Before Erick knew it there was a single week left till the end of the year, then came Shadow’s Feast, and then the week-long Triumph of Light celebration afterward. He had not actually been planning much for any of that, but now that the hour was near, just like with last year and Last Shadow’s Feast, Erick got a wake-up-call telling him it was time to prepare.

That call had come in the form of a letter from a person Erick hadn’t thought about at all in recent months.

While sitting at his desk, Erick read the letter again.

- -

Dearest Fire of the Age, Erick Flatt, Wizard and Dragon of Benevolence,

GREETINGS!

It has been a whole year since I saw you directly! And yes, that does mean that I have been spying sometimes, as a concerned citizen of the world sometimes does when Wizards start walking around openly and honestly. You should know that I still have your fun little [Blessing of Minor Truth] active. I am looking forward to telling you all about what I’ve been doing this last year when I next see you in person! For we will be meeting again for this year’s Shadow’s Feast, will we not? Surely we will!

Since you are hosting the Feast this time.

I look forward to your opening song to the Dark, for My God has mentioned that once or twice or a hundred times— it is how it is with ancient gods and finding something they truly look forward to, you know.

But after that opening magics, there will have to be planned festivities and honors and such and such! I cannot wait to see what you come up with, for it is your year to plan and produce the whole thing! Goldie and Quilatalap are there to help you if you need help, and surely you will, but I will be showing up a day before the event and I suspect all the rest of us will be showing up a day before, too! They’ve all got triumphs to share with you, themselves, but I’ve kept tabs on them, so I can share a little bit right now.

Lapis, Shade of Enchantment. Ensuring the Quiet War remains as silent as it can be.

Farix, Shade of Education. Ensuring the safety and prosperity of the Brightwater refugees.

Treant, Shade of Forest. Cultivating the wild spaces to reduce danger and increase life.

Queen, Shade of Empire. Bringing Songli back from devastation, and more.

Hollowsaur, Shade of Life. Dismantling and reforming problematic species into beneficial things.

And of course you know of Goldie, Shade of Counter-Assassination.

And then there is me!

I look forward to seeing you again, Erick.

-Love, Fallopolis, Shade of Civilization, Culler of Corruption

- -

Erick looked up from his desk at the person who had given him the letter. “So… Goldie? Got any ideas for the party?”

Goldie stood on the other side of Erick’s desk, wearing her customary black leathers, with her customary black plank of a sword hovering at her back. She was at rest-stance, though that was rather normal. She was always as prim and proper as could be when she was around Erick in any sort of official capacity, and this was one of those times.

Instead of confirming that Erick would, in fact, be accepting the duty of hosting Shadow’s Feast himself, Goldie easily rattled off, “It will take place in the main tower of House Benevolence. You will cast your Time Magic in a large enough way to envelop this entire space, which will require you to make something new. Over the course of 1 night, we should have at least 48 hours of time in which to lay out all the accomplishments of everyone.

“The only people present from your side should be those you deem worthy of telling their exploits to others, and who you trust to hear the exploits of everyone else, and who you do not mind learning certain secrets that you have kept hidden for a long time. I have suggestions on that front, but I would not feel comfortable clouding your judgments with those personnel suggestions, so I will not give those.

“You will supply dishes and drink enough for everyone to consume to their core’s content—”

She stopped.

Because Fairy Moon stepped out of the open air to the side. The not-young-woman-at-all wore her usual pink and green dress, with a white corset. Her heterochromatic pink and green eyes sparkled, as she smiled, asking, “I wish to be welcomed for this feast.”

… It seemed things were moving fast in his life again.

Erick considered Fairy Moon’s request/order, and paused in his response so that Fairy Moon knew that he was truly considering it. The fae gained a small smile.

And then Erick asked, “Can I talk you out of this request?”

Fairy Moon frowned. “You could, but you could also not. Ask instead for agreements of secrecy sealed, and gain gifts of Ar’Cosmos catering and care instead.”

Goldie said nothing. She gave a light look at Fairy Moon, but Erick could tell nothing of how she felt— Ah. Goldie had shifted to shadow a small amount, and was perfectly controlling her countenance…

And with that particular thought, Erick gained some insight into his first of several open-ended requests.

Erick leveled at Fairy Moon, “You and whoever you bring will see things they were never meant to see. Things which could destroy the world if they got out. Therefore, you will remain silent about the secrets you spy— And you will stop infecting everything with your Fae Magic. And! These words are not to be lawyered out of. They are general wishes of goodwill desired from you, about all things. The closer you adhere to the spirit of this sentencing, then the better off I will be, and you will be, and all of everything we are doing here will go better, and what you are doing in Ar’Cosmos, will be better. You will be as a perfect guest. You will not influence anything in any untoward manner, unless that untowardness is required for the good of all of everyone.” He added, “And you’ll bring food and drink of all sorts, and… At most one or three more guests who will agree to the same.”

Fairy Moon listened to all of Erick’s words, and then instantly said, “I agree.”

Erick looked at her.

Fairy Moon smiled a little bit. “I agree! What more do you want?”

Erick said, “There’s going to be a small amount of my great big secrets revealed, even though I don’t want them revealed. The Shades already know them, but as far as I can tell they didn’t tell anyone, so the only real problem here is you and whoever you bring.”

Erick was talking about a lot of secrets, but the major ones were his possession of [Duplicate] and also that his real form looked like a small Melemizargo—

… His real form? What the fuck was that thought?

Erick ignored that thought for now.

“I can cast some compelling curses to keep your secrets as secure as the secrets of Ar’Cosmos, so that you will be able to announce those secrets to your people at the party, and then retract those secrets at the end.” Fairy Moon smiled, saying, “I would maintain those mysteries myself, but I am also great at keeping confidence when charged with that call. It would be as though the party happened in a dream for all other people.”

Goldie spoke up, “There will be none of that at the party. Melemizargo is about open honesty, and that secrets once given cannot be taken. If you cannot trust someone not to spill your secrets, Lord Flatt, then you should forbid them from the festivities.” Goldie winced a bit there at the end, for he was speaking in alliteration. With bright white eyes, she glared at Fairy Moon. “Do not.”

Fairy Moon almost responded—

But Erick made his words final as he spoke, “We will not be doing fae seals on the party. If you cannot trust your plus-1, 2, or 3, then you cannot bring them. If I cannot trust you, then…” Erick simply looked at Fairy Moon. “I want to trust you. Don’t screw this up. Don’t let others screw this up, either. You are an ally to me, so act like it more, please.”

Fairy Moon simply nodded. “I am aware I am in-the-hole with you. I will make it up to you this Shadow’s Feast, and you will know me for who I wish to be. I will ensure Bright Smile is on her best behavior, too, for she will be my plus-1, and there will be no others.”

“… Okay. That’s fine. I look forward to hearing the truth of what is going on in Ar’Cosmos in a friendly manner and from Bright Smile herself. Also, I do not appreciate you listening in to conversations that were clearly not about you. I did not say your name at all. You were not invited into this conversation.”

Fairy Moon smiled a little, and then vanished, her voice trailing away on the air, “See you soon!”

Erick ignored Fairy Moon, who was probably still in the room with them, and turned to Goldie. “As you were saying?”

Goldie turned away from where Fairy Moon was, then said, “Guest list. Guest quarters. Guest food and drink and comfort and security. Slotted time for the Shades to speak— Fairy Moon. Leave please.”

Something ephemeral left the room.

Erick held up a hand and flashed a Privacy through the space, dismissing it as soon as it was cast, using it as a manasphere cleanser. And then he flicked a [Cleanse] through the space to be sure. Thick air spilled away from Goldie and from all the rest of the space, but not that much, really.

Erick asked Goldie. “Do you have an idea of why she was here like that? This usually doesn’t happen.”

Goldie said, “Worried over the end of the year. Everyone is. Everyone has called last year’s festivities ‘Last Shadow’s Feast’ and we allowed it and encouraged it, but it was never going to be the ‘Last Shadow’s Feast’, for ‘Shadow’s Feast’ has happened every single year for a million years. The nature of that party changed in the New Cosmology, but since the Culling of our Clergy, it is Melemizargo’s hope that the Feast is back to being what it used to be… hopefully.”

“Yeah… Figured it was something like that.” Erick said, “So let’s change the name, then. Start something new.”

Goldie paused, her eyes going a little wide. “Uhh.” And then she recovered. “There are metaphysical reasons it is called ‘Shadow’s Feast’, because it is an honoring to the Dark, yet in such a way that existence can survive that honoring. People cannot survive honoring the Dark directly. So we gift a feast and the Dark takes what He desires, as one does for dragons and gods.”

“How about ‘Shadow’s Triumph’? Less of a connotation of devouring the world. More of an idea of spreading and honoring?” Erick said, “It aligns with the same sort of ideas of the Triumph of Light, too, and this way there is parity on both sides. Maybe the Triumph of Light can change into something less ‘anti-Shadow’ and ‘anti-Dark’ as well. But that’s not up to me. That’s an entire world changing their thoughts.”

Goldie went, “Uhh… You could try it— How about Shadow’s Festival? It’s almost the same?”

Erick nodded. He would try that, too. He could workshop a bunch of names, actually.

“Anyway.” Goldie continued, “There should be time for each Shade to speak, to tell you how they have tried to make the world better. Then there’s the public orgy event, which is always popular but we never got to last time. I believe you spoke about missing the last one because the whole event sort of… fell apart there. But you can certainly make that happen this year. Then there are non-Shade talks that should happen. Quilatalap will be expected to speak on something; he can do whatever he wants though, as he usually does— Ah! Exhibits are necessary and good. Since we’ll have at least two days of a party— more are better— then there should be multiple small parties lined up. You need to do the opening ceremony with the song that Melemizargo desires, then I suggest a party in the beginning, a day of exhibits and speeches, another party which is probably the orgy. Sleep. Another party, more speeches. End of day dismissal.” Goldie said, “Those are my suggestions.”

“… No orgy this year, either. Save it for your own time, or for personal inclinations during the event.”

Goldie nodded.

Erick asked, “Any guest list suggestions?”

“Less is more, in this case. You and a date or three. More dates is a good thing. All the Shades get a plus-1… Maybe 25 people, total? 30? None of your overseers… Except maybe Zolan? Mox, too; she’s incredibly good at her job. They’ll be expected to give small exhibits, at least. Probably no speeches.”

Erick had some ideas about all of that. He rapidly decided, “Those two can probably take the night off for a party. Everyone else will be on high alert. Will you be an assistant coordinator for me? Not sure what that will entail, but I’ll figure it out.”

Goldie stood fractionally straighter. “Absolutely.”

“Good. Then…” Erick said, “Then I’ll put everyone on alert and you can tell me when the other Shades all get here. I’ll greet them, and they can shuffle off into their rooms in the Shade tower...” Erick stood up. “I need to make some new magics.”

Goldie bowed, and then she straightened and vanished.

- - - -

Once Erick was back in his warehouse, and probably alone, he sat down on the ground and had a minor panic.

He was going to host the Shades for a Shadows Feast.

This was really happening. Erick had hoped that Melemizargo would have forgotten about the Feast and no one would ever mention it again, but holy shit. Of course that wasn’t going to happen. Like Goldie had said, this party had been happening every year since the dawn of the Old Cosmology.

And now here he was, expected to host Shades…

Okay.

Erick forced himself to stop panicking, and he was mostly successful.

Erick got up and got to work. First thing he needed to do was combine [Hasted Shelter] with [Renew], making an expandable hasted space, like he had with [Fairy Stronghold]. Easy enough. This was actually a spell Erick had been thinking about a lot, since a lot of dragons were way too large to fit inside his single Shelter, but he had never really had a need to make a larger magic, since, as a dragon, Erick’s range and size of every spell had gotten rather large. He could easily fill a 40-by-40-by-40 meter spherical-ish cube with a single [Hasted Shelter], if he wanted. Too bad the House was a lot larger than that.

And there was no way a Feast could ever fit in a single 40-meter-cubed space.

Erick shook himself out a little, shaking his hands and rolling his shoulders. He did a few small pushups to get the blood flowing, and then he stood and centered himself, briefly closing his eyes.

He opened his eyes.

With a few quick commands, Erick had a few Ophiel surround him. He handed out spellwork to all of them, rapidly bringing a new song to a crescendo of [Renew]ed and expandable Time Magic, and then he cast. A very similar Hasted area filled the space around Erick, but it was different in all the ways that mattered.

He dismissed the spell.

A blue box appeared.

Expandable Hasted Shelter, instant, close range, 500 + Variable

Multiply the subjective time of a large area to a variable degree, or expand the area of an existing cast. If one section breaks, the spell will contract, and not fully break.

Base version is 1 hour of subjective time in 1 minute.

500 points of damage to the barrier will break the effect. Always Restful. Always Cleansing.

Pretty much the same as before, but now it was ‘Expandable’, and Erick had even managed to work in that part about not fully breaking if one section broke.

Which was great!

… But the spell was rather a great deal stronger timewise than it needed to be, if they were only going to do 48 hours of partying in 12 hours of real time. With this, Erick could have 30 days of a party inside a single night.

… Had Tania Webwalker’s ‘hasted shelter’ spell, that covered the entirety of Ar’Kendrithyst, been weaker in strength? No. Obviously not. Obviously it had simply been tuned more for area, and less for density of time. Was Erick’s own spell a problem?

… No. They would have a normal night until midnight, and then Erick could cast [Expandable Hasted Shelter] and seal everyone into the party, rapidly filling the House with this magic. And then, from midnight to 1 am, they could have 60 hours of time to do whatever they wanted. Good. Yes. That… Could work.

He could keep going with this magic, though; add in some Undertow and such—

Oh!

No. He wasn’t going to make this magic drain the people inside in order to keep working longer. That seemed like… A really bad idea. REALLY bad, actually.

But Erick’s stray Undertow thoughts knocked loose some other magic he had been meaning to make for a while. Not a combo of all this other ‘party time enabling magic’, but something far more useful. A generalized Undertow, able to extract mana from donors from one side, and through a [Renew], empower any magics on the other side. He hadn’t actually put that magic together yet, and now was a good time to do so—

As a few Ophiel came together and started to sing, Erick realized that this spell was likely larger than most of the magics he had ever made. He stopped Ophiel’s song. He restarted.

Had to do this right, remaking all of this particular magic from the very beginning, Basic Tier, and he had to write everything down so that future generations could do this magic right, too. After a few false starts with wording, Erick got some paper and wrote down his thoughts… Mostly.

It starts with a set of magic controlled.

A [Renew] laid down to form the base mold.

Then comes Abyss to pull mana and hold

in a [Ward] made of Drain, the mana will fold

into self-made creations; eternal stronghold.

The base form is set, conditions are met;

take all that you’ve made, and start to braid.

The Abyss plunges far, drawing mana down deep.

Collapsed shadow to star! Light bleeds, it doth creep

In the form of [Renew] laid down at the first

powering self and others, here now, determinant.

It’ll work well now that you’re magically versed

And capable of making power that’s Permanent 

It wasn’t a poem Erick sang to the mana. It was a primer for people, and therefore it was purposefully cryptic.

It was also rather unnecessary, considering the whole point of [Renew] was that anyone could buy that and use that to directly power any other magics out there; that was how Erick had created that magic, after all. But with this Erick could set out a ‘charging station’ for his eventual city-wide runic web, that would eventually be powering all the city…

Oh. He could go a bit further, couldn’t he?

Erick’s grin went wide as he laughed a little, happily aware of what his next spell would look like; what it could do.

He lined up some Ophiel and they sang with him.

Seconds later, a spellform popped into existence.

The base nature of the magic was a blot of cold shadows in the air, and a tiny pinprick of light in the center. It almost looked like Erick’s [Undertow Star], all made of tendrils of shadow and hovering above the ground, but in a much, much smaller form. It was only about a meter across. This spell was only tier 2, as Erick had started from the base creation of his Undertow effect and added [Renew] right at the beginning. This was because he had needed to start over. All his other Undertow spellworks had been much too specialized already, and this was the spellwork he imagined many, many other people would attempt to replicate in the many, many years to come.

The blue box for the spell was taking a while to come through.

So Erick got to experimenting. He had an Ophiel hover near the shadowy tendrils and, almost lazily, the tendrils began to touch Ophiel. This was a subdued version of this spell; not fast acting at all. At least not right away. As glowing lights flowed from Ophiel into the ball of shadows, the light at the center of those shadows began to glow brighter and brighter—

The tendrils released Ophiel; the spell was fully—

Node of the Renewing Undertow, instant, super long range, 500 mana + Variable

Conjure a node that you can further direct to Renew spellwork within line of sight of the node. Nodes once linked to other spellwork will continue to Renew that spellwork until told otherwise, or until that spellwork is fully powered.

Ethereal. Permanent. Self-recreating, if part of a network.

10,000 base mana containment.

10,0000 extra mana containment per 500 initial mana invested.

Erick smiled. That was a good blue box.

He summoned another [Node of the Renewing Undertow] a hundred meters away from the first. For a few seconds the two Nodes just hovered where he had placed them. And then, with an easy-to-understand, almost instinctual feeling, he directed the two Nodes to link.

A thin beam of light shot from the mana-filled-Node and struck the shadows of the new Node. Erick had Ophiel move away from the first Node as he watched that first Node pour ethereal power into the second. The first Node dimmed. The second Node brightened.

They rapidly equalized.

This, now, was a runic web, but in spell form.

No need for metal at all—

“Oh!” Erick chuckled a little, then said to Ophiel, “This is probably the supremely easy version of whatever they got going on in Ar’Cosmos with Redflame’s nodes.” Ophiel twittered. Erick nodded, then looked to his Node, saying, “… Maybe I should expand my own Gate Space, too? That space is also called a ‘node’.”

… But where, though?

He only had one Gate Space out there right now. Every single Yggdrasil guarded a main entrance to that singular Gate Space.

Erick needed to double up on Gate Spaces, for sure, just in case something happened to the original. It was only… Hmm. How much did it cost to make a new Gate Space node? Erick brought up the box for [Gate].

Right there in [Gate]’s big blue box, it read, ‘Special Function, Special Cost: Open a gate into <Elemental Benevolence> to a known location OR create a node inside <Elemental Benevolence> to claim a portion of that space as your own gate space.’

Yeah.

The ‘special cost’ was a bit worrying, but he still needed to make at least one backup Gate Space. But where?

… Maybe Rozeta would have a good idea. He needed to ask her about the special cost, and also about this whole ‘Shadow’s Triumph’. Lotta reasons to call her up, actually.

So Erick surrounded himself in a Privacy and then opened his Minor Relevant Entity permissions and wordlessly sent off his magical question, in the form of a prayer.

He got an immediate response.

Normally the founding of an expansion to your Gate Space would require the use of your core to create a new node, but you managed to avoid that cost the first time through breaking yourself from the Script temporarily and using your mana to do that. If you can do that again, then I suggest you make several backups. If it doesn’t work, then you will get an Error message. Shouldn’t hurt too badly.

I will work on ensuring that you can reconnect, so don’t worry about that.

If you can do that, then put a Node at each Yggdrasil you have in the world, and somewhere else, too.

But you will likely have to wait until you can make a second core and extract that from your body in order to use it for base materials, before you can make another Gate Space.

All of the most permanent and special forms of magic make use of this type of artifact creation, and Gate Spaces are no exception. 

“… Ah.” Erick said, “Thanks. I suppose I should work on accretion more than I already have, huh.”

Your original Gate Space is well protected. Anyone seeking to invade would have to go through every single Yggdrasil simultaneously including the one inside the Gate Space itself, incapacitate you at the same time, and then corrupt all of Benevolence itself into their own mana. The list of entities capable of doing that is very, very small, and only really includes me, Melemizargo, and Koyabez, and we’re all invested in ensuring that no harm befalls you in those sorts of ways.

We can’t do much about mortal worries, but there aren’t any of those capable of truly harming your Gate Space, either. Small harms, yes. But harms you can recover from.

As far as accretion, though:

It would be good if you could make extra cores, but since exceeding a certain level of power might kick you off the Script (even with all the extra attachments I have given you, and continue to maintain), I would caution against trying to go too far with accretion.

The Script can account for a lot, Erick, but it can only do so much against a truly powerful Wizard.

I’ll warn you if it looks like you could possibly lose Script access long before you actually do. 

Erick smiled a little. There were worries in that note, but also a lot of hope, and friendly reassurance. “Thanks, Rozeta.” And then he moved on to the meat of the conversation, asking, “Any thoughts on this ‘Shadow’s Triumph’, thing?”

The box took a moment to appear, and begin filling with words.

Hopefully nothing untoward will happen, but of course my father would demand an honoring. We had all hoped that he would maybe skip a year or twenty, but of course he would not. We’ll be watching and ready to support your side if you need us, Erick, but what we suspect will happen, if anything, is that nothing will happen and he will lull you and others into a false sense of security.

Anything big might happen long after new worlds are opened.

So play whatever parts you feel you need to play, but don’t fall too deep down into whatever abyss my father makes inviting. 

“Then I’ll proceed as planned. Thank you, Rozeta.”

The blue box bobbed a bit, and then vanished.

Erick canceled the Privacy.

And then he opened a [Gate] to the Yggdrasil over at Songli.

The night was deep in this part of the world, but Yggdrasil was full of light. Erick glanced down at the world below, at the lake waters, and at the Wanzhi River that ran north to south, to the west of the lake. Yggdrasil’s roots, like white dragons, had buried into the lake, cropping up here and there as illuminated white arches, and in and out of the ground, almost like exposed stitching, crashing into the lakeside and expanding far into the river. This location had been rather large for Yggdrasil, back when Erick had originally planted him, but Yggdrasil had ‘outgrown the flowerpot’ sometime in the last few months. House Benevolence and Songli had been in talks to create a Gate Network for a while now, but ever since Erick had decided against marrying Nirzir, those talks had gone rather frosty.

The expansion to the Network should have gone down… there… somewhere.

Erick saw no good place for the Network to go, though. Everything was stitched with glowing white roots. If talks ever properly resumed with Songli, the expansion to the Network would probably have to go… Over at Holorulo? On the horizon over there?

Erick gazed across the world, to the west, and saw the clan mountains of Holorulo. They stood in light, almost like Yggdrasil stumps, ringing the central ceremonial city between them all. Erick cast his gaze further, seeing through Ophiel, looking upon the ancestral homes of High Clan Devouring Nightmare, where the former-Scion, now-Patriarch of Devouring Nightmare, Hangzi… was probably not there right now.

Hangzi was probably doing work somewhere, or something.

Erick should be doing work, too.

Erick had half a mind to search out Patriarch Hangzi Devouring Nightmare, and also Matriarch Lingxing Void Song, and also Matriarch Tipanri Severing Crescent, to get them all in a room together and actually fix this problem; to get them their Gate Network expansion. That would be incredibly rude, though.

Eh.

Whatever.

Erick had enough plots on his plate. Let this one take years to happen if it had to.

Erick turned his attention back to Yggdrasil.

He floated into Yggdrasil’s crown, to where he stood above a part of Yggdrasil’s branches that had a particularly fluffy looking patch of moss covering. With a twitch of thought, he pinged Yggdrasil attention. “Yggdrasil? You see me?”

An iridescent eye popped into the air beside Erick. “Hello father! What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to try something. Keep an eye out, okay? I might fall down onto this moss, but it shouldn’t be any worse than that.”

“Okay!”

And then Erick cast the Special Function of his [Gate]—

A blue box appeared bigger than anything, an ERROR message, but the size was simply Erick’s imagination because something spun inside of him, attempting to rip him open from the inside out. Everything went dim as horrible wrenching pain ripped at his insides and—

And then the pain flashed and vanished.

Erick came to, on his knees, on the moss. He coughed up glowing red blood that splattered across Yggdrasil’s mossy surface, sprouting little red mushrooms everywhere it landed. Something was caught in his throat, so Erick hocked up blood and bile. He spat out even more blood, and one shard of his own core.

Erick paused.

Yup. That white, glowing shard of something gem-like had been a part of his core.

—had been a part of his core.

He didn’t feel that bad, but upon seeing that shard he looked inside of himself.

Panic went up, and then down. It was just a surface crack through the whole thing, mangled arteries that were already healing, and a heart that was already pumping blood back where blood should be pumped. His lungs had taken some damage and there were other shards of core inside his body…

But he could fix that.

Erick went back home to his warehouse in Candlepoint’s Yggdrasil and sat down on the floor. He started to accrete like he did every morning, but this time there was a lot of damage to heal through, and shards of core to reattach. It took about half an hour to repair the damage, using a combination of [Renew] and accretion.

He did not realize until he was fully healed how absolutely shitty he had actually felt when his core was that damaged. He had been kidding himself before; tricking his mind into not feeling the pain. Or maybe… It just wasn’t that painful, until it was gone, and then it was like looking back at something he was glad was over.

But anyway. Now he breathed easy.

And then he said, “Fucking hell that had hurt!”

Maybe his opinion of ‘it won’t hurt much’ was different from Rozeta’s.

But… He was never in any danger of death… He supposed.

Erick decided that he could wait to make multiple cores before he tried that again. It was time to plan for a party, anyway; Erick had already planned out the magic, but there was a lot more organization to do than that. He summoned a chalkboard and began a rough sketch of the plan.

Ten minutes later, he was mostly done making a plan, because, even though he had so much other shit to deal with he was expected to put on a party for Melemizargo. Which. Fine. Let’s do this right, and such. Keep the alliances going and all that…

With some basic planning done, it was time to do more than that.

Erick went to see Quilatalap.

- - - -

Quilatalap’s Library was impressive.

Most of it was hidden behind a great many illusions. Erick had to walk a certain path to be admitted to the main library, which also caused him to go out Sight of almost everyone as soon as he got halfway down that path. It was similar to the way that Kydyr had hidden his own [Fairy House], but different, for they were still on Veird inside Quilatalap’s ‘[Library Space]’.

Erick needed to ask Quilatalap how he did this, exactly. It was one of his many new questions for the big guy—

Ah. Fuck. Stop with those sorts of thoughts, Erick. Quilatalap was just a guy who had a rather easy time making connections with others. He didn’t actually mean anything when he asked you out on a date.

It wasn’t a date!

It was just dinner!

Okay.

Stuff those thoughts away…

Erick walked down a hallway of books that were all trash. Daily distributions from popular copper-coin publications. Old editions of various Arcanaeum Consortium classroom publications that everyone and their grandfather had likely read in their Introduction to Force Magic class. All of those had been positioned here specifically to discourage people from looking deeper. And then Erick crossed a threshold. In big black letters over an archway made of bones and monster skulls, which looked like sapient skulls (but which were not, according to Quilatalap) the actual entrance to the library read:

‘VENTURE FORTH, THOSE WHO VALUE KNOWLEDGE MORE THAN THEIR LIVES’.

Erick had a lot of thoughts on that proclamation.

Part of him was all like ‘oh, okay, Quilatalap doesn’t want odd people to poke around; this is fine’. The other part of Erick was not happy with such dangerous proclamations being present in his kingdom, for any reason whatsoever. And yet, Erick was fine with it, for Quilatalap was simply protecting himself.

Quilatalap was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.

… And Erick really wanted to have dinner with the guy, but he hadn’t found a good time to finalize those plans… Or to talk about the warning Quilatalap had posted outside his library. Or to talk about all the magic he wanted to talk about.

Erick had kinda found himself in the last few days, simply wanting to be around Quilatalap. They had talked a lot about a bunch of topics, and yet neither of them had brought up that promised ‘date’—

An orcol skeleton came walking around the corner with its arms outstretched, fires in its eyes, and a dead-to-the-world incani in its grip. The man was not actually dead, but he was missing his left arm up to his bicep. It looked like he put his arm into an explosion of some sort.

Erick had seen something like this happen twice before, though, so he wasn’t too worried; Quilatalap was removing someone from his library. Erick merely stepped to the side and let the skeleton walk the guy out of the library. The injuries were new, though. A repeat offender?

Erick couldn’t tell; the guy looked different—

Suddenly narrowing his eyes, Erick watched as the unconscious man and his skeleton escort vanished around the corner. If that man had face-stolen someone else’s body to come here… Erick needed to talk to Quilatalap about that, too.

With his libido now firmly annihilated, Erick walked below the archway, into the library proper, and he felt his senses of the outside world collapse to only what he could see though the shelves upon shelves of books. In a few short strides, Erick had walked below skeletal birds, who watched everyone who came and went, and passed into the main room.

It would be a fantastic library one day. Many, many eternal stonewood shelves (Quilatalap knew that spell himself) stretched up multiple stories into the air. Rows upon rows. Depths upon depths. But as for actual books, there were only a few scattered around here and there. They were all books on magic. Almost all of them were from the Arcanaeum Consortium catalog, of which Quilatalap had managed to acquire about 40%. The rest of that whole entire catalog was on backorder. Soon, Erick would have a copy of Oceanside’s public library here, at House Benevolence, and he kinda loved that entire idea.

What had arrived so far came in by the Platform-full. On the east side of the library, Quilatalap was still unboxing those books and setting them out on the shelves. Erick found the ancient archlich setting a nice set of books on Force Magic out on the shelves.

“Hello, Erick!” Quilatalap said. “Come to inspect the library?”

“It’s looking great, but that’s not why I’m here.” Erick thumbed backward. “That guy was missing most of an arm?”

“And he’ll find a healer to get it back for him. Maybe next time he’ll think before he pesters me for answers to something I have told him I cannot tell him.” Quilatalap didn’t say those words with any rancor at all; he was merely explaining what had happened.

“Was he a face stealer?”

Quilatalap jerked a little. He finished putting away a book, and then he turned to Erick. “I don’t think so? Though I will probably get one or two of those in here eventually.”

With conviction, Erick said, “Feel free to murder those who murder others in order to take their Familiar Forms.”

“Ehhh... I try not to murder anyone these days, Erick. Maiming? Sure. I could relinquish those types to Burhendurur, though?”

Erick blinked. “Uh. Yes. That’s a better idea. Uh…” He looked back toward the entrance, then he turned back to Quilatalap. “I just got a bad feeling about that guy?”

“He’s… Probably not harmless.” Quilatalap glanced up, then turned back to Erick. “There. The guy is being handed over to Enforcement now.”

A flush of relief passed through Erick. “Thank you.”

Quilatalap smiled a little, asking, “So why are you here? Just that? Or are we going to the Saucery tonight? I keep waiting for you to set a date, but it appears I might need to do that myself.”

Erick’s heart thumped. “Uh. Yes. Tonight? Tonight. Yes. I’ll. Uh. I’ll pick you up here at 7?”

Quilatalap smiled wide. “Sounds good to me!”

Erick smiled a little bit, too. And then he nodded, and turned—

He turned back. He had come here to ask about preparations for ‘Shadow’s Triumph’—

He turned back around and kept walking out.

Getting a date set was much more productive.

They could talk about the party on their date.

He paused—

He had come here to ask about accretion. Not just the party. Erick needed to know what Quilatalap knew about making multiple cores. Erick could ask some other dragons, too, but multiple opinions were good.

— he kept walking; they could talk about that on their date, too.

Behind him, Quilatalap grinned and went back to stocking the shelves.

- - - -

In the hallway outside of the library, Erick paused.

A lot of thoughts were going through his head right now. Like what sort of food did Quilatalap like? He ate like any other normal person, for Erick had already shared pastries and coffee and soda and tea with the man, over many different talks of magic. But was Quilatalap humoring him? Or did he actually like that stuff? His body looked like a rather normal 30-ish year old male orcol in the prime of his life, with muscles and height and what was clearly an active Blessing of Beauty and Brutality (Holy Aloethag, was that active!).

Erick was eager to see if all that he saw worked as it looked like it would work.

He was also worried about his own physical… self.

Just. All of it. Really.

Warlord Linxel had had that [Alter Size] thing going on, so everything worked out rather fine in that one, single instance that Erick had gotten it on with anyone while on Veird. Participating in a Red Dream with Al and Mog did not count at all. Dreams were dreams. Reality was reality.

And in reality, there were size concerns.

Erick was under 2 meters tall, as normal for human males. Pretty average height, really. Maybe, like… A little bit on the taller side? But not really at all.

Quilatalap was 3 meters tall, and all of him was sized exactly as Quilatalap wanted it to be, for he could do that to himself. The man was an ancient lich and technically undead and operating through a bunch of magical effects. So. Actually. Now that Erick thought about it? There wasn’t a problem at all? Quilatalap could probably change himself… Though would that be rude to ask?

And anyway Erick could pop out for a moment, turn into a dragon, and then turn back into an oversized human, and he’d be, like, 2.5 meters tall at least. Worst-case scenario Erick could—

OH!

Dragons had [Perfected Polymorph]. That spell was innate; a thing that every single dragon gained whenever they fully became a real dragon, either through being born-that-way, or through the gaining of Dragon Essence. Erick no longer had a reason to hide that he could change into other people at will.

Okay.

All crises of size and shape were averted.

Now to deal with whatever crisis was standing in front of him, because the moment Erick had stepped out of the Shade Tower, there was a person waiting for him.

Erick said, “Hello, Aisha. What’s up?”

“… I am not entirely sure.” Aisha looked to Erick. “I am concerned about something you did this morning. Maybe a few hours ago? Maybe just ten minutes ago?”

“Oh? What could I— Oh.” Erick nodded, saying, “I eliminated the need for runic webs in a great deal of normal use-cases. Is that it?”

Aisha’s eyes went wide.

Erick nodded. “Yeah. Big change.” He handed off the box for [Node of the Renewing Undertow], saying, “Let’s walk and talk.” He gestured down the hallway, toward the stairs that led down into the center of the atrium. He started walking, and Aisha rapidly caught up. “The breakthroughs with the Denial Spheres were necessary, and physical [Renew] runic webs will have to happen eventually for stability’s sake, but I needed a solution right now to new mana transportation concerns. It’s not ideal, but it is what it has to be. Because we’re hosting Shadow’s Feast this year, and I’m going to call it something else… Not sure yet. And I need the Network as stable as possible, as well as the stability of my Feast Barrier magics. Which brings me to this: Do you want to be a part of the Feast?”

Aisha’s eyebrows came together as she walked beside Erick. To her vast credit, she only flinched a little. Then she asked, “And the Shades will all be arriving here, I assume?”

“Yes. About a day ahead of schedule. It’ll be all of them and a plus one, or something, I assume. The fairy and Bright Smile will be coming here, too.”

Fairy Moon stepped onto the ground on Erick’s other side. “You called?”

Without missing a beat, Erick said, “I very clearly said ‘that fairy’ so as not to draw your attention unduly, but now that you’re here: You have to give a presentation on whatever good-for-the-world thing you have done this year, and you also have to bring some sort of thing to share with everyone else. If you want, you can bring along someone else in addition to Bright Smile and have the other person run a booth, presenting your good-for-the-wold thing, whatever that might be. I think the party will start at sunset, proceed through normal time till midnight, and then I’ll lock us all into a good 2-ish day party inside the entire house… Or maybe I should make a new location. Haven’t actually decided on that particular solution, yet.” Erick had some more words he could have said on all that, but they had reached the staircase leading down into the atrium, and Erick didn’t want Fairy Moon to be present for all the rest of what he had to do today. So he looked to Fairy Moon. “I plan on everyone being there for the first half of the night, and then only a select few of us heading off to the days-long party. I’ll also be handing out some small gifts to everyone present. Haven’t figured it all out, but I will.”

Fairy Moon nodded. “I will have gifts to give as well. … And probably another person to ply the presentation— I must prepare!”

And then she vanished again.

Erick said to Aisha, “We’re going to prepare, too, but it will be a relaxed sort of preparation. I might be putting all of the House into a Hasted zone, so report back to me on the feasibility of that, for I would be kicking everyone out of the House and their homes in the various towers while this happened… And I’m just now realizing how much of a nightmare that will be. I’ll have to have the party elsewhere— Contact Architect O’Lark for me. See if he can design a simple party space… Maybe 5 kilometers by 5 kilometers by 1? Flat and wide and open, but with places for people to live in, and it has to be nice…” He thought. He said, “Yes. Tell him what it is for, too. If he doesn’t want to design a location in the next two days, then that’s fine.”

Aisha nodded, and said, “As you command.”

“I’m going to do a lot of things right now, and so if you have more questions feel free to send a message and ask—” Erick sent an Ophiel to the house, to see if Poi was back from his own obligations yet. And he was not. Erick came back to himself. “Poi will be back soon—” Erick was pretty sure. “—Might as well wait for that.”

Aisha turned around and went back to the Office of Magic.

And Erick went down the stairs, down into the center of House Benevolence, where people ate at the atrium, and also in any of a dozen different places around the food court. Almost directly across the space, Atalle Slipstream’s Saucery was beginning to transition to their lunch menu. Servers of all kinds were already seating people there, as there was a small line waiting for that transition.

Erick walked around the room, causing a small hush as he went, though a lot of the normal people paid him only the barest bit of mind. It was only the visitors who really stopped what they were doing and looked at him, their small conversations turning to hushed whispers or telepathic links. None of the people here looked particularly threatening, so Erick paid it no mind.

Erick kept on walking, right up to the Saucery—

A stir in The M Eatery, to the right, caused Erick to pause, as a very attractive human man came out from behind the door to the kitchen and rushed straight for Erick, looking right at him. The guy was Donny, an 8 star Cook from the Cooking Guilds of Nelboor. He was also desperately trying to get preferential treatment, for Erick had hired a bunch of high-star Cooks, a lot of them had ended up here in the atrium, and a lot of them, like Donny, were falling behind when it came to popularity, and number of customers. There was nothing wrong with Donny’s food; it was rather fantastic. But the competition was stiff, and now that Donny was young again and exploring his options, he wanted to expand. He wanted to expand, a lot.

Donny came right up to Erick, asking, “I have amended my previous request. I want to open a restaurant on Financial Road.”

“You stopped wanting to open a place on the lakeside of the Gate District?”

“I have! You haven’t built anything there yet, and I will not be the first place there; I know this now.”

“Have you spoken to Zolan about this Financial Road business?”

Donny stood a bit taller, as he gladly said, “This morning. I was told that Castellan Zolan would need to speak to you directly.”

“He’s probably planning on that soon enough.” Erick said, “Listen, Donny. You’re probably going to get your request fulfilled this time. I can’t talk about that right now—”

“You’re headed off to the Saucery though, right?” With a deeply serious tone, Donny said, “Whatever Atalle can do, I can do the same, and with a lot more drive to make it work however you want.”

… Erick rapidly decided a few things.

“I’m going to be preparing for a lot of large feasts and for multiple days rather soon, Donny. You can be on that list if you want, and if you promise you won’t get scared when meeting the gaze of Melemizargo, and if you can keep secrets like your life depends on it. Because it will.”

Donny’s eyes went wide, his heart suddenly beating hard. With a suddenly dry mouth, he said, “I can do that.” And then he steeled himself. “I can do that, sir.”

“Good. Be prepared for 4 feasts in a week. Roughly 50 people each time. Dinner, breakfast, dinner, and breakfast again. Stuff for two lunches and two midnight things. Don’t worry about prepping enough food for dragon stomachs; I’ll find a way to handle that myself.” Erick added, “And I’ll be asking Atalle for the same, so you’ll be coordinating with her and whatever. Maybe one more person, too, though I haven’t decided who.”

Donny stood firm. “Understood. Thank you, Wizard Flatt. I will not disappoint you.” He bowed deeply, then rose again. “Thank you— AHH!” He jumped back.

Because the golden dragonkin and Shade of Assassination, Goldie, wisped in beside Erick, asking, “I thought I was coordinating?”

“I decided I wanted to coordinate, too, Goldie.” And then Erick turned to the Saucery and started walking. “We can go together.” While quite a few people either stared or rushed away or casually tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, Erick asked Goldie, “Did you coordinate food yet?”

“Not at all!” Goldie walked strongly beside Erick, saying, “I haven’t gotten much beyond yelling at other Shades.”

Erick chuckled. “Ahhh… I hope I don’t have to do any of that this year.”

“You will. I’m already telling them that they have to behave and they’re mostly listening, but—” Goldie confided, “They’re all insistent upon being granted lives here, like me.”

Erick made another, perhaps foolish decision, “Tell them that it is possible, but probably not likely.”

Goldie blinked a bit, her whole-white eyes briefly dimming behind golden lids. “… I was telling them to fucking forget it and to stop asking?”

“It’s not that complicated to get me to approve of individuals, Goldie. People just have to be willing to be better today and tomorrow than they were yesterday.” And then Erick remembered the guy with the missing arm whom he had almost had killed on thoughts of being a face stealer. Erick added, “Obviously the world doesn’t actually work that way, though; it takes time and change for healing to actually happen.”

Erick made a personal note to go investigate that missing-arm guy.

Goldie kept right beside Erick, silently nodding.

- - - -

In the back of Atalle Slipstream’s Saucery, Erick (and only him, for Goldie was in the wind) met with the 10 star Cook who ran the place, in Atalle’s side office. She was a rather strong-bodied demi woman of pale blue skin and dark blue everything else, with an inner fire that roared when it came time to cook. She was not too full of that inner fire right now, though.

Erick said, “Sorry to wake you, Atalle. I know you’re on the dinner shift.”

Atalle yawned wide, blinking a bit as she tried to wave off Erick’s apology. “Dooon…” She yawned again. “Don’t worry about it, Wizard Flatt. What can I do for you this morning?”

It was technically afternoon, but Erick didn’t mind that. Atalle probably would have been more awake for this conversation if Goldie was actually visible, but Goldie was not currently within sight, of any sort. It was just Erick and Ophiel here at the moment. Visually, anyway.

“A few things. I’ll be accepting your invitation to eat tonight, along with a guest—”

Atalle woke up instantly, gasping a little and fully ready to ask for details, but she waited.

“— and I’ll also be needing your catering services for an upcoming 2 to 3 days of parties.” Erick said, “More details to follow about all that, but I’ve already enlisted the help of Donny from The M Eatery, and I’ll probably get one more person to help with all that. That party will likely happen under the eyes of Melemizargo, though, so if you don’t feel up for that then tell me now and I will look for others to cater that event.”

“I will make you a grand dinner tonight, Wizard Flatt!” Atalle rapidly said, “As for the party: I have cooked for practically every important person in the world at least once or twice, and for the Headmaster every other week for several years. I can handle being under the gaze of Melemizargo and even Shades. This is not a problem, but I do need full details on the events.” She added, “I already have events planned for Triumph of Light, but I can certainly add more for you.”

Erick smiled a little bit. Atalle was truly an unparalleled Cook.

Erick said, “Maybe 55 hours of events; 2 and a half full days and nights. 50 people each feeding time. Starting with dinner, then midnight meal, then breakfast, lunch; repeat, and then going to dinner once more. It won’t interrupt Triumph of Light plans, because it’s all going to happen on Shadow’s Feast, though we’ll call it something else. Shadow’s Triumph. That’s what this party is for. I’ve been tapped to host, and I cannot refuse.

“It’ll start at midnight, and then I’ll be putting up [Hasted Shelter]s across the entire venue, which will probably be here in the House. Everyone else will be evacuated. Probably. I might get another venue, but it’ll probably happen here.”

Atalle looked at Erick for a long minute, her eyes flickering around as she thought.

And then she said, “I can do a Shadow’s Feast. I won’t deal with any powers-that-be in my kitchen, though. If you’re hiring two others and Donny is one of them, then I can coordinate with him, and I suggest you pick either Lisa or another good Dessert Cook to round us out. Our staff will be protected too, of course. I would prefer to work out of here and then you can [Gate] us to the venue— Magic doesn’t work so well inside of a [Hasted Shelter], right? That could be a problem… But we can work around that.”

Erick smiled a little, then they got to talking.

Twenty minutes later, their preliminary conversation was over, and Erick was exceptionally glad that he had Atalle here at the House. She had understood what would happen to the Script Seconds when under time compression, and she had understood just how dangerous Shades could be. She was above and beyond any Cook that Erick could have asked for.

But he could ask her, “Is there anything I can do for you to make your job here better? More satisfying?”

Atalle laughed loudly. “This is the best job I have ever had, and I can’t fault the benefits, either! We’re good, Wizard Flatt. Very good. Very satisfied.”

Erick smiled. There were a few more words, but he soon moved on, for Poi was back from whatever he had been doing all morning, and now Poi waited at the house. He seemed to be waiting to drop an information bomb, actually.

Erick tried not to give away his sudden worry over Poi as he left Atalle behind, but the canny woman had probably picked up on his sudden need to exit the conversation anyway; she was pretty good about reading people, too. There was no way she knew the exact reason he had needed to exit, though.

Erick didn’t even know that exact reason.

- - - -

Erick reviewed some recent facts as he stepped back into his home.

Poi had gone missing a few times, recently. Looking back, Poi had had some ‘days off’ every other week or so for a while now. It had mostly started when Erick was finally able to sleep in a [Hasted Shelter], and there was no need to protect him nearly as much as Poi, Teressa, Kiri, and others had been protecting him.

These days, Teressa was mostly at the Benevolence Research Tower, doing Benevolence stuff.

Kiri was over with Tasar or Mox, changing the landscape and learning about Spatial Magic and dungeoneering, and then doing that Spatial Magic and dungeoneering.

Jane was still in the Underworld with her team. Last Erick heard, they were ripping it up down there, tearing through historically deadly environments and transforming them into livable land. The subjugation and cultivation of some ‘Healing Waters Cavern’ down there was apparently a Big Deal for about 40 villages and several large cities in the depths of the world. Erick wasn’t quite sure why it was a big deal, but it was; everyone assured him. Erick thought those Healing waters were a quick way to get super cancer.

And Poi… Was doing something secretive.

Erick trusted Poi perhaps the most of anyone on Veird. Poi could have his secrets.

Erick had not pried, for his people could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. And thankfully, Erick was able to go out into the world and not worry about sudden assassinations anymore, thanks to his 1,000 absolute damage reduction, combined with 95% damage reduction from Constitution. Even Tasar wasn’t as present as she usually had been, which Erick knew Tasar had been thankful for. For all Tasar’s friendliness, she was much more comfortable teaching Kiri various magics than she was being around Erick all the time, now that Erick was also a dragon.

Tasar was having some trouble with that particular transformation. A lot of people were. Erick had gotten concerned letters from all over the world, once it became apparent what he could do, and what he was doing.

And, perhaps, as Erick stepped into the kitchen dining room, and Poi froze and set down the pasta dough he had been rolling out, Erick wondered if Poi was freaking out about the dragon thing, too. Or maybe whatever was happening with Poi was about the Shadow’s-Feast-thing unfurling today.

Erick verbalized the rest of this thought, “Or is something concerning you, personally, Poi?”

Poi thought about lying, but then he breathed a bit, and said, “My sister wishes for a [Reincarnation], and to be made into her proper age she would have been if not for being torn apart and remade by Shades for the past… long while.”

“Okay. Done. When does she want it?”

“… An hour after you agree to it, whenever that should happen.” Poi added, “In light of this new information with the Feast I must say that this might be a way to get you to do something for Shade Farix. I don’t know what, though.”

“Yup. I agree. But I’m still going to help you with your twin sister. I haven’t pried before now, because I trust you, but is that where you’ve been skipping off to, all this time?”

“Yeah. It was. Mostly I was just… talking…” Poi took his hands off of the dough he had been making, and then he dismissed his conjured gloves. Bits of dough fell from those gloves to land back on the dough ball. And then Poi went to the kitchen table and sat down, not saying anything.

Erick whipped up some tea, letting Poi stew, and letting the tea stew between them. Erick sat down across from the sapphirescale man. He waited.

Poi eventually said, “I want her here, Erick. Not in the house, but… Nearby. Close. And yet… That would be a breach of security wider than Goldie walking around at your side all day long. And what’s worse is that there’s no real time for this shit in my life.” Poi looked to Erick, saying, “I thought I left this pain behind me. I thought Rizala was dead. I moved on! But no! She’s been a shadeling all this time. She watched me from the shadows sometimes. She saved my life... Once when a leviathan crashed out of the shadows and another… I didn’t know she was there… That she was still there. All these years of her being there and me not knowing she was there. I couldn’t know though? Right? I couldn’t know. I didn’t know—” His throat closed up as tears streamed down his face.

Erick went to him and held him for a while, and Poi held Erick back.

Poi shook as he sobbed, and Erick just held him.

After a minute, Poi pulled away. His eyes were red. He rubbed them with the back of his hands, careful of his scales. And then he blinked a bit and sat down. He drank his tea.

Erick sat down and drank his own tea, too. When another silent minute had passed, Erick said, “I’ll hire her for the House if you want.”

“… Yeah. She and I… We talked about… A lot of stuff. She would work at the House.” Poi shuddered again, then looked at Erick, saying, “She’s a good Mind Mage. Uh… I wanna say Enforcement, but. That’s your call.”

“Enforcement it is.” Erick stood up. “Let’s go meet with her and with Farix. See what the Shade is planning.”

Poi just nodded.

- - - -

Erick transformed the bare orange stone of a very small part of the desert into a solid platform about ten meters across. And then he and Poi waited on a corner of that platform. The sun glared in the western sky, but it wasn’t that hot. It was never really that hot in the Crystal Forest. Erick felt that was more due to his own Health and Constitution and absolute damage reduction allowing him to weather the weather, but even before he had all this power, simply having Health was enough to make the hot sun rather bearable.

For a good five minutes, Erick let his mind wander, to think more about the problems of the day—

And then Erick turned his attentions to the other corner of the platform.

There, under the bright sun, shadows began to gather.

Farix stepped out of the air. He was more clothed than Erick mostly remembered him, as he was wearing full black robes and a suit underneath those. His skin was still pale blue while all the other parts of him were bright white, like his full-white eyes. He looked to Erick, and stood tall.

And then a sapphirescale woman stepped out next to Farix. She looked rather a lot like Poi, but not at all; not really. Rizala wore simple conjured robes, like one might wear inside a hospital, when disrobing quickly might prove necessary. It was appropriate garb for a [Reincarnation].

Erick opened with, “Hello, Farix.” He looked to Rizala. “Hello, Rizala.”

Farix smiled a little, saying, “I’m looking forward to the party, Erick. Want me to run the bar again?” He held up a rather large sock. “I brought my outfit!”

“You are free to wear whatever you want the whole time, but I’m having the whole thing catered by high-star Cooks and there’s going to be a fae in attendance, as well as a few dragons.”

Farix frowned a little. He put the sock away, saying, “I suppose a cold Feast is better than no Feast at all. Will the orgies happen?”

“… Probably not.”

“That’s not a ‘no’!” Farix smirked a little, then he spoke of Rizala, “This one wants to move on from my employ. You taking her, Erick?”

“I am.”

“Good! Treat her well.” Farix made a shooing motion at Rizala, and then he waved to Erick. “See you at the party!”

Farix stepped down into the shadows, and then he was gone.

Rizala remained. And she had paperwork—

Poi stepped forward, saying, “Erick. This is… Rizala. My sister. Separated as children and… Well you know the story.”

Rizala bowed deeply, then stood back up, saying, “It is an honor to meet you, sir.”

Erick gladly said, “Any family of Poi’s is family of mine. So how about we get you into a body that’s yours? We can do all the real talking later, after you recover from this magic.”

Rizala breathed a bit, then she said, “Yes, sir.”

She wiped away a tear. Poi wiped away a tear.

There were a lot of emotions, and Erick really wanted to be there for Poi, but Poi was purposefully keeping Erick at arm’s length about this. After a bit of explanation about how this would work, Erick got to making magic.

Soon, Rizala was Rizala again, but different. Same sapphire scales. Same height and sex. Same looks. Her fracture of futures turned out a bit oddly, for Erick saw a clear break in possible futures between ones where Rizala had telepathic tendrils on her head, and another set of futures where all those telepathic powers were gone. That was the difference between being a Mind Mage or not, Erick figured.

Poi said, “Yeah. That’s that… We suspected that something like this would happen with a known Mind Mage, so… It’s good for confirmation, I guess.”

“Do you see a future that you think she would prefer out of these options?” Erick gestured at a certain part of the fractured futures. “There’s tens of similar ones, all of which her paperwork says are fine.”

Poi warred with himself for a moment, then he told Erick which one Rizala would have truly wanted.

Erick picked the future with Rizala as a nexus of telepathic tendrils, helping to root out abusers of Mind Magic the world over. She still had her body, though, so she wasn’t a full creature of Mind Magic. She even had a few children. It was the future she requested, the future right next to the one Erick was going to pick anyway, and so it was an easy wish for the future for Erick to grant.

Erick floated Rizala off on a Platform, through a [Gate], into a [Fairy Stronghold] that he had conjured on Yggdrasil. And then Poi went with her.

“We’ll talk later?” Erick asked.

From the other side of the [Gate], Poi nodded. “Yeah. Let’s talk later. But…” He looked to his sister. “I need to be here for her when she wakes.” He turned back toward Erick. “Thank you for understanding.”

And Erick did.

He shut the [Gate].

And then he stood there on the orange stone platform, alone.

That whole thing had been rather surreal. From Poi suddenly asking to [Reincarnation] his sister, to meeting with Farix and not having an actual problem with him, to meeting Rizala for the first time… And yet not really meeting her at all.

… Erick decided he needed a second opinion on what had happened there.

But he was too busy to really pursue that right now. He had taken most of the morning off to deal with the letter from Fallopolis, but stuff was piling up back at the Castellan’s Office. Zolan was going to be a part of Shadow’s Feast— or ‘Shadow’s Triumph? Whatever it ended up being called, Erick decided to call it the Feast for now.

And Zolan would want to be present at the Feast… Probably?

- - - -

Erick sat in the guest chair of Zolan’s office. He had just finished explaining what was going to happen, or at least most of it. A lot of this Feast was up in the air right now, and there was no telling which way it would land, exactly.

Zolan sat in his normal chair, thinking. “And there’s no way for you to deny this burden placed upon you?”

“Nope.” Erick elaborated, “I could choose not to do this, but it would happen anyway, outside of my sight and control, and I would be expected to show up for it. No one has said this much, directly, but I can already see the writing on the wall. It’d be a much harder ballgame if I chose not to play. And, you know, there’s this whole ‘treaty between all sides’ thing I got going on here.”

“… Right. Of course.” Zolan breathed out, “Because the Darkness will not be ignored.”

“Exactly.”

“… Okay. I’ll, uh, make it happen— Or rather I’ll work off of everything else you’ve already created.” Zolan tossed aside his worries and sat up straighter as he said, “This would explain the letter we got from Aisha about O’Lark, then—”

Erick’s hopes went up.

“—he says ‘absolutely not—”

Erick’s hopes went down.

“—not in a million years’.” Zolan said, “But since the options were someplace new or House Benevolence, I am glad that he said ‘no’, because now I can work on securing the entire House for the party. Get most people temporary rooms— Actually. It’s probably time for all of the people who live here at the House to move to Candlepoint, and take the Gate here in the morning, along with all the other people. We’re past most of the worries of sudden violence, and it would be good for the community if people weren’t segregated into towers. This is the perfect excuse to clear house… And ‘House’, too!” He smiled a little bit, happy that he could make a small joke there at the end.

Erick grinned, too. “I approve. So will you come to the Feast?”

“… Historically, the Feast is mostly a very extravagant party, except if you’re not invited, and then it’s a chase and a murdering. So if you’re hosting it, and if you can guarantee safety, then yes, I will come. A first-hand account of a Feast always helps our side of things to be able to know, exactly, how the Shades are fucking us over, and there were many parts of your account of Last Shadow’s Feast that didn’t add up.”

“Uh?” Erick blinked a bit, frowning. “What didn’t add up?”

“There’s always an orgy and you would have been forced to attend, but there was no orgy in your account.”

Erick burst out laughing.

Zolan defused all tension, saying, “It’s the highlight of the Feast! And you’re way too prudish. There’s so much information we could have gathered at— Now now. All this laughing isn’t helping. Why didn’t you record the orgy, Erick? It’s a very serious question!”

Erick would have thought it a serious question if Zolan wasn’t smiling the whole time he said it. So Erick just laughed.

And then Zolan happily took out a folder from his desk, saying, “And now that you’re in a good mood, let’s talk about Stratagold’s formal request that we not change the Gate Network over to per-ton and per-person rates, and continue to use cost-value shipping rates.”

Erick’s good mood soured. “I have a better idea. I want to show you some new magic.” He handed over the box for [Node of the Renewing Undertow], saying, “I call it ‘runic web in a spell’, or, in other words, a [Renew] Network.”

Zolan’s good mood soured. “… Ah. That’s a big change.”

“Yes! It is!” Erick got up from his seat, asking, “Wanna see me wire all of the Gate Network together into one grand unified spell? So we don’t have to worry about any part of it failing due to lack of mana upkeep?”

Zolan sighed. “It wouldn’t be a day around here with another miracle, I suppose.”

“Ohhh! It’s not that much of a breakthrough! It’s [Renew] and a Mana Drain and a transferring spell! I’m not sure why I didn’t come up with it sooner.”

- - - -

One by one, Ophiel went out across the Gate Network, flying down the center of Gate Road, flitting above the Undertows and the Gates that led to Stratagold, and Portal, and back and forth into the Wayfarer’s Guild embassy. Ophiel flew over the Financial District, and all the Gates that led to Candlepoint, and Gambler’s Rest, and to Weald and Spur. Everywhere Ophiel flew, in precise ordered lines, and in the air about 600 meters up since he could simply put the Nodes that high if he wanted, Erick created tiny stars inside shadowy spaces—

Back in his office, overseeing the Gate District, Erick said, “Oh. I could make art out of this.”

—that connected to each other with perfectly straight beams of light, like threads from point of light to point of light. Soon, Erick had formed a network of ‘runic webs’ across the land and through the sky, knitting together points to points.

… And then he went back and adjusted some of his point-to-point systems, to clean the whole thing up and make it look less like a haphazard mess. His second attempt looked a lot cleaner, for sure. And this time he even propped up some lines of light that went directly through the Gates themselves. He kept those Gate-transversing lines of light to the upper corners of the Gates, to keep them out of the way of others—

But people on the ground did not like that something was happening with their Gates.

Erick pulled back his experiment as he was starting to freak out some of the guards at the Gates.

Okay.

Quite rapidly, everything devolved. Zolan reported lots of incoming telepathic messages. Poi called in, talking about the same.

And thus, Erick canceled all the magic he had put up, ending the whole program, for now. He had tried to do something too new, too fast, and people wanted to know what the fuck he was doing, and also, Erick saw some problems already.

First major problem: The current version of the Gates Erick had created had no upper limit to how much mana they could absorb, so when Erick put power into the Node Network (tentative name), all that power instantly went to the closest possible Gates, and none got to any of the later Gates. So that was a complete failure that Erick had not accounted for.

The problem there was actually in the metal runic webs, and also in the spells themselves. Both were able to absorb millions of mana-turned-magic, and the runic webs would melt before they ran out of room for more power.

He would need to make a Gate version 5 to fix that problem; installing a ‘cap’ on how much mana a Gate could hold.

Second major problem: A lot of people really did not like magical effects trailing through their Gates. Spur, especially, gave Erick a very strongly worded letter of ‘please find another way’ other than stringing lines of light through their Gate.

Erick had already come up with a solution for that problem too.

He would change the runic web inside the Gate to allow for a second, much smaller [Gate] onto the top of the Gates, allowing Erick to drop a line of power from each Node Network down into both halves of every Gate he made.

Third major problem:

Archmage Riivo, Headmaster Kirginatharp, King Alfonin, and also, inexplicably, Bright Smile, all suddenly wanted to know what the fuck Erick was doing, and how had he managed to make a runic web without any metal at all. They had all used rather polite wording, but Erick very much understood the gist of what they were really asking.

The third problem was the easiest to solve… Maybe.

So Erick scheduled a meeting.

- - - -

Inside a [Fairy Stronghold] that was basically inside of Erick’s own throne room, Erick had set up a small demonstration. Twelve points of light, spaced equally around the entire room, glowed within shadows. Each one connected to its nearest neighbors, creating a very loose ‘net’ of light around the room, almost like a very, very wide dreamcatcher. But since Veird didn’t have that sort of concept, when Erick had used that word to explain the net’s shape, he had needed to explain that word, as well, which led to a small tangent that could have gone much, much deeper, if the nature of his ‘Node Network’ wasn’t such a large upset to how things were usually done.

Kirginatharp pulled back from his inspection of the spell, saying, “It’s a variation on a theme of expandable spellwork done through cooperative casting, though it seems [Renew] makes such expansions much, much easier to create.”

Archmage Riivo said, “It is a lot more than a simple variation on cooperative casting.”

“Quite right, Riivo,” Kirginatharp said.

The Second to Rozeta was currently enchanted by a bright and giggling [Shooting Star] of Erick’s that was currently playing around in the light around a node, like a child holding a ribbon taut as it raced around a maypole. No matter where the ‘designated’ spell moved, if it was connected to a node, that node kept that connection strong, and unlike with the runic webs inside the Gates, natural spellwork could only take in double its original mana before it could take no more. That [Shooting Star] cost 250 mana and lasted 5 seconds, but thanks to Erick cycling Ophiels into the drain of the Node near the throne, the bright ball of light in front of Kirginatharp had lasted 15 minutes, so far.

Erick had a few other [Shooting Star]s connected to other Nodes around the room, and for good reason. Apparently, that spell was his only spell that lasted a short while, and which was easy for a learned person to look at and say to themselves, ‘Yup; that’s getting [Renew]ed, alright.’ Other people had spells that they wanted to test out, though, so Erick helped them with those, too.

Archmage Riivo stood at a different Node, where he had emplaced a sphere of simple light which changed color depending on how much time was left on the spell. ‘White’ was when the spell was at over 55 seconds left of its full 60 second duration. Right now, though, that sphere was at a ‘blinding white’ stage, so Riivo knew something was going on there.

Riivo spoke across the room at Kirginatharp, saying, “The notion that spellwork can be [Renew]ed past its initial spell cost is also a rather large change.”

“Not that much of a breakthrough.” Kirginatharp said, “Not that disruptive, in my opinion, considering the opportunity costs of magics such as these.”

Riivo nodded, saying, “The real breakthrough is the ability to keep runes hidden from general sight. With a Node Network, there is no need to expose the true nature of runes and runic webs to any possible prying eyes.”

Kirginatharp nodded as he continued to watch the [Shooting Star] play around its tethered node.

“… Ah. I wasn’t actually considering that foible at all.” Erick said, “I wanted to make it easier to upkeep the Gate Network.”

King Alfonin Stratagold couldn’t come to this, so he had sent another in his place.

Kromolok, the Grand Inquisitor of Rozeta, said, “This will certainly make it easier to do that. So congratulations, Erick; you have circumvented the possible release of runes into the world. We all thought that that was going to happen as you continued your current path, but not anymore.”

“Might still happen, though,” Riivo said.

“In a much smaller way, it might still happen. Not nearly as large of a disruption as it would have been had you put down runic webs under the streets, Erick,” Kirginatharp said, turning to Erick. “This has been rather amazing. Many different sorts of congratulations are in order. I’m particularly happy to have another dragon around, along with all the other ones you have managed to uncover and transform, too. However Benevolence is managing to crush the Curse, it is doing it quite well.”

Erick asked, “Do you want to talk about that Gate to Oceanside, now? I'll have to update the entire Network with a new Gate design in the coming weeks in order to take advantage of this new magic, so adding another Gate to the pile is rather easy.”

Kirginatharp grinned a little. “I do want that. I also want to talk about setting up some sort of dragon collective with those who are staying in this world, under your power. I see you trying to avoid that conversation, and I will respect that decision for a while, but not forever.”

“Ahh. Well. Yeah. I had been trying to avoid that topic.” Erick said, “It’s all rather in the air right now. Every one of the dragons I Benevolence’d are doing odd little things. Mostly going out of their way to help people now and again, but we had our first murder by a dragon the other day. It’s in the courts right now and it’ll probably be a landmark case… I’m waiting to poke my head into that when all the facts are finally revealed.”

Riivo, Kromolok, and Kirginatharp all considered those words.

Riivo, Kromolok, and Kirginatharp all already knew of that particular court case, though.

Kirginatharp seemed to speak for all of them as he said, “I want to talk with you about all that, at length, another day. Perhaps when the full facts of that murder case are pulled apart by your Enforcement, but I’ve heard of a different, slightly more pressing issue. You’re hosting a ‘Shadow’s Feast’?”

Erick had been ready for that. There had been multiple purposes for inviting all these people here, and for them, this new ‘runic node web’ was just the excuse to talk about the Feast.

Erick said, “It was either I host the Feast, or watch it be hosted elsewhere and then get ‘invited’ to join. And so, I’ll host it right here in the House. I’ve already got some new Time Magic to make a ‘Feast Barrier’ sort of spell. Not nearly as strong as the Barrier that usually went up for that sort of thing, but it’ll give the party a good 55ish hours in the space of a single hour, around midnight.” Erick asked, “Got any words of wisdom for that?”

Kirginatharp smiled a little. “Quite a few. I’ve instructed tens of people on how to approach a Shadow’s Feast in order to extract as much knowledge from the event as possible, and also how to survive. Not everyone takes all of my advice, but those that do usually end up coming out of such an event rather well off. Before the Sundering, I even hosted several of these sorts of parties before. Every year, the Shadow’s Feast was— Well. It went by a lot of different names back then. Shall we have a sit down?” He looked to the two wrought in the room. “All of us?”

Kromolok and Riivo both nodded; they wanted to talk about the Feast, too.

Erick dismissed the [Shooting Star]s around the room, but he left the temporary Node Network active. As he began bliping some chairs from their hidden spaces below the floor of his throne room, onto the actual floor of this throne room, Erick asked, “Would you care for any desserts? I have a rather great Dessert Cook downstairs, I think you know of her? Lisa? She has a nice place downstairs now, called Lisa’s Dessert Counter.”

Kirginatharp smiled wide. “Does Lisa still make those little lime tarts?”

“She does.” Erick had Ophiel flicker down there, to stand in line at Lisa’s Dessert Counter. He began [Gate]ing in some drinks that he had always on hand for these sorts of occasions; reaching into a preservation ward that held a tray that had everything ready to go. He set down that tray on the table as he sat down himself, and began actual drink preparation with a quick application of sunform, saying, “Dessert tea, berry soda, and coffee. Creamer and sugar are suggested for the tea and coffee, but that stuff doesn’t go in the berry soda. The lime tarts will be ready— Looks like they’re ready now.” Another small [Gate] brought forth an Ophiel carrying a sample platter of tiny cakes and cookies, and a whole little tray of lime tarts. Erick asked Riivo and Kromolok, “I think I can find some pure iron and aluminum for you two, if you wish.”

Riivo and Kromolok both nodded, sitting down at the table after Kirginatharp, saying small words of thanks as Erick served them. They both said they did not need any metals; they were fine with trying some fleshy food.

Kromolok set down a half-eaten lime tart, the pure-white aluminum wrought half-joking as he said, “I don’t really agree with your naming of holyite as ‘aluminum’.”

Riivo happily said, “I’m glad ‘iron’ is still ‘iron’.”

“I’d actually call that one ‘iron’ in English,” Erick said. “But it was rather easy for me to mentally call ‘iron’ iron, so that switch was fine.”

Kirginatharp chuckled every time Erick said ‘iron’ in English. Kromolok smiled.

Riivo unhappily said, “That’s the name of a small dog.”

“A cute and innocent small dog,” Kromolok said, still smiling. “The ‘cute and innocent’ part is important.”

Riivo shook his head. “Let us talk about the Feast…”

And so they did.

An hour later, Erick asked if everyone was okay with him putting up a [Hasted Shelter]. He hoped they were, because Kirginatharp had brought out historical records of past Feasts, Riivo began casting lightwards of Feast plans, and Kromolok spoke of which parts of Last Shadow’s Feast he wished Erick would have elaborated on more. They agreed to the time expansion.

Erick would have had the conversation in normal time, but he had an important event scheduled for 7 pm. Once the [Hasted Shelter] went up, they all had a lot more time to talk.

Riivo looked around him, saying, “Such a marvelous spell. Have you considered putting this in a runic web to sell? Perhaps to me?”

Erick smiled, saying. “Not happening, for anyone. Sorry.”

Kromolok and Kirginatharp both looked at Riivo.

And then Kromolok said, “Really, Riivo?”

“I merely asked!” Riivo said, “Not all of us can be on the best possible terms with Phagar and all the time to talk in the world is wonderful!” He gestured back to the light diagrams he had cast, saying, “Now, about security at the lower levels...”

By the time they were done, Erick felt like the introduction to the Feasts that Killzone had given him was both exactly what it needed to be, and also woefully inadequate. He also felt that, if given endless time, immortals would use that time. And with Kirginatharp in attendance, there was absolutely no shortage of any of the treats or drinks which Erick had grabbed from Lisa’s Dessert Counter. [Duplicate] was on full display.

And then they had a conversation about [Duplicate], and Riivo said he knew Erick had that spell, and he was very glad that Erick was so circumspect about it. Dealing with the Merchants of Stratagold would have not gone nearly as well if they had known.

Erick stared at the others. “How many people know I have [Duplicate]?”

Kirginatharp said, “Quite a few. Luckily, we can trust you not to abuse that.”

Kromolok shrugged, saying, “That’s about it, yeah.”

The conversation continued.

Erick had needed to give himself a Shaped [Cleanse] twice to clear out his bladder, and once to clear out his bowels, though.

… And when he did that last one, he almost asked an embarrassing question, of ‘what is the best way to make [Alter Friction] into a ‘fun’ spell. But nope! That would be unprofessional.

But then Kromolok opened a telepathic connection with Erick and began speaking at length about all that type of magic, along with a bunch of smaller spells of that particular nature. At first, that sub-conversation had been a nightmare, but it rapidly progressed to a clinical-sort of talk.

A useful talk, really.

Though Riivo and Kirginatharp probably noticed something odd about Erick as he discussed sex magic with Kromolok.

Probably because of that, Riivo eventually nonchalantly asked, “So about the orgies at the Feast?”

Erick’s face turned pinker.

Riivo grinned.

And then Kirginatharp asked, “Do you know any Sex Magic, Erick? I can give you a book on the subject; prepare you for the Feast. Also, you’re rather good at concealing the micro movements of your throat as you telepathically speak with Kromolok, but he looped the other two of us into the conversation of Sex Magic a while ago. So! We could all talk about all that?” He smiled, adding, “These spells are good to know!”

Erick’s face was red now.

Riivo smiled, chuckling a bit. 

And then Kromolok made a sex joke. Kirginatharp and Riivo both laughed.

And Erick tried to dismiss his hangups as much as he could. He started shooting the shit with the three of them, like this was some old boy’s club, or something. It started off awkwardly, but rapidly progressed to less awkward, and then downright friendly.

It was nice.

The conversation moved on.

- - - -

Erick checked on everything in his kingdom once more.

Poi was sitting beside his sleeping sister. Kiri was over with Mox and Tasar and expanding the ring of greenery around Candlepoint to the second 100km ring, along with the help of a few pastel dragons. Tasar was with Aisha in the Benevolence Dungeon Tower, plucking whitespark flowers, which seemed to be a new variety of Benevolence Essence plants that had started growing after Erick had Benevolence’d all those dragons. There was some connection between the new essence-heavy white bell flowers, and the dragons, but no one knew what it was, yet. And Jane was down in the Underworld, somewhere. Poi had checked an hour ago and Jane was fine.

A lot of people were either headed toward dinner at the atrium, or headed away.

The Saucery was packed, and yet there was a nice table in the back for Erick and his date. It had a small plaque simply saying, ‘taken’.

… Erick moved his eyes away from there, to look at other possible problems. He found none, though.

Burhendurur and the Office of the Overseer were still collecting information on Benevolence dragons and their strange actions.

Volaro was currently personally interrogating the Benevolence dragon who had murdered a guy a few days ago. That dragon’s name was Crem; just ‘Crem’. Odd name for a dragon, but also an odd guy. Mostly a hermit who liked to help adventurers when they got lost in his part of Nergal. Crem kept his part of the world clear of major threats, while also never revealing himself. Apparently his part of Nergal was one of the ‘safer zones’ on the very southern coast where the land was half-frozen, but no one knew that until after Crem came in for a Benevolencing. During that Benevolencing, when the world had fractured, Erick saw Crem doing the exact same helpful things as before, but on a wider scale, and so, Erick had picked that option, since that was what Crem wanted.

Erick would not have guessed that Crem would have been the one to kill anyone, but after it had happened, Crem had remained on the scene of the crime, waiting for Enforcement to show.

That whole thing was still unfolding…

Erick moved on.

Raingorl’s new, larger school was going up. Erick felt Raingorl would make a good ‘High Chancellor’, teaching all of the normal Arcanaeum curriculum, but with some more freedoms of instruction taken from Ar’Cosmos’s curriculum.

Erick’s Castellan, Zolan, was still hard at work, filling out papers and talking to people through telepathic connections. The meetings were over for the day, but there was always more to be done. Facts to check and numbers to correct…

A lot of individuals were done for the day.

And Candlepoint had no fires. And Weald was only half-built, but it was getting there; the last of the temporary structures would come down tomorrow or the next day. And Gambler’s Rest was fully built.

The farms of Candlepoint were still churning out food. The Gate Network was still constantly turning over with people from Stratagold, or from Portal, or from any of the single Gates, or from any of the Wayfarer Gates…

Erick needed to make a Gate version 5, and start handing those out to the Wayfarer’s Guild, to connect them to every part of the Crystal Forest, instead of making them a distribution hub for [Teleport] and [Teleporting Platform]s. How was that paperwork and diplomacy coming along? Erick wasn’t quite sure…

Zolan had said something about that today, but Erick couldn’t really bother to think too much about that right now. The kingdom was not on fire.

And Erick had a lot of butterflies in his stomach.

He stood before a mirror, and he knew he looked good. He wore a white and black robe/suit that accentuated his strong shoulders and tapered waist, and his ass and his arms...

… Maybe it was too much? Oh. Shit. What if it was too much—

No. It was good. This was fine.

Erick had even showered with some nice manly-scented soaps, or at least what passed for such smells here on Veird. Of all the possible options Erick could have picked, from salt-spray, to deep-forest, to grass, to alcohol, Erick had picked the one labeled ‘Mossy Beast’. It reminded him of the scent on the wind when near Yggdrasil. It was a good smell, even if the name was… odd.

… oh gods, what if he recognizes the smell as some sort of ‘beast’ smell—

Nope. This was fine. ‘Mossy Beast’ was a perfectly accepted ‘generic male’ smell, and it smelled good—

Fuck! What if Quilatalap didn’t like it?

… No. This was fine.

Erick had cut his own black hair to his preferred medium-short length, and he felt he had gotten quite good at that. His white-iris eyes were nice, and his face was clean shaven. He was good. This was great.

Okay.

Let’s stop being nervous.

Erick lightstepped directly to the entrance of the library, in the Shade Tower. And then he walked inside. Casually, he registered the skeletal birds looking at him, and the guardian skeletons standing to the sides of the door. A weight alighted on Erick’s shoulder—

It was only Ophiel.

Erick had almost freaked out at the sudden weight, but then he chuckled. Ophiel twittered at him, asking what had happened. Erick laughed a bit, then he sighed.

Erick patted the little guy, saying, “Thanks for that.”

Ophiel cooed, tilting a little, questioning what was happening.

Erick explained as he walked, “I was nervous. And now I’m not so nervous.”

Ophiel cooed, nodding—

Quilatalap stood to the side of the main part of his library, sitting down at a table, but at Erick’s appearance he stood. He smiled, exposing his lower fangs. And he was magnificent. Tall, broad shouldered. In a grey suit/robes, sort of like Erick’s own, but of a different sort of style, and with tiny silver stars here and there as accents on corners, and on his shoulders. A single black star held over his heart. It all indicated allegiance to Koyabez, but of a non-standard variety.

His muscular chest and arms and legs and all the wonderful rest of him bulged in all the right ways, underneath those nice clothes.

Erick took in all of him, and then looked up, and said, “You’re beautiful.”

Quilatalap chuckled a little. “You’re quite handsome, too.”

“Handsome! Right. Handsome. That’s a good word for it, too.” Veird did have a thing like that, like they had back on Earth; one word was used to describe desirous women, and the other was used for desirous men. Of course, both words could also be used interchangeably, but that wasn’t usually done. Erick almost vomited out all that etymology at Quilatalap, but he decided not to, and simply added, “You’re also beautiful. I. Uh. I swear I’m usually better at flirting. I’m out of practice.”

Quilatalap smiled again, saying, “One of the ways I used to flirt back when I was an orc in the Old Cosmology was to challenge another to a wrestling match, and let whatever happened, happen. Clothes were optional in those times.”

Erick laughed.

Quilatalap added, “These days it's a foot race through the Forest of Glaquin to see who can melee-kill the most monsters in a night. Armor is usually recommended for that.” He happily added, “Though not always used!”

Erick said, “Maybe wrestling would be fun.” Erick held out his hand.

Quilatalap easily took Erick’s hand. “It usually is.”

Erick truly considered that Quilatalap was over a meter taller than him. “I don’t actually have an orcol form… so you would probably win.”

Quilatalap grinned, his green skin turning slightly redder. “I’m sure you could find a way to pin me if you really wanted.”

Erick smiled brightly.

… It was a little awkward as they left the library, with Erick holding onto Quilatalap’s hand, but it was nice. Erick asked a small question of lightstepping, or walking in the front, and Quilatalap quietly said that he would rather step, and so a quick lightstep brought the both of them directly to the back entrance to Slipstream’s Saucery—

There, in the back hallway of the restaurant, Quilatalap suddenly squeezed Erick’s hand and magic went up all around them. The world stopped, and the big man looked down on Erick with suddenly worried eyes. “Do you really want to do this? We could go somewhere else? We could go back to the library and fuck. I want this, but me being out there with you… This will have political ramifications.”

Erick felt his heart beat hard. He ignored the other suddenly hard things in his life as much as he could as he gripped Quilatalap’s hands. He looked up at the big man, as Quilatalap looked down at him. “If it means I get to see you flustered like this over and over, and continually say, ‘Let’s try it anyway’, then yes. I want to go on a date with you.”

Quilatalap blushed hard. “You don’t even know what you’re saying.”

“Probably not. But that’s fine, right? Even if this doesn’t work out, we’ll both be around for a long time and I’m glad to be allies with you, Quilatalap. If this really doesn’t work via sudden protests at the Saucery, or something, but we still want to try again, then I have [Dragon Body], and both of us can be different people and go out to an un-fancy place like ‘Meat! Bread! Cheese!’ back at Spur. I kinda miss their fries.” Erick added, “And I’m hosting Shadow’s Feast this year, apparently, so there’s going to be a lot of angry stuff happening in this next week. I can handle it.”

Not a single part of that was romantic.

But Quilatalap loved it.

Quilatalap said, “Okay.”

“Okay!” Erick looked back to the restaurant. “You hungry?”

“Yes. Absolutely. But let’s… Let’s do lower profile stuff next time. We can both be different people and go somewhere simple, next time.”

“I would love that. I haven’t actually experimented with different forms at all, though, so I’ll have to do some experimenting with all that before we try somewhere else.”

Quilatalap smiled. “Want to try some bodily experimenting with a professional— Later. I mean later. I haven’t eaten at this nice of a place in a long time and I want to be here, too.”

“Yes.”

Quilatalap blushed even more— And then he jerked a little, getting even more into the moment as his voice turned deeper, “You remembered when Fallopolis said I like constant and enthusiastic consent.”

Erick suddenly did remember something like that. “Uh. Yeah. I guess I do?”

“You’re amazing, Erick.” Quilatalap’s eyes seemed to shine. “Let’s go have dinner.”