact with her sword— but it was way, way beyond what the Red Wizard should have been capable of doing.

And then the Red Wave was there.

Jane and Candice huddled together, reaching into the Red with dual auras and Domains, forming a prow. All of Jane’s senses turned White as the thin Wave became a deep ocean, completely surrounding Jane and Candice, ripping at their Domains and their Prismatic power. [Greater Prismatic Body] did what it did best. It transformed as needed, becoming what it needed to be in order to survive and thrive in the coming apocalypse, but Jane and Candice both still needed to direct it.

It seemed that Intelligence Stat was working well, though.

[Dispel]s were met with Elemental Destruction of Jane and Candices’s own. Tricking Magic was tricked into splashing against Tricking Magic of its own. Elemental Lava melted Elemental Metal, and Armor of Protection wreathed everything in White, from Jane and Candice’s combined prow, to their blue and orange armors.

And then Jane roared and shoved her shield into the Red—

The ocean parted—

A horn blared.

Jane felt her father’s presence before he actually moved. She looked up at the Red Wizard.

And then White lightning arced out of nowhere and slagged the top three kilometers of the Siphon, along with the Red Wizard.

White flashed, and all the Red drained from the world.

Words appeared writ large across the sky.

SCENARIO ENDED

“Fuck!” Candice said, scowling at the sky, wielding a sword in her hand larger than her entire body. “Come on! We could have taken him, Dad!”

Not fast enough, though, Jane thought, as the Siphon continued to melt from the White Lightning strike.

Metal splashed across the wasteland.

Dad’s voice carried on the void, “I’m not about to commit a crime against civilization by letting a malevolent Wizard be created —even if he would supposedly be instantly depowered— and you both got double advancements of that armor thing you got going on anyway. The experiment was a success, and decoupling the Wizard from the Dungeon wasn’t working. He reached 65% coherence.”

Candice groaned out, “FUCK!”

Jane said, “Then that means you get to poke at us with Wizardry, Dad.”

Candice yelled at the sky, “Yeah!”

Silence stretched across the inert Third Floor of the Glittering Depths.

And then Erick’s voice came back, “… Fine.”

Candice whooped.

Dad said, “We’ll do, like, forced eye-color changes, or something, and you can try to resist them.”

Candice called out, “Don’t want to strain yourself! I understand. You’re just too busy.”

Dad appeared in the air in front of Candice, saying, “Pink.”

Candice turned the most vibrant colors of Pink that Jane had ever seen.

For a moment, there was silence.

And then Candice looked at herself. She looked at her hands, her armor, her fingernails. All was brightest pink. And then she focused inward and her [Greater Prismatic Aura] was trying to come out, but it was also brightest pink… and kinda rainbowy. Candice scoffed. “What the—” She went stone-faced serious. “I can solve this.”

Dad smiled. “I have complete faith in you. Here, let me help you learn more: Chartreuse.”

Candice turned shit green.

“SHIT GREEN?!” Candice exclaimed. 

Jane tried not to snort.

While dad and Candice reenacted the fairys of Sleeping Beauty scene all on their own, Jane glanced at the readout from her Status.

Quest Complete!

[???] achieved!

[Armor of Protection] → [Regalia of Protection]

You are you.

Always active in the background. Always at 100% Wizardry Resistance. Regalia of Protection drains 1 mana per second upkeep. Automatic negation of Wizardry below <Store Manager> level. You will take damage to your Mana before you take damage to yourself to protect yourself from Wizardry. Summon your full Regalia for 100 mana to mitigate even more damage. Will break if you have nothing left to give.

It felt pretty good. Great, even. But also fucking exhausting. That tiny bit of a ‘battle’ had proven 10 times over why Jane had needed something more in order to hang with the big boys, and she had gotten it. All it had cost her was… Ouch. That Status, tho.

MP: 51% / HP: 58% / PP: 58% / <Res: 0 / WR: 100%>

Jane switched to the normal view, and got more accurate information.

Mp: 58,761/114,000, ↑↓ [+8.3, -1 <Regalia Upkeep>]

Hp: 35,361/60,000, ↑↓ [+0,-0]

Pp: 11,177/19,000, ↑↓ [+0,-0]

Resons: 0/100

Oh yeah. Jane saw the problem. When the Personal Script first initialized Jane had felt like absolute shit until she had gotten a few resons under the belt. That ‘0’ right there is why she felt so damned tired. Defending against the Wizard had really taken that much out of her? Shit.

Jane adjusted her Status to fund all of her regen into resons, and as soon as 3 seconds passed, she had generated 25-ish mana which made 2 resons, with another one almost fully generated in that third second. Jane breathed out, relieved, and then she adjusted her Status back to how it had been originally.

Mp: 58,807/114,000, ↑↓ [+4.9, -1 <Regalia Upkeep>]

Hp: 35,364/60,000, ↑ [+2.5, -0]

Pp: 11,179/19,000, ↑ [+1.5, -0]

Resons: 3/100 [+.1 = +.01, -0]

Candice, floating in radiant brown armor, asked Jane, “I got [Armaments of Protection]. How about you?”

Dad must have moved on.

“[Regalia of Protection]. So slightly different.” Jane mentally commanded her newest spell to fill the air in front of her… Which took 1 mana, according to her Status. “It takes a mana to display Status?”

Candice didn’t answer. She was reading, her eyes going wide as she giggled semi-maniacally. “This is great! Mine is basically the same.”

[Armaments of Protection]

You are you.

Always active in the background. Always at 100% Wizardry Resistance. Armaments of Protection drains 1 mana per second upkeep. Automatic negation of Wizardry below <New Hire> level. You will take damage to your Mana before you take damage to yourself to protect yourself from Wizardry. Summon your full Armaments for 100 mana, and gain an edge that cuts through Wizardry. Will break if you have nothing left to give.

Jane tried to pull the description into herself, like she could with any blue box from the Script, and nothing happened, as she asked, “It cost you a mana to display that, too, right?”

Candice paused and then she looked in the air as she conjured a good hundred spell descriptions and other junk, filling the air with brown-colored words. “Oh yeah. That’s a mana a pop. I never noticed that.” She wiped a hand through the mess of glowing words, ignoring them as she asked Jane, “Do you think we can make more stuff like this? I want [Absolute Annihilation]— or [Wizard Beam]!”

“I don’t know… But...”

Jane felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since she had come to Veird and first experienced the Script, full of unknown possibilities. Not since the first time she had stepped into her first dungeon. It had been a long time since either of those events, and even longer since she had picked up a stick as a kid and pretended it was a sword.

Jane had learned almost everything she could through experimentation and Dungeons, always struggling to keep up with her father’s power, always falling short and needing to explore side avenues of strength in order to find the way forward once again.

But this Personal Script…

Jane floated in the absent gravity of the Third Floor of the Glittering depths, surrounded by scattering, molten metal that floated in the sky like a million tiny suns, her body surrounded by blue [Conjure Armor] that wasn’t [Conjure Armor] at all, and she saw the path forward to the future. A small glimpse. A chink in an impossible wall, an impossible crack opened that she could walk through, if she kept her wits about her, and leveraged every strength she already knew to widen that gap even further.

It was a gap that she could use to save the world.

Words appeared.

Reson cap improved!

100→ 276

Jane chuckled at that.

Candice asked, “What?”

“We’re going to save this world, Candice.” Jane said, “Us. You and me and the others. Dad is going to be involved, but we’re going to be the ones to kill Red gods and Red archliches, and copies of ourselves that were twisted to Malevolence, that are going to try and tear us down in ways we cannot imagine.”

Candice’s wild enthusiasm burned hotter, and deeper, as her wild grin turned to a quiet smirk. “Yeah. We are—” She glanced at the air. “Oh! My reson cap went up!”

Jane smiled. And then she teased, “Still got a shit-brown mana-color.”

“I’m working on it!”

- - - -

Half-asleep, Jane opened her eyes to a white room, with a white hologram of herself standing before her.

Benevolence said, “Great job! That worked out very well. What can I help you with?”

“I want answers. A lot of them. And maybe an adjustment to [Regalia of Protection]”

Benevolence nodded. “I can help you with questions and answers. Be forewarned that my answers will attempt to lead you down a path toward the greatest good for all and every individual. If you are good with that, then we can proceed, otherwise I would suggest you return to the Conglomeration version of myself. Your Regalia can be altered by me as needed, as I deem necessary. Your Regalia can be altered by you, however you wish, if you can alter it and not have it collapse upon you.” She added, “I am afraid, though, that I have done as much as I can for you at this time with regard to spellwork. Would you like to see your [Regalia of Protection] spell?”

“… Sure.”

Benevolence lifted a hand and a cluster crystal of light and power and rainbows coalesced. It was a confusing jumble of angles and planes and edges and softer curves, all of which seemed both frozen in time with itself and constantly moving inward and outward. It almost hurt to look at, but this was a space inside Jane’s soul, so it actually just hurt to be around. That pain was nothing that Jane couldn’t handle, but she did have to struggle to stay within the half-dream—

Jane blinked, and she realized she was fully awake.

She grumbled a little as she took in the sights of her private room near the Blue Corps offices, located in the center of Ar’Kendrithyst. She had been kicked out of the half-dream, and now she was simply sitting on a pillow, beside her bed. The windows outside showed brilliant blue sky and fluffy clouds, and the deeper blue crystal of the Blue Corps offices across the way.

Jane breathed deep, let her small frustration go, and then she closed her eyes again.

A few minutes later, half-asleep, Jane opened her eyes to a white room.

Benevolence said, “Welcome back. Your Regalia is a very large working, rife with Wizardry, so I suggest you start with a smaller spell if you want to practice with soulforging.” Benevolence lifted an arm, and a simple 6-sided quartz-like crystal appeared. It was clear-ish, with a dot of soft blue glowing in the center, coloring the whole thing. “This is a representation of [Force Bolt] in your soul.” She put her hands together, and then brought out another crystal exactly the same as the first. “And this is a copy to mess with; one that isn’t connected to any other part of your actual soul.”

Both of the representations of [Force Bolt] hurt to look at, but Jane was able to maintain her concentration on the half-dream this time. But… Jane came upon a realization.

“This is gonna take a long time, isn’t it.”

“You might reach some competency with Soul Magic before you fight against real Wizardry in the coming month, but Soul Magic is the study of a lifetime. Several lifetimes, really.”

“Put away the spell. I want to talk about organizing the Status.”

The spells vanished—

Benevolence vanished, too.

The blue hologram came back, saying, “Let’s talk about your Status.”

“What happened to Benevolence?”

“Status is my deal.”

“… I want to organize my Status so my Mana protects my Health which protects my Psyche.”

“Sure. How do you want to do that?”

Jane sighed a little, both in the half-dream, and in reality—

Jane realized she was back in her room. She had fallen out of the half-dream.

“Dammit,” she whispered.

And then she focused inward again, as she closed her eyes…

- - - -

“So after half an hour of talking about how to do that, and then another hour getting it done, I have the bright idea to ask if we can simulate some combat scenarios or something, and she says ‘Sure! How do you want to do that?’. GODS. I just about punched her.”

Sitnakov laughed. It was just the two of them right now, taking dinner in Jane’s office in the Blue Corps of Ar’Kendrithyst. She was eating a big fried chicken sandwich and fries, and he was eating the same, with a side of black adamantium in little bricks. It was a cozy dinner. Jane wanted more dinners like this, but events were advancing outside their little spot of calm.

Plan Surround and Consume was hours away from finishing. Jane and the big guy were stealing as much time together as they could, because soon they would be in completely different theaters of war. She, here at the Corps, on reserve and likely going to stay that way because it was more important for the entire world to see The Wizard’s daughter in the thick of command, and especially if there was going to be a counter attack. Killzone would be remaining here, too.

Sitnakov would be on the front lines, with her father.

If Plan Surround and Consume worked, then dad would turn up the heat on Fenrir, cracking its Scheme and likely saving the people down there, or something like that. He was playing his plans close to his chest, and he’d probably be altering his plans ten thousand times between now and then, just to keep Nothanaganthor guessing. If everything went well, then father would be the tip of the spear in a week, or something, paving the way for all others to come in and sweep up. Sitnakov and the Valkyries would be somewhere in all of that. Candice would be close behind that front line, because she had already expressed that she was going out there and it was either with dad, or in secret, and he had relented.

Jane might be there, too.

But the actual war was a massive affair, and Fenrir had two sides, and Veird only saw this side of that land. Even dad hadn’t ventured inside Fenrir to check in there. Not yet.

… Or maybe he had, and he hadn’t told anyone. That was also a possibility.

Jane went back to focusing on dinner. She stuck a fry into some purple ketchup, made with purple tomatoes. Dad had brought/invented the red variety, but Jane kinda liked the purple stuff better.

Sitnakov smiled softly as he saw her eat.

Jane waved her fry. “Anyway. The Personal Script has a lot of limitations but it will help you do whatever you can figure out on your own. I was kinda pissed off and trying anything to figure out how Candice had made all her pools protect each other in sequence, so I said ‘can we shoot my own Mana at my Mana and Health and Psyche, and see what kinda damage it does?’ Looong story short, the various pools take and deal different types of damage, and they’re strong against their own damage but ‘weak-ish’ when they’re exposed to damage from other types. The way that it’s already set up is that each pool already takes damage from what they’re best at taking damage from and hides behind the other pools to let those other pools take damage from their preferred damage. Candice was livid when I told her and she checked out a damage scenario herself.”

Sitnakov smiled. “Say ‘damage’ one more time.”

Jane slapped his arm.

“Ow!” Sitnakov said, smiling wider as he pretended to hold his ‘injured’ arm. “That was several points of damage!”

Jane smiled.

Sitnakov asked, “So do soul attacks attack your Mana?”

Jane nodded. “And physical stuff hits my Health and mental shit hits my Psyche. Honestly, the hardest thing to wrap my head around now is that I can’t cheat in tens of thousands more ‘mana’ through Healing Magic and Blood Mana combos. That’s a big hit to long term effectiveness. Beth is experimenting with fixing that issue, but she’s not had much luck. I’m sure someone will figure out a cheat soon enough. Wonder what will happen when that happens. Is dad going to ‘update’ the software, or something?

“Or maybe there are no cheats, because he retroactively went back in time and fixed them from ever happening? Who knows!

“Anyway.

“Beth has the weakest Benevolence Mark of us all and she doesn’t want to go fight things at all and she’s not in any organization or supporting others, so her Benevolence Mark is at ‘New Hire’, like Candice, but it’s a lot less helpful. Candice’s Benevolence Mark simply stopped talking to her when she was done with her Quest, like it was too tired to speak more.”

“Have you talked to your Dark Mark yet?”

“I tried it for a moment.” Jane said, “Incoherent screaming and then I started to feel… weird. Distant-weird. Hard to explain. And then there were white eyes staring at me. The eyes went away and the Dark went quiet. Little Miss Blue Combination lightward came back out after that.”

Sitnakov sat back in his chair, saying, “That’s wild, Jane. That’s… pretty amazing… Was it Melemizargo in your Personal Script?”

“Really might have been a hallucination.”

“Hmm… Even so, that has some implications for who the Benevolence Lady is… And yet, your dad did try to make Benevolence be its own thing, outside of him.”

Jane shrugged. “I haven’t asked him anything about it yet.”

“What’d the Fractal say?”

“Nothing. I tried to access it, but the interior space went all weird like a ripple flashing the top of a pond into dull reflections, then the conglomerate blue lady came back.”

“Have you asked about Igniting to Wizardry?” Sitnakov waggled his eyebrows. “You could join the real front lines and I wouldn’t have to fight alongside Shades.”

“It simply didn’t answer me. Evan asked about that, though— his Benevolence Mark is the most talkative. He’s at ‘District Manager’ level, for all the stuff he’s doing in the administration of the House. Benevolence said that he’s simply not ready, until he’s ready.” Jane huffed a laugh. “Which was appropriately fairy-like.”

Candice was now linen-colored, or at least she had been the last time Jane had [Telepathy]d with her.

Jane smiled at that.

Sitnakov hummed with discontent. “That’s something I don’t understand. Why does Evan have a bigger Benevolence Mark than you? You’re here at the Blue Corps and you’re one of the leaders for the Dungeoneer’s Guild. You should be a District Manager.”

Jane’s heart pulsed with a little bit of joy because Sitnakov was looking out for her. She smiled, saying, “I talked with Dad about it. He thinks it’s a temperament issue. I’m organizing this stuff because I kinda fell into it and learned on the job, but Evan is really going for it, and for much less violent reasons than me. I just wanted to be a delver to explore and fight new things and the organization around all of it was a whole bunch of people trying to swing their egos around and gumming up what should have been a simple act of organizing known dungeons and eradicating bad ones, so I sorta… did that. And then kept going. Honestly I am so glad that I’m not a real leader in any of these things, but I’m still here.”

Sitnakov grinned. “I get that.”

“You’ve fallen into the trap of responsibility a few times, haven’t you?”

Sitnakov boomed with a laugh. “Once or twice! Sometimes I ended up leading men and then those men became a company and Kormolok would try to get me to do more and father would say the same, but then Abarnikon asked if I wanted help with all my newfound responsibilities and I threw all of them at him. He loved it, and he’s good at it, so that’s fine by me.”

Jane snorted. “I should start doing that with Evan.”

Sitnakov smiled, and it was great to see. “So that [Regalia of Protection] is almost like a constant Wizardly-‘No’, or something, then? Like how to protect against soul magic?”

Jane eagerly said, “It is! That’s basically the entire Ability. Took me a while to realize that— That’s another thing about the Personal Script. You know the computers my dad brought back from Earth? And from Margleknot, I suppose. Talking with the Personal Script reminded me a lot of this thing they do with ‘coding’ when the code isn’t coding right. It’s called ‘talking to the duck’ troubleshooting…”

- - - -

Evan sat in a lotus position upon a pillow in his room in his house of the Cloud Castle.

The world was disarrayed.

He would put it to rights.

He closed his eyes and meditated, his aura shimmering prismatic as it cycled into his body, into his core, into his soul. A soft chime soon echoed in his ears, and not in his ears at all. He ignored it. Another chime came a minute later. He ignored it, as he cultivated and accreted at the same time, in a way that he never could before. Several more chimes came through, like the soft bells of a meditation bowl. The ripple filled his mind, and then vanished into the ocean that was his magenta-rainbow soul.

And then there was a ‘ding!’.

Power unwound.

Evan relaxed, his magenta-prismatic aura fading away, his Domain faltering, as he felt out his body.

Black ichor drenched him, from his short black hair to the soles of his feet, to every place where flesh met flesh and even the inside of his mouth and ears and in the corners of his eyes. It stank, and Evan was exhausted. It was difficult to keep his head up and his shoulders straight, to not retch at the stench of it all, but he managed. A [Cleanse] removed most of the problem, but not all. Evan knew why it hadn’t fully cleaned him, but his mind was blurry right now; he would fix that issue later. For now, he was tired, but not absolutely filthy.

He opened his eyes and took in the update from his Personal Script.

[Pure Cultivation] accomplished!

Pure Cultivation

Expel weakness. Grow strength. Find yourself. Maybe become a Wizard one day.

Actively drain your resources to grow your base stats, starting with the weakest. <Base Stats do not affect mana generation rate>

Evan smiled at that, and then he looked through his older notifications —all those little chimes while he was cultivating— before he opened his Status and had a good look.

He liked what he saw.

Soul up!

Body up!

Mind up!

Reson cap up!

Evan Flatt, [35] [Current Location: Layer 789; Veird, year 1453]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 50%, 30%, 5%

Reson allocation rate: 15%

Darkness Level: Archmage

Fractal Level: Blind

Benevolence Level: District Manager

Soul: 115; 703,700 per day / 8.1 per second

Body: 66

Mind: 35

Overall Stability: ↑ [+6.9, -0]

Mp: 59,671/115,000, ↑ [+4, -0]

Hp: 32,487/66,000, ↑ [+2.4, -0]

Pp: 8,871/35,000, ↑ [+.4, -0]

Resons: 1/521, [+1.2 = +.13, -0]

Evan sighed into the open air, relaxing as his resons ticked up to 2. Everything about this process was a bottleneck, but Evan’s lack of resons were the real bottleneck. But 2 days ago his reson cap was 100, and now it was 521,

He would have gone further today, but duty called.

Plan Surround and Consume was proceeding on ‘schedule’, and all foreseen issues were already being taken care of by father. The encirclement would happen in 2 more doublings; in the next 3 hours. From there, they’d try to double the whole thing 2 more times, for more solid coverage.

Evan cleaned himself up again with another [Cleanse]… and then a few more, because the [Cleanse] in his Personal Script was not as good as the Script [Cleanse], which was what it was.

“Right” Evan reminded himself, “Switch back.”

With a flick of intent, Evan cast [Cleanse] upon himself using the real Script, and it was amazing.

Evan sighed in content as thick air flushed away the ick still on his body. He switched back to the Personal Script soon after, cast an [Alarm Ward] for 1 hour, and crawled into bed. Closing his eyes he drifted off to sleep almost instantly—

Evan found himself in a magenta room, facing the lightward version of himself that was his Personal Script.

“Ah,” Evan said, “I did not mean to come here.”

The magenta copy of himself flickered and turned pure iridescent white. “I am aware, but you should know that while I told you I could not help you make a second ability so soon after the completion of your first one, it appears I can, in fact, help you adjust another spell you already have. Would you like to take the Quest for [Sight Beyond Sight]? Or would you like to try for an upgrade for [Pure Cultivation], to increase mana generation? Please note that the previous warning still holds, in that if you choose to increase mana generation through [Pure Cultivation] then you will gain fewer Stats.”

Evan was exhausted, but he smiled and had no trouble saying, “Let’s talk about the capabilities of [Sight Beyond Sight] again, for I have new questions...”

- - - -

Poi did not need to meditate to speak to his Personal Script, but he did need to be in the right frame of mind, so he made himself some tea and cut off his connections to others, except for himself down in the Black Gate Dungeon over on Dungeon Island… or he kept his connection open to the version of himself on the Cloud Castle above Candlepoint. Really a POV issue, there. Both Pois were the same Poi.

Poi kinda lived in two bodies these days. It was nice.

Poi sat down on two chairs in two different sun rooms at the same time, and he called up two different shadows of himself—

The images condensed into a softly blue wardlight image of Poi, appearing at the sunroom in the Cloud Castle. It asked, “Yeah?”

“Last time you appeared in the dungeon space. What changed this time?”

“Your main focus is up here, so this is where I appeared.”

Poi hummed. And then he shifted his main perceptions down to the dungeon.

The Personal Script image moved with his mind and appeared in the facsimile of the old house at Spur, where Poi also sat sipping tea. It said, “And now your main mind is down here.”

Poi narrowed his eyes at his Personal Script, and was glad that it was actually answering questions, now.

Good.

No more ‘beating around the bush’, as Erick used to think, and Solomon still thought sometimes.

Poi asked, “If we were to separate this link, then would you split into both of us?”

Poi’s Personal Script began to glitter like crystal, the soft blue becoming a daytime sky filled with stars. “Of course I would split, Initiate Poi, for you know more than any other that I am more than what I appear to be. Also, you have been speaking with people who have a Personal Script and who also got pregnant, and I split down in that direction as well, just like the Mind Mages of historical Veird passed down their power.”

Huh.

Being weirdly talkative, it seemed.

Time for the big question.

Poi extended himself inward, into his soul, into the very machinery of the Personal Script.

It allowed him to do that, this time.

Poi asked, “What are you?”

The Fractal Mark in Poi’s Personal Script, like a perfect onion, and the Fractal Marks strewn throughout Poi’s soul, inside every derivative Skill and Spell of the original Fractal Mark of the Original Mind Mage, scattered like so much chopped onion, resonated together. The Fractal Poi said, “I am guidance that you have given yourself, constructed from what will be and what has been of you, but only you are you, Initiate Poi.” They asked, “Who would you like to be today?”

Huh.

Yeah.

That tracked.

Poi made a decision to believe.

He said, “Show me the options.”

Fractal Poi waved a hand.

Words appeared.

Calm Cultivation

Sight to See

Avatar of My Zenith

- - - -

Teressa laid Lenitha down for her nap, tucking her into her bed and then kissing her on her forehead. While Teressa had been reading the Benevolent Sky, her little girl had been running around with Ophiel again and she was completely exhausted. Teressa was kind of exhausted, too, but she had work to do.

She went to the kitchen, but she stopped right before she entered the room.

Dariok was there, rubbing salts and herbs onto a big slab of beef, getting it ready for the grill. He looked good. Teressa felt a pang in her heart as she looked upon him, and he hadn’t noticed her yet. How could she have possibly forgotten him? It was that damned Nothanganathor and his Red—

Teressa felt a familiar brush of Carnage pulse through her heart, filling her body with the Need to Kill, but then she sighed, and smiled, and walked into the room. Her Rage drained away as she put a hand on Dariok’s shoulder—

Dariok flinched— “Whoops! — Oh! Teressa. Ha ha!” Dariok turned and gave her a quick kiss, before he went back to stuffing salts and herbs into the cuts he had carved into the roast. “Didn’t see you there.”

He was still jumpy sometimes. He had never been jumpy before, but Solomon had said that there was trauma that would take a while to get over. Years, maybe. Decades. Maybe never. Hard to say. This un-Erasure process was completely new.

Teressa still loved Dariok.

Teressa smiled, saying, “Finally got Lenitha to take a nap and I was quiet. And I like watching you cook.”

Dariok grinned. “It’s bluebell and garlic and vanilla today.”

“Vanilla?” Teressa made a face. “In the roast?” She looked closer at the roast, and then at the near past, at the carvings that had been taken off and [Cleanse]d away. She came back to the moment, slightly offended. “That’s thousand-gold roast!” She laughed. “You’re gonna make it horrible!”

“Oh I am not.” Dariok rolled his eyes at her, saying, “It’ll be great! Some of the valkyries are real foodies and they already tried it out. Not a single person thought it would taste good, but it does… Or at least I assume it will if I followed the recipe correctly. Besides! You love bluebell, and that’s almost vanilla.”

“Bluebell is so far from vanilla that I’m not even sure where to begin.”

“I’m sure you could figure out some place, if you thought really hard.”

Teressa laughed loudly— And then she put a hand over her own mouth. “Oh that was too loud.”

Dariok smiled brightly, and it was wonderful. “Want me to help you make some louder noises? Just gotta get this meat in the oven.”

Ah.

Teressa missed this, and she hadn’t even known she missed this. The playfulness. The dirty talk. The love. The loving. Both of them knew they had no real time to do anything… Or maybe they had all the time in the world? Who knew what would happen when Plan Surround and Consume finally finished the encirclement. Teressa was supposed to be one of those who actually did know, but the Benevolent Sky was unreliable when it came to Nothanganathor’s direct actions.

Erick’s personal messages, delivered by him going back and forth through time, were much more reliable.

Mostly.

Things were going well.

Teressa strongly, softly, looked at Dariok, and poured her heart out as she said, “I love you.”

Dariok grinned. “I love you, too.”

Teressa pulled back a little bit from the seriousness of it all, teasing, “But your hands are all salty and I’m hungry, so get to cooking the rest of dinner.”

Dariok laughed. “Afterward?”

“And then afterward…” Teressa breathed deep. “I have to go back to the office.”

“I get it. I’ll take Tabitha into Benevolence Itself… Ophiel’ll pick us up?”

“He said he would and he wouldn’t forget that, but he does have a million other things on his docket…” Teressa made a decision. “I need to sit down for a little while, okay?”

“Sure. Dinner will be ready in 2 hours.”

Dariok placed the roast onto the nice big tray. It wasn’t the original nice big tray that they had had. All of Dariok’s stuff that he had had in the house had vanished with his Erasure, and the tray was one of those things. They had gotten him back, but none of the stuff. Those replacements had required trips to stores around the world. Teressa had loved that trip of theirs. It had been another walk through memory.

Dariok said, “I’ll get started on the vegetables. What do you want today? I got whiteroot, potatoes, carrots… Other stuff, I’m sure.”

“Everything that’s good. I’m gonna need something really delicious.”

Dariok raised an eyebrow. “How about fried veggies, then, and that soft sauce you like?”

Teressa felt buoyed just a little bit more. “I love it.”

Dariok smiled and gave Teressa a kiss.

They parted, and he got to cooking.

Teressa went into the other room where she sat down on a pillow and closed her eyes.

Moments later, Teressa stood in a room that was not a room, facing a softly grey version of herself without any distinguishing features. Didn’t even have a mouth or eyes, and the hands were all solid things, but yeah, that was Teressa. Maybe the shape of her soul, to be more precise? Or not. Teressa wasn’t sure, exactly.

The grey person said, “Welcome back. How may I help you?”

Teressa had made a decision a little bit ago, and now she made it again. “I need to speak with the Darkness.”

The Personal Script fluttered and then broke like a glass figure releasing a black tide that washed away the universe and left Teressa in a cloying void. The void pulled at her and she saw things in that Darkness that did not exist, but also things that might exist, if she was strong enough. If she could grab it and make it hers.

There was noise, and it sounded like everything and nothing all at once. Directionless. Without cause or effect. Someone roared. Someone cried. Someone laughed. Someone died.

Teressa was a point of calm in the black storm, and yet she wasn’t calm at all. She intoned, “I Rage at Malevolence, at what it has taken from me and others, and what it has done to all existence. I need to eradicate it all.”

The Darkness Raged with her, Teressa’s meditation filling with dragon roars and dark fire and ten million other things that may have existed in the past, might exist right now, and might exist in the future, or in another reality that was not this one. It was a cacophony that only existed because Teressa was here, looking upon it.

It was a cacophony that Teressa found strangely comforting.

It was sort of like staring into the black tangles of Benevolence in the sky, trying to figure out what they were and what they meant, but a whole lot more.

Teressa pulled herself out of the cacophony some time later, the Dark flowing back into the grey image of her Personal Script, like a black wound in the world retreating and healing over.

The reformed Personal Script said, “You have achieved an increase of your Dark Mark from 157,000 mana per day, to 161,000 mana per day, along with an across-the-board increase in Stats of several points. As you have decided against visual, exact updates, I will not give them to you unless you change this setting.”

Teressa nodded, and then she pulled out of the meditation.

In the darkened meditation room, Teressa opened her eyes. She wasn’t getting much out of her Personal Script right now, but she saw the usefulness of it. She’d figure out what she wanted to do with it eventually, but for now she smelled flowery meat on the air while Dariok and Lenitha giggled in the kitchen, talking about all that Lenitha had seen and done today with Ophiel.

Teressa grinned at that.

Her Rage was still there, in the background, demanding to come forward and for Teressa to grab at the Red in the sky and tear it all down. That was a change from the usual. Her usual way of being had been impotence. Useless. Without a way to actually accomplish anything at all.

It was not an unfamiliar feeling.

Back when Teressa had first met Erick, he had blown past her expectations of an archmage and then proven that she couldn’t protect him at all because he was too big. But then Teressa had learned about mana sensing, and she ended up better than him at that… for a short while.

Now, Erick was the fae-wizard-dragon Apparent King, handing out Personal Scripts and a lot of new power, and Teressa needed to catch up, in some way that Erick hadn’t done yet, in order to keep everything together. To make it all work.

She had decided she was going to Know the Darkness, if possible.

She was going to do an end-run on Nothanaganthor.

… Hopefully.

Teressa chuckled to herself, at the impossibility of her desire.

She’d still try. Would she have success? … ehhhhh.

Teressa rose from her seat and made her way to her family, in the kitchen.

- - - -

Shivraa sat in her field office, upon a pillow, her body a work of ice-forged weaponry, her mind sharp as monomolecular wires, her instincts as honed as a Wardancer, a Valkyrie, an officer, and a secretary, all at the same time. She had played many of those parts in her years upon years of slavery in Slavery’s Den, including some smaller parts that were best left unmentioned and forgotten. There were few exceptions to that drive to forget it all.

Perhaps the best role she had ever had in her years as a slave was as a simple cooling system. They had told her to stay in a large mansion’s large cold room with the food, to keep it cold and prevent spoiling. Shivraa recalled that time in her life almost fondly. The rage had abated in those years, and she had become ‘the cold fairy’ to the children of the master. She was not a fairy at all, but they liked to call her that. She made ice treats and snow rooms for those little kids.

Those little kids grew up and became like their parents. The rage had returned when that happened, when the eldest son decided to do to her what they did to slaves sometimes.

Shivraa didn’t remember much of the years after that.

She had been at Slave Intake 45, acting as a secretary, when the Apparent King had made his will known, and shown his power to all. When the raging monster came for Shivraa, there behind that desk, Shivraa did not fight. She welcomed that sword through her chest.

The Apparent King had saved her in so many different ways, but it had just been any old day to him. He was amazing. He was beyond her. She would try to catch up, as much as she could.

For Shivraa was awake now, making her own choices in life, and she was choosing to be at the Apparent King’s side, in whatever way he allowed.

He had already allowed her to express her rage, to let it take control, to let it do everything that she could not do, and somehow she had found herself again in that rage. In that Rage. Her Rage had become a living thing. A sword. A hand of claws. A jaw filled with teeth. Wings of blades and an aura of the Cold End of All.

There on her meditation pillow, Shivraa meditated on her path in life, in the choices she was making, every single day. Her mind wandered through memories, and through desires.

Before this trip to Veird, to what was surely her new, wonderful home, she had seen the old children of her former master, who had become masters themselves. They had briefly been mindless valkyrie, before being ripped back into youth, back into the people just on the cusp of becoming like their parents. Shivraa remembered the eldest son the most. She hated him. She almost killed him again. But she mitigated her response. Being a valkyrie had allowed her perspective that she had never had before.

That she had never been allowed to have.

She had spoken to them harshly, and they had reacted with fear and anger and terror, but also understanding. Their ‘Cold Fairy’ had become a cold killer, and the former masters had become crying children, barely understanding what they had become, or who they were anymore.

Shivraa paid them no more mind.

She wandered her meditation closer to the present, to this land where slavery was denied by the Powers That Be, through anti-slavery Quests that rescued people from that horrible life and tossed them across the globe, to another part of the land. Or, there was the other option. Vengeance.

Shivraa loved that.

She loved her new home in ways that she could not articulate well.

She could articulate that she hated Nothanganathor, though. She Raged at him. At the very idea of him. He was the creator of the creator of the creator of Slaver’s Den, of the Malevolence that kept all those people trapped until the Apparent King came and set them free.

Shivraa would kill Nothanganathor, if she got the chance.

… And yet, Shivraa knew the responsible thing. She would be better served making openings for the Apparent King to take his own revenge.

So many people would be there with her, too. To help, to Rage, to carve and kill and eradicate the Red. Veird was full of people who had been wronged by Nothanganathor, and all of them were valued comrades on the battlefield.

And yet, those others had faltered over the last year. When Shivraa appeared on Veird with her fellows and the full truth of the universe was revealed to these people, they faltered. They were small. Their rage was small. They had no idea of the full truth of the coming war.

This war would determine the fate of Margleknot, and thus millions upon millions of Layers of Infinity.

That daunted some people. Most people, really. Everyone had spoken to her about the impossibility of the coming war, in small conversations and small confessions. She did her best to assuage those fears, for fear was the mindkiller, as the Apparent King had once said… And then instantly told Shivraa that he was merely quoting someone else.

Shivraa smiled at that memory.

He was so honest.

Shivraa would die for him. Over and over and over, if need be, for what had she been doing before him except living as a slave? She was no longer a slave. She was her own person, making her own decisions, and she had made yet another decision, thanks to the Apparent King giving her more options. She would get her true revenge upon Nothanganathor, like all the others of this land.

The ‘how’ of it was still in question, though.

Shivraa focused inward.

She stepped into the room of the Personal Script.

She was already there, waiting for her. She had been at the edge of her meditation this whole time, simply waiting for Shivraa to turn her way. She was beautiful. Radiant. Brilliant white with wings cast wide and ice of many colors filling the room, like spikes of glittering-black-white certainty. She was utter solidity. She was the Ice That Ended It All.

She was Shivraa, but more.

The Perfect Version of Shivraa asked, “Your decision.”

Imperfect-but-striving Shrivraa declared, “[To Strike the Pretender-Gods From Heaven].”

“Quest Accepted.”