Fifteen days ago, Slave Intake #45 had been a collection of different structures all designed like a meat processing plant meant to process around 100,000 people a year.

Slave Intake #45 was now House Benevolence, the original structure ripped out to the roots and replaced in white. Eternal stonewood was the building material of choice, and that material made apartments, offices, extra work spaces for whoever wanted to have one, strip malls, learning spaces, food halls, an entire sewer system, as well as defenses to keep all of that working well. Erick and his Overseers and the resurrected of the Waiting Room had worked hard to make that happen. Almost none of it was actively being used except for the essential places, but it was there for the using, as soon as people got around to it. They were in the middle of a war, though, so no one really cared about the economy at the moment.

Slave Intake #38 was a relatively 1-for-1 copy of Slave Intake #45, but the internals were all different.

Erick investigated those internals now.

The series of black structures known as Slave Intake #38 stood amid the tan wasteland and took up about 40 square kilometers of land, with each building connected to each other via well-controlled underground tunnels. There was some above-ground movement here and there, but people only moved above-ground when they were at this or that ‘processing zone’.

To be seen moving above ground outside of those specific zones was to be shot at by the turrets that rose above the place on tall black towers.

In the center of the Intake was the spaceport. Ships of all kinds and sizes —but mostly 400-meter-long transports— rested on black stone, while slavers and slave-soldiers moved would-be-slaves into the facilities, shuffling them off the tarmac toward the left. Those new would-be-slaves numbered in the thousands. Slave Intake #38 had just finished a raid, and the captured people were yelling and spitting and cursing and hating. Those that got too rowdy often got blasted with vile light from cruel captors, causing no real damage to their ‘livestock’ but a whole lot of pain. Those that got rowdy in those large transports often had their fellow captured people drag them down and away from the bars, so that they didn’t all get blasted with pain over and over again.

There was screaming. Some of it was because of the pain. Some was because of sorrow.

On the right side of the spaceport’s tarmac a much different flow of people came out of the ground, to head off to much smaller transports, to head off to sale. The difference in the number of people heading into the facility on the left and coming out of the facility on the right was maybe 8 to 1. For every 8 would-be-slaves, only 1 got ‘processed’ to satisfaction. The rest got eaten by demons, which was not technically a soul sundering. Not yet.

They did the sundering on Layer 1.

The demons ate the souls of the ‘failures’ here, digesting them for as long as they wanted, and when it came time to actually rid themselves of those souls, the demons usually went to Layer 1 and completed the digestion process.

Erick moved his gaze onward, investigating defenses and barriers to ingress and the locations of targets and infrastructure.

All across Slave Intake #38 were black turrets on tall black towers. They were mostly Vile-based laser-based defenses; useful against people. Not so useful against anything else. They did have guns with bullets and automatic targeting systems and such, but the real defenses of this land were the demons and talents in this place.

Those guys were in the main eviscerating area; the largest area.

Erick looked to the receiving station, first.

Over there was the receiving station. It was about five square kilometers of various structures that were more or less jail cells on steroids. This is where the main breaking took place. Unlike Slave Intake #45, where they captured families and broke people by having them break their loved ones, this place identified pairs of people through some sort of demonic intelligence. Erick watched as the processed people were forced to walk through scanners.

These people were elves, which were the most prominent people in the universe. These particular elves were some sort of forest elves, with slight brown skin and green-ish hair. As they walked through the scanners, light flickered and burned away whatever clothes they had, and then branded them on their back with big numbers. Burned flesh instantly healed over under different sorts of light. It was not a pleasant experience.

People screamed as they were forced to walk through the pain.

The jailers called them ‘weak shits’ and more. They were taunting whoever they could. When the captured people tried to fight they were incinerated from the outside in, and slowly, so that everyone walking by could see.

When the enslaved got past that intake, they were paired up based on their numbers and then stuffed into cells. Erick rapidly deduced that the pairings were made to inflict maximum emotional pain on the pair, with the person who had a dot burned onto their shoulder the one that they expected to survive.

The next part of intake stuffed people into cells, where only one left alive.

Those ‘victors’ got on to the next part of the whole ordeal, in which a pair of Contracts appeared out of the walls of the room, under protective glass so that the Contracts couldn’t be injured. A lot of people were trying to injure the Contracts and also failing. Videos played on the screens of those cells, showcasing ‘this is how good of a life you will have!’ if you signed the bigger Contract; the one they wanted you to sign. The smaller Contract was if the person wanted to be ‘processed’ more.

That smaller Contract imparted tracking and auto-pain magics into the person signing it, to be used at the discretion of any slaver.

The larger Contract had the contents of the smaller Contract, and also a lot of soul and body control curses. The larger Contract promised to get them out of here and into their new lives as slaves.

People signed the smaller Contract, mostly, but only when the water started filling the room.

No matter which contract the people signed, they ended up moving in the same direction.

The newly-Contracted people went to the main building where they learned what was expected of them in their new lives —from cooking to cleaning to simple obedience, to worse— and were disciplined when they failed to live up to their demands. This area of Slave Intake #38 was the largest by far, at over a full 20 square kilometers of the place. Multiple teaching buildings, the main administration center, main housing for demons and slavers; all of that, and more.

Erick wasn’t quite sure what signing the different Contracts got a person, if anything; it seemed to be a way to torture them more.

‘Graduates’ of that main area —which took about 4 months based on what Erick was reading and hearing— then moved on, all of them under heavy Contract, which was the large contract of the first offering, and more. ‘Failures’ of the main area got ‘walked’ into an ‘inferno exit’ in the center of the main area, whereupon they were incinerated and eaten by demons. The slaves were free and even encouraged to walk through the ‘inferno exit’ whenever they wished.

One person was ‘walking’ that way right now, under strict orders to go through the inferno, but she clearly did not want to do that. She was standing as still as she could right now, and yet even her simple body movements had her breathing away from the exit, the movements of her body that moved away from the exit causing agony. Looking through the nearby past, Erick saw that the woman had tried walking away, but she fell to the ground in agony. And so, she walked sideways from the exit and simply cried as she desperately tried to ‘do what the demons wanted, except exit’. They were giving her orders, and promising that if she did those orders she could be free of the inferno exit.

She did not want to die. She tried to do what they wanted.

But what they wanted was her painful death. Invariably, with small movements and accidental stumbles as she moved in an arc from the watering station to bathrooms to clean them up, she ended closer to the exit. From what Erick was hearing, she had been ‘walking’ toward the exit for three days now, because of some made up shit by the slavers, just to show off what they could do.

… Moving on.

The exit area had slaves under heavy Contract, and then under orders to sign new Contracts, which were just about the harshest things that Erick had ever seen. Bones would automatically break in fingers if the slave stepped out of line. Body parts would rot away…

Erick couldn’t read anymore.

He had only been looking over Slave Intake #38 for 20 seconds, and even that much was too much.

Every moment he delayed meant yet another person was subjected to the horrors of Slaver’s Den.

And so, 25 kilometers away from Slave Intake #38, under a considerable number of illusionary and other hiding magics, Erick conjured an eternal stonewood tree and then Shaped it into an actual defensive structure. Some walls. A thick, domed roof. Spaces for defensive valkyries to stand and to watch, and to defend. Ingress through one direction only. It was completely inadequate for any sort of true defense. It would be wiped away with a single nuclear bomb. But for the actual defense, there was Erick.

Currently, he was a 20-meter tall dragon. It was more than enough.

And then Erick cast some magic, combining [Spellsurge Weave] and [Blood of the Valkyrie] into a spellwork at the center of the forward base.

Carnage red glows floated above the solid white ground, and up above, high over the domed roof of the central structure, a red light began to glow, to cascade. The weaver was up, but it was not actively infecting people with [Blood of the Valkyrie]. Not yet. The glows in front of Erick began to change into a map of the area.

Down below that Valkyrie room, Erick cast an [Infinite Imaging], tuned to finding people. Outside, a white orb began to manifest and cascade into the air. In a much less worrisome way, people began to appear as blue dots on a white map.

Erick returned to the red map. Erick imagined the red map was a little less precise than the white one, a little more sloppy, and less refined, because he was worried about propagative effects spiraling out of control with unintended targets, and erring on the side of ‘this is not a target’. But no. The red map was just as well-made as the white. Whatever he wanted to infect, he could infect.

“And this is it, Erick,” he said to himself, floating above the red map.

Any target he picked would be the infection-vector for the rest of the propagative spell, and from there the valkyries would… spread. Erick cast a glance down below, to the white map, to see 37,000-ish blue dots pop up all over the 40 square kilometers of structure. Erick had that map search for ‘Good people’, just because; he wasn’t even sure why he picked that option.

19 people showed up. Erick was not one of them.

He kinda laughed at that.

And then he searched for ‘people about to die inside Slave Intake #38’.

783 targets.

… A bad idea, that one. The spell would fail pretty fast if it had to infect that many people at once, since each infection cost 50,000 mana.

‘Guards of Slave Intake #38’ had the same problem, but worse, at around 7,200 targets.

“How about ‘Graduates of Slave Intake #38 who wish for death’,” Erick asked himself, as he cast into the white map down below.

Erick’s eyes went wide, and then he let out a breath he had been holding. Erick wasn’t sure why he had picked that option, but it soon proved to be the better option. Only 8 targets. He imagined there would have been more, or maybe less for whatever reason, but perhaps Slave Intake #38 killed all of those who wished for death.

He didn’t want to think too much about it.

Erick gazed down upon the red map.

He began pumping it full of [Renew], and soon, the map was absolutely crimson with density. The light of the red weaver above began to drip sharp crimson, smoke grey, and shine black and gold at the same time. It was ready.

Erick cast [Spellsurge Weave] into the red map, intoning, “Graduates of Slave Intake #38 who wish for death.”

- - - -

A bloody crystal orb suddenly appeared over the black roofs of the graduate center, and then it descended fast. It smacked a ‘guard’ standing tall outside of a doorway, passing through the man, coming out the other side and taking the man’s entrails with it. The man was not dead yet, but he would be soon. The other ‘guard’ beside the first one had a surreal moment and failed to raise any alert at all.

The red ball was already gone.

The orb flew down a corridor, following the center path, but angled slightly. It went right past two demons in lab coats and deteriorating bodies, ignoring them. The demons looked at the orb as it passed, and then at each other and then at the orb again. They ignored it and walked on.

The Blood aimed for a woman down the hall who was ‘mopping’ the floor with her own spit and tongue while a nearby guard —an elven man this time— watched the woman mop, while also making her life more miserable by dribbling something nasty onto the ground.

The Blood caved through the woman’s shoulder, chest, and then went out through her hip and out the other side. The guard paused, unable to process what had just happened.

The Blood took a sharp turn through a wall and passed through that wall without impediment.

It killed a guy in a bunk unable to sleep because his bunkmate below had been kicking the bed. Gore splashed on the bunkmate.

The Blood took another sharp turn through the floor and caved a person in from their head to their feet. That person had been playing cards with real guards and losing their clothes in the process and now that person was gore on the ground. The guards complained of ‘what the fuck!’ and ‘shitting pranks.’

The Blood went through four more people, each of them actively wishing to die. It finished in some leader’s office, killing a woman who had been dusting the shelves while the leader went over progress reports and news of Erick’s resistance to Slaver’s Den. That cleaner’s gore splashed over those reports, and over the face of that leader.

The leader was stunned for a moment, then he frowned, saying, “What fool put auto-destruct pranks in the Contracts again?! What the fuck was she even doing to… trigger… Hmm.” He stopped talking.

For the body, lying broken on the ground with a hole in its chest and stomach, was subtly glowing. And then all subtly was gone. The gaping wound flashed bright red and inflamed with light, both black and gold. Veins of red and grey spread throughout the corpse in a flashing instant.

The hole in the woman’s chest crushed inward, forming a ball of roiling flesh that—

The leader waved a hand and the blood splattered away, and then he tapped a black square on his desk, saying, “Get a cleanup crew in here, and get me Fa—”

Alarms blared. Softly. Was there a problem right now?

Unsure.

For that first ‘guard’s’ body had gone through the full transformation, uninterrupted, and out stepped a monster.

Three meters tall, human-shaped, androgynous with crimson skin and no sex. A peaceful face that almost looked like the man it had killed, but softer. Nicer. The man was at rest, and now came the monster with closed eyes, and a crown of eyes that blazed red and judgmental.

Thin yet strong, its muscles like cables stretched on bones of adamantine. Four blackened-gold wings hovered at its back and hips like a hundred floating swords, knives, and daggers. It held its clawed hands across its chest, as it floated there, looking dead and in a state of eternal repose, and yet like it would wake at any moment. A baleful, blackened-gold light shone from its wings and its crown. The world was darker where it floated.

The secondary guard, who had remained the whole time to see what was happening, had fallen to the ground, screaming in utter pain as his body flickered with black-gold fire that infected him and yet barely injured him. It didn’t need to injure. The infection of red veins under his skin did not need to kill.

That’s what the actual valkyrie was for.

The monster opened its eyes.

With eternal grace, the valkyrie reached over and carved away the guard’s face and pulled apart his chest, leaving the very-dead man behind as the valkyrie turned toward the hallway. The fresh gore turned to liquid and flowed together, into another valkyrie cocoon.

Down the hallway, tens of meters away, the two demons were staring at the red monster. One of them asked the other one, “Demon-spawning Contracts now? Who did that?”

“I’m not sure it is a demon, brother,” said the other demon. “It feels... weird. Can you feel that? I think… I think it is coming for us. Trying to convert us. What the black! The nerve of some youngsters!”

“Is that a conversion-pull? It seems weird, but I venture you are correct, brother.” The first demon said, “You shouldn’t try that against your elders, little demon. We’ll eat you up.”

The valkyrie advanced down the hallway, softly walking as though it were a single movement away from dancing instead.

“I think it aims to attack us! Actually attack us!” said the first demon, completely unable to understand why it would ever try that shit. “Can you believe this?”

“You seem correct,” said the other demon. “Come now then, little fresh-demon. Show us how— Ouch ouch! What the fuck is thaaAHH— FUCK YOU! AHHH!”

Blackgold fire erupted from the two demons, burning at their fleshy shells, infecting those shells with red and grey. The valkyrie advanced, its claws glinting, its smile faint.

The first demon sloughed off its skin and revealed its true nature as a four-meter-long teal-and-red slug. The slug spat acid even as it burned in the blackgold aura of the valkyrie. The second demon shed its burning flesh and stood as a skeleton made of putrid yellow bones. It went down screaming as blackgold fires tried to consume it; it had a lot more surface area to burn than the slug, and the slug was wet, so bones apparently burned a lot better than mucus.

The valkyrie flicked its blade wings around, splattering the slug’s acid onto the hallway, smoke rising from every drop, and then the valkyrie danced through the slug, blades flashing, blackgold burning slug slices went wide, each one infected with red-grey veins. The valkyrie then reached down and pulled the screaming skeleton demon apart with its bare hands, casting yellowed bone left and right.

Down the hall, the other valkyrie spawned from the mopping woman was just finishing playing in the entrails of the man that had been tormenting her. Those entrails glowed red-grey and turned to blood, coming together in another valkyrie cocoon.

Down below, amid blaring alarms and flashing warning lights, bloody playing cards turned less bloody as that blood floated into the air, away from the cards, to come together into a pair of cocoons.

A terrible roommate was reborn as another valkyrie, another tall, sexless creature of baleful blacklight and many blackened swords. Nearby, some bars were broken, sliced and twisted by incredible strength and powerful cutting edges. Beyond that open cage ‘graduates’ turned into meat, and then into balls of blood floating amid Siphoning blackgold light.

A dungeon further down, a playroom of the vile, held two more valkyries and several orbs of blood ready to be born soon enough, as soon as the rest of the valkyries siphoned enough power from those around them.

The leader of the graduate center was still alive. He was fighting.

He battled a valkyrie outside of his office while four more Siphoning orbs of blood pulled at him. He waved a hand and splashed away the valkyrie’s arm, but then the arm reformed and blackgold claws came for the leader’s throat again. Again, the leader bashed away the valkyrie, though every time he tried to form some sort of spellwork outside of his body the Siphoning orbs all around him pulled that magic apart.

So the leader ran.

Straight through his office, out the large window, the leader rushed to get away from a battlefield he could not win, triggering some tech in his office on the way out. The valkyrie followed and was promptly blown up as the office exploded around it.

The leader flew outside of his office, smiling as he looked back… His smile fell.

The valkyrie was dormant again; a ball of blood floating amid the burning wreckage of the room.

And the leader’s flesh was infected with red-grey veins.

The guy ran even more, calling out, “Margleknot! Travel to Wraithborne!”

Text appeared in the air,

You are currently infected with propagative magic. Travel is forbidden.

The same message was all over the place in Slave Intake #38, for many people were trying to leave the easy way. It was a technique that the slaves could not employ, due to ancient decrees of space and war made long ago in Margleknot, but the slavers could.

But not right now. Not in the middle of a war, and certainly not in the middle of a propagative event.

And so the leader of the graduate center flew faster, cursing and yelling and then yelling into a bit of tech he retrieved from his pockets—

Something darker than black descended, evaporating the man from his chest outward. A head went that way. Limbs and body went in other directions. All were infected with red, though. The ‘phone’ that had been in those hands fell away, some guy on the other side softly asking if everything was okay, and what was going on. When there was no answer the man’s voice turned frantic.

“Raza! Raza! Are you there?! ANSWER ME RAZA!”

The former leader of the graduate zone of Slave Intake #38 was already a ball of floating blood.

- - - -

Erick sighed.

Erick had regretfully learned the leader man’s name in that last phone call exchange. He did not want to, but he had.

He saw all of the destruction as his valkyries began to multiply at an alarming rate. After he had turned off the auto-targeting for new targets, letting the valkyries propagate on their own, he had only needed to supply an extra million mana to get the system rolling. And roll it did.

Some people tried to escape the battle. Erick couldn’t have that.

And so, Erick had added another Weave to another part of the building and combined that one with [Annihilation Bolt] in order to automate the killing of runners. Annihilation was fantastic at killing in one stroke of power against targets that had no defenses against that, and not many people did. It was better than doing it himself… though he was supplying all the mana to that Weave as well, and he had to directly do that. But really, only the strong were even able to make an escape attempt.

The valkyries were advancing too fast.

- - - -

A woman burned on the ground for her hatred of being captured. She hated and she hated and she wanted to kill and kill and never stop killing.

That deep conviction proved to be the thing that changed everything for her.

A valkyrie found the woman on the way to killing others. It did not do a thing to the woman that was not already being done, and worse, but the mere presence of a valkyrie was enough. Blackgold fire infected the downed woman anyway. She died to the automatic killing systems of Intake, and then she rose again as a vengeful angel.

She was not sexless. She was the same shape as the other valkyries, but her face was her own, and her body was her own, and she stared at her hands, and at how she knew what was happening around her from all of her sisters and brothers in the fight, and how all the world was filled with red orbs of former friends and neighbors and otherwise from home.

And yet she had a new home.

She was of House Benevolence now.

And Slave Intake #38 needed to be fully purged.

She roared, the first Valkyrie to give voice to the pain inside of her soul, and then she grabbed a sword from her wings, transforming the feather into a 4 meter-long blackgold instrument of death.

She moved so much faster than her slow brothers and sisters.

She carved a ballet of blood out of the entrails of slavers and former loved ones alike, knowing that all of them would be reborn in Benevolence.

Just like her.

The valkyrie smiled.

- - - -

A woman walked toward the Inferno Exit. Her body burned with vile light.

It was a relief when that black turned to blackgold. She had been struggling so hard against that demon pit in the center of the compound. She did not want to go into that oblivion. It had been days already, and she thought the end had come.

And then there was an angel.

The angel blessed her with redgrey death that promised something better, if she wanted.

And then the angel killed her, because that is what the angels did, and that was fine. The woman was ready for death; but not for oblivion.

… And then, somehow, the woman was still alive, in some odd way. But she was not herself. The woman watched the slaughter all around, disconnected from her body, from anything physical at all, as though from inside a bubble of glass inside a red ocean—

Oh?

The angels were killing the demons?

She wanted to help.

It was a simple emotion at first, but then that emotion doubled, tripled. And became an all-consuming need for vengeance.

And so, in a way she did not understand, she extended her arms, her legs, her wings, and she could move again. She was no longer on her way to the Inferno Exit. She did not hurt. She hurt others, instead.

And she moved so much faster than her new family.

She found supreme joy in reaping the guards who had tried to break her, to then transform them into something better. Because they would be better. This was a trial for everyone right now, and the Apparent King was watching. Maybe, if she proved herself, the King would let her kill more at the next location.

- - - -

A man stood over the cooling corpse of his mother, a knife in his hand, tears on his face, and his mother’s last words eternally on his mind.

‘Kill me and live a good life, son. Don’t ever think twice about what you have to do, because they’re only letting one of us go, and I want you to live. So do it. I’m ready.’

The Contracts held on the side of the room, each of them under glass except for where the man’’s signature needed to go. A red pen sat in a little nook that had extended out from the wall along with the Contracts.

And the man held the knife. He had stopped sobbing only minutes ago, because an alarm went on, and the body was still there, the Contracts were still there, and tears still flowed when they could. Mostly, though, there was anger. Fury. Hate beyond measure.

And then the monster appeared. It stood outside the cell and flicked its wings across the bars and through the man at the same time. Iron bars turned to broken shrapnel. The man turned to slices of himself.

The man died not knowing that he was dead.

He was reborn as himself, but more. Taller. Stronger. Once again connected to others.

His mother’s corpse lay on the ground. It was cold.

She was not there anymore.

But something whispered in his mind; A susurrus of general knowledge and tactics, yes, but more than that. There were distinct voices. 17 of them so far. Some of those voices knew things, and so, they all knew things.

This land where the demons had taken them was known as Margleknot. People here didn’t die unless they were sundered, and people didn’t get sundered here at Slave Intake #38, unless the demons ate them. The man’s mother had not been eaten. The man had killed his own mother. And so his mother would go and wait for a while in a room that was not a room.

If the man proved himself as worthy of the power granted unto him, he might see his mother again.

The world did not make sense at all.

But it made enough sense, for now.

The valkyrie bent a knee, gathered his mother’s corpse, and incinerated it in blackgold fire. And then he said, “Thank you, House Benevolence, for sparing me from further pain of this place. I pledge myself to House Benevolence and the Apparent King.”

With a casual touch, the man picked one of his largest wing-blades and turned it into a greatsword. He sliced through the Contracts on the wall, vindication flowing through every part of him as he burned the offensive words in blackgold flames, and then he went on to join the slaughter.

He was so much faster at killing and converting than his slower brothers and sisters, until he met a woman who moved like him; with purpose and power.

The woman smiled as she cut through a barrier and killed the huddling demons beyond. “Welcome to the war, new brother. I’m Reena. What’s your name?”

“Xai Lu,” Xai said, his main eyes focused on cutting down the guard in front of him, but his crown-eyes were on Reena. On her grace, and her sword, and her beauty. She was paler than their other brothers and sisters, almost blush-colored. Her wings were more gold than black. She was amazing. “I did not recognize my name until you asked for it, and neither did I recognize your beauty.”

Reena laughed delightfully. “My thoughts are rather clear, too, so let us meet in the afterlife, my amazingly-red Xai Lu and talk about all of that which comes next. But war comes first.”

Xai Lu readily agreed, “War first.”

- - - -

Leader Sloane floated atop the main structure of Slave Intake #38, his former office, orchestrating the battle against his former home and pride and joy like an insurgent, or a wayward slave. His former underlings fought him, of course. A pair of soldiers stepped out from behind a ruined wall and fired their lasers at him. But then Sloane twisted his wings and blackgold strength deflected that laserfire. With a casual twist, Sloane turned two feathers into spears that rocketed down a hundred meters to split the soldiers into pieces.

Those pieces gathered around rapidly-departing souls, holding them in place as two new cocoons formed. Within moments, former enemies became mindless allies.

“Yet more mindless allies,” Sloane said to all of his new family, through a connection that he didn’t quite understand but he knew how to use well enough. Most of his new people couldn’t understand his words, but some could, and that mattered. He spoke to the masses, “It is a shame that more of you did not adapt well to your new gifts of strength.”

Reena was on the other side of the compound, reaping lives alongside that Xai Lu man, but Reena’s voice carried through their community link, “It is a shame that I feel beholden to not kill you again, but I would very much like to, Leader Sloane. I do not look forward to being reborn beside you.”

“I doubt I will be allowed to be reborn with all of you, anyway,” Sloane said, while he also instructed a wave of their lesser kin to overflow against some holdout powers in the basement levels. “Think less poorly of me when you go on to heaven, please, for I will be repenting elsewhere for a very long time, and I have already saved your ass five times now. Look behind you more, girl! Those turrets up there are not just for show.”

Sloane put four mindless brothers into the path of laserfire that had been aiming at Reena, their wings deflecting that bright black light. Then he made those minions go after the turret again, to duck and weave and assault that little holdout of danger, but the laserfire was oppressive. Those turrets were too well defended. Sloane had the mindless pull back, for now. The most Sloane could do against those things was to negate their effects on the rest of the battlefield.

“I have died and been reborn in blood three times already, decrepit Sloane!” Reena said, laughing through their connection, as she danced through another wall, making easy egress for the battalion to follow her into hell. “Let them try to kill me, and fail even more in that attempt!”

“You use up resources when you die, Reena,” said an unnamed woman who refused to tell anyone her name. She was killing on the lower levels, and doing well.

“A valid point about resources,” Reena said, “I will do better.”

Sloane was thankful for the nameless woman—

Someone blasted Sloane out of the sky with a sweeping beam of Void Magic.

When he came back to life far below the roof, stepping out of a puddle of blood, he said to everyone, “Reinforcements are here.”

Reena laughed. “Our King already took care of them while you were out of it!”

“Good.” Sloane flew upward, carving holes in the ceiling and turning stone to rubble. Broken building bounced off his new body as he ascended, back into the air, back into overwatch— A cloaked transport was taking off. Did anyone else see it? That shimmer in the air? Sloane instantly said, “There’s a transport—”

White lights shimmered and floated around the Intake, moving from one side to the other like streaking comets, rapidly intercepting the cloaked transport. Those white lights released black specks that drove through the cloaked ship’s hull and killed everyone inside that space. As the transport lost its cloak and its ability to remain in the air, it began crashing slowly, and then rapidly, trailing blood that turned into hovering red orbs midair. Those four orbs held in a rough line in the air as the transport crashed below, turning into a fireball. Soon, those red orbs hatched into new brothers and sisters…

None with any mind to them, though.

Sloane turned his attention back to the battlefield, diving into the minds of his new people…

There seemed to be another blockade in the intake area. The intake guards were rallying again, eh? Those men and women and otherwise were always Slave Intake #38’s best and darkest. Of course they could rally more than once; the army hadn’t crushed them yet. Sloane directed forces toward that space…

Oh? This was a final stand of Intake #38, then? Very well.

Soon, the defenses were overwhelmed and hundreds of bodies turned to mush, to blood, to float into orbs, becoming raw materials for new brothers and sisters.

From there, it was cleanup.

Altogether the battle took maybe an hour, from first valkyrie to last valkyrie. Maybe at first the battle was questionable. Could they do it? Could they kill everyone and bring them all to a better land beyond? Especially when the valkyries were all so mindless and able to be picked off with ease. But then the first mindful valkyrie was born, sharing their everything with all of the horde, and from there the outcome was assured.

By the time Sloane rose on the side of Benevolence, all that was left was varying degrees of cleanup.

And now, Sloane took to the sky with his brethren, taking into formation, to hover above the defeated land. Some of the army was already flying off to House Benevolence, to those red pillars in the sky, to be reborn far away.

Sloane and the other mindful valkyrie took one more pass through Slave Intake #38, cutting down walls and stealing important things, like paperwork and some of the nicer tech, and then they too joined the flight toward House Benevolence.

It was a glorious formation.

Over 35,000 warriors flying home, to be reborn in Benevolence.

Sloane flew high and free over the lands he had once filled with horrors. Now, he was but one of many.

Going home.

And then, hopefully, moving on forever.

On the far side of the formation Reena and Xai laughed as they flew together, twisting in the air like children with their first flying magics. Sloane could already tell that those two wished for more battle. It had been a good battle. Sloane did not begrudge them that. He wanted to move on, though—

The entire formation paused and turned as one when a great white castle appeared on the wasteland horizon, and the Apparent King strode out onto the battlefield, tall as a mountain and black as the void. His wings spread wide. His mouth was a white abyss. Lightning crackled over the King’s body, and tiny black dots appeared in that crackling.

Sloane and the others watched from a great height as The Wizard Dragon of Benevolence cast tiny black dots through the air, toward Slave Intake #38. Those dots moved slowly. Inexorably. The world whined at their passage, wind and sky and dirt crawling into those voids that were not voids at all.

The Black Dots struck the landing fields, receiving, evisceration, and packaging. Where the dots touched, they cloyed, like animated void paint. Slave Intake #38 flashed over in absolute black, and then the black pulled downward like paint washing off of glass, revealing that every wall, window, floor, tower, even the land itself, all the way down to the deep tunnels and space below, was gone. The Apparent King had annihilated Slave Intake #38. Nothing was left but four deep craters.

He could have done that with everyone inside, but instead he chose to save them.

Sloane felt vindicated, thrilled, and proud all at once.

Next, the King vanquished his white castle with another Black Dot, turning that land into another crater—

Briefly, Sloane felt a twinge, as some connection fell apart. The voices of his fellows fell away, but not a single one of them was destroyed. Blackgold wings turned dim, but still held the valkyrie horde aloft, as red skin revealed the blood that had been on all of them, instead of red glows. The world turned more real as their connections were just between whoever was closest to each other, and not very strongly, at that.

Sloane felt a great demand of war lift from him, as though he had been suffering all his life and now it was finally over. All he wanted to do was go home, to rest. To sleep. To rise again in another life. The mindless valkyries moved on, paying no attention to their Apparent King at all, for they already had their orders to reincarnate back at the House, by those red pillars in the sky.

The mindful valkyries bowed to their King.

And then they flew on.

Reena flew near Xai, and the two of them flew beside Sloane.

Reena spoke in her real voice, saying, “You made that all much easier, Sloane. I still do not forgive you.”

“I don’t forgive myself, Reena.”

Reena glanced at him with her real ruby eyes and then looked away. The red eyes of her blackgold crown kept focus on him, though, as she said, “The battle is over, and redemption exists for all, though I would prefer to never know of you ever again.”

And that was enough for her, and for Xai. They flew off away, and faster, following the army toward the red light in the distance.

Sloane flew alone—

Lightning descended.

- -

Sloane stood nude among the grasses of a land long ago. It was his real home, so far away from Margleknot, before Slaver’s Den’s ships came and took them away on black ships with black guards into black holds to write their blood oaths upon black contracts. It had been 150 years since that time, and now he was back...

But not really?

Sloane looked at his hands, and then at the grass, and then at the home that had been destroyed in fire by guards who delighted in the pain. All of this was fake. All of this could be real again. For Slaver’s Den never fully killed any world. They raided. They plucked the easiest fruit. And then they ran. That was how Sloane had come to the Den.

And somewhere between signing that Contract and becoming part of the problem himself, Sloane had forgotten home.

He turned to the man who was a dragon, and Sloane thought that black was no longer a bad color. Sloane asked, “I’m getting my wish?”

“I heard you ask to leave, and so you are getting your wish. You and many others. Got any requests?”

Sloane had a thousand. He said, “I want to be able to fight the slavers the next time they come, for even if the Den is destroyed, our home was marked as slaving-quality long ago, its location hidden except for those who came to raid. I was a papermaker last time. I want to be a warrior this time, and I never want to lose myself like I did to Slaver’s Den, or to any others.”

The Apparent King smiled softly. “Good luck.”

- -

Sloane felt softness at his back as he woke slowly, surely.

He sat up. He was on some grasses on some world with a bright blue sky, white clouds, and two suns in the sky. One of those suns was white, the other blue.

Oh gods of Margleknot and every Universe, I’m home.

It took a moment for him to compose himself, but he got there eventually. He was nude and not red at all, but he remembered being a valkyrie too much to ever forget that experience. That absolute freedom. That sense of purpose. That sense of Right and Wrong.

He had been a simple elf; breathing, moving, thinking, heart-beating. And then he had been a valkyrie; weightless, strong, breathless, still unless he moved. He was neither of those things anymore. The black gold fire was gone. The crown of seeing was lost.

But Sloane stood up in the body of a young elf, and he moved his right hand—

A brilliant white dagger appeared in his grip, lightning tracing along the edges. It wasn’t much, but it was a start—

Something roared in the treeline.

Sloane ran, exhilarating in the pumping of his legs and heart, and the depth of his breath. A big lizard, all green and frilled and maybe not that big at all, actually, crashed out of the treeline behind him, and Sloane happily called out, “I’ve seen bigger lizards than you!”

A minute of chase later, Sloane turned at the best possible moment, his lightning blade guiding his strike to rip backward, through the forehead of the snapping lizard then all the way down its back, opening it up and shredding its insides with jagged, blackening lightning. Sloane felt weaker after that, and the dagger turned into a whittling knife, but it had done its job.

Soon enough, the crackle of a fire sizzled lizard meat on skewers, filling the twilight with the scent of meat and smoke, under familiar stars and a single moon. Sloane ate well. When it was time for bed he conjured his dagger again and traced it alongside a big rock, feeling weaker in the action as his knife became a dagger again, but the dagger’s trace had spilled soft moss out of the rock like a big blanket. It had done its job very well.

Sloane slept under that moss, hidden from the world.

He felt free for the first time in a century.

- - - -

Erick had his hands full for about an hour after the raid. The first thing he did was send off a whole bunch of people to other worlds; mostly those who were the ‘Big Problem’ at Slave Intake #38. That number of people turned out to be 586. He did some of those personally, but he also just [Grand Reincarnation]’d 551 of those 586 people, using some resonwork spellwork to target those for which everything else would be easier if they just weren’t around Margleknot anymore.

And then he went to the House, where 10,000 valkyries waited in line to use the single [Spellsurge Weave][Reincarnation] ‘machine’, which had a 20 second windup time, because Erick had made a mistake there. At least the valkyries were all very polite. Some of them were even talking with Ta’Kamoil, or helping their fellow reincarnated people come out of the machine, to make way for others.

Erick had identified a few different types of valkyries during their first battle.

There was the mindless version; that’s how they started. They used claws and strength and no thought at all besides animalistic urges to kill, in order to kill.

Then there were the thinkers; those who were born of souls that melded with the spellwork of the valkyrie, to take over those valkyries both physically, and in mission. Erick was pretty sure that there was some minor soul twisting going on there, but [Reincarnation] was getting rid of all that, so it was… fine. Sure. It was ‘fine’.

Then there were the mindful-mindless. These were the oddest of the bunch. They were the product of all the connections between the mindful people influencing the mindless horde. These ones had been fully mindless at the beginning of the battle, but somewhere along the way they had learned to use their wing feathers and swords and their wings as shields and now they were standing in line like perfect little soldiers, their eyes moving around as they desired. It reminded Erick a lot of Ophiel back when Ophiel was maybe a few months old; completely unable to understand anything, but still able to put a few things together on his own.

Erick was 100% sure that whatever ‘person’ eventually came out of [Blood of the Valkyrie] would be the conglomerate mind of the mindful-mindless given soul and form of its own.

Anyway.

Erick was glad to see that the valkyries were no longer infectious now that their node network of the Weave was down.

The freshly-resurrected people who came out of the valkyries had a bunch of mixed reactions. Mostly worry and relief; they vibrated between those two emotions rather quickly in some cases.

The people of the House got the newcomers settled as best as they could, as fast as they could.

Lanzoil had set up a great big welcoming feast on one side of a large area, setting out more than enough food to feed 20,000 people, which was only 70% the number of new arrivals.

Erick’s first actions were to hurriedly set up 14 more [Spellsurge Weave][Reincarnation] ‘machines’ and adjust the triggering for all of them down to a 5 second windup-time. There were 36,000-ish people coming through, and at around an average of 8 second turn around, and 15 machines, that it would take about 5.5 hours to reincarnate every valkyrie here.

Soon, the machines were working well.

… Erick added another 15 machines to cut down the intake time to under 3 hours.

Tomorrow he would go on another attack, but for today, he took inventory on what was going on with the valkyries and how orderly they moved and, of course…

The aberrations. The thinkers.

“We want to remain valkyries,” Reena said, as she stood with Xai Lu, both of them still nude and completely unashamed of their nudity. She stood strong, too; like a soldier. Her blackgold wings held stiff at her back. Eyes forward. Her crown-eyes wandered, though. She asked, “Please allow us to remain in the war, Apparent King.”

“No,” Erick said, standing before them, to the side of the reincarnation zone. “You’re both not in your right mind right now. You’ll go through the machines like all the rest, and then, if you choose to do this again, then we can talk. Right now you’re too ensorcelled to make your own decisions.”

Reena did not breathe, her heart did not beat. But her eyes were alight with ruby flame and her face was set in complete obedience. “Understood, sir.”

Contrary to Reena’s soldier-like obedience, Xai Lu silently bowed; that was how he accepted Erick’s judgment. Both of them had been elves before this, both from vastly different cultures.

Thankfully, both of them went back into line, to be reincarnated; there was no dissent.

There had been a lot of aberrations today, though.

Erick had based his [Blood of the Valkyrie] spell on a humanoid-form; two arms, two legs, one head, but with Exalted wings and Vile aura and a whole bunch of other magics that could make all sorts of different forms. Apparently, some people, when they were captured and born again as a valkyrie, were able to influence those malleable forms, though the minds of all of them were relatively the same; obedient.

Over there was a centaur valkyrie.

Over there was a demon valkyrie with four arms.

Color variations abounded. Some were more golden-winged than the rest. Some were darker-red-skinned. Some were pale as pastel-pink snow. Some were dark as dried blood. Or violet, even.

Over there was a valkyrie made of blackgold swords with wings made of carnage and bone. That was perhaps the oddest one. Erick wasn’t sure what its deal was, for it was not sapient like Reena and Xai Lu.

On the other side of the reincarnation line, people came out more or less normal. Physically, anyway.

Querkooda was there, dividing those who were guards from those who were enslaved, though the line wasn’t so easy to draw sometimes. Like with that first guy that Erick had killed with the [Blood of the Valkyrie], and with Sloane, many enslaved had become the slavers for this reason or another. Many graduates of Slave Intake #38 had returned to become guards at that very same Intake, for whatever reasons. Querkooda seemed to be more than able to spot problems before they began, though; his Sight was improving.

Erick was rather certain Querkooda was seeing the Lightning Path, or maybe Destiny’s [Benevolent Chaos], or rather, more likely, his own thing. Erick would let that develop however it developed.

He was glad to see that the valkyries took instruction well from Querkooda, too, and that they were non-infectious after Erick had broken the ‘[Blood Weaver]’ map back in that forward base. Those were two of the things Erick worried about most with this Propagation Magic. But the valkyries were standing beside new soldiers of House Benevolence, and no one was transforming from proximity at all.

Erick almost wanted to do some more tests with the valkyries…

But no. Tomorrow. Tests would come tomorrow.

These people had earned their new lives, and the 30 resurrection machines were working very well, and Erick was quite happy with the ‘just after puberty’ setting, because quite a few people were ecstatic to be young again and that made a lot of this a lot easier, in multiple ways. Teenagers were easier to handle than full-grown adults, too.

Erick watched as Reena and Xai split from each other to each step onto their own white circle. Rapidly, the circles turned red, before flowing through the rainbow to blue, and then finally black. [Reincarnation]s struck both of them, and both of them turned into young elves. Three-meter tall valkyries carried the still-waking teenagers off of the reincarnation zones and set them up with workers from the House. They got some new clothes and a gesture toward the feast inside the wall.

Both of the new teenage elves went off to the feast, though Xai soon broke down sobbing about his mother. Reena was there with him, and soon a social worker from the House was there with them, too, taking their mind off of their troubles with some paperwork regarding their new houses and if they wanted to learn magic and such. It was such an odd change of topic that Xai was thrown out of his sorrow.

“… You’ll teach us magic?” Xai asked, as though it were the strangest, most oddly wonderful thing to be given free training.

Erick smiled.

He turned back to regard the rest of the valkyrie intake, but he did copy clothes and food and a bunch of stuff now and again, because they were running out of everything rather quickly.

Erick noticed some anomalies among the revived while he did all that. Nothing concerning. But what he was seeing was definitely a result of [Blood of the Valkyrie].

Some people were pulling knives of Benevolence out of the air. Some of those people showed off their knives to others, and soon some people had knives hovering around them. Most people with knives were only able to conjure the knives into their hands. A few people manifested crowns of white light with white eyes on them. Others were able to conjure lightning-fire that cloyed onto surfaces and either burned black, or into brilliant growth. Some people radiated healing. A few radiated harm, and were rapidly told to put that away, and they did, though they were thrilled to be able to still do that.

It was non-infectious harm.

Erick breathed a sigh of relief at that.

Reena was one of those who radiated harm. She loved it, and readily learned to turn it into healing instead of harm. Her new boyfriend, Xai, had one curved sword in his right hand and one dirk in his left hand, and both of them floated on his back when he didn’t grip them. He mostly ignored the sword. He focused on the dirk, staring at it, thinking about another time and place. He was having a mixed sort of reaction to the shape of the dirk. Sorrow, acceptance, growth and pain. Reena was with him, though. That seemed to be enough for now.

Erick let it be.

Over 36,000 new stories were being born today. Not all of them were pleasant. In fact, most of them were dark in the beginning, but now there was hope again, and all the little manifestations of power that Erick was seeing were normal-enough variations on natural, mana-based spellcasting, that there was little worry.

The people would be propagative. The Benevolence inside of them would, too.

But not in any magical sort of way. Just in the normal way that societies grew and changed and succeeded in peace and prosperity. A lot of these people were already praying that this was as much of a heaven as they thought it might have been when they were inside the valkyrie. Erick hoped to fulfill their wishes… Except this wasn’t a heaven.

He told people that as much as he could.

They did not believe him right away.

A few hours after the last valkyrie became a normal person again, Erick made a speech to the crowd about opportunities and the future and of general plans going forward.

“And I finish with this:” Erick said, “Some of you have already expressed a wish to go back into war. To take the form of a valkyrie again. I urge you not to, but if you continue to feel this desire in the following days, then I will be doing experiments to see if this is even possible. I feel it is possible. So, I will be accepting the formation of a valkyrie squadron in a few days. Or maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow, you can visit Overseer Querkooda’s Office of Enforcement to sign up for that.

“But for now!

“You’re free.

“When House Benevolence has fully taken Slaver’s Den from the slavers and remade this land in our image, we will see about getting people back home to wherever you all come from. Luckily, the valkyries of Slave Intake #38 gathered a bunch of information on all that before we left. If you don’t know where you come from, and we have no information to help you, then it might take longer to get you home.” Erick said, “So for now, House Benevolence is your home, if you wish it to be. Welcome home. Opportunities abound for all sorts of good futures, and we can make them happen for you.”

Some people were sobbing in joy. Some were simmering with vindication and a call to action. Most were silent, as the weight of Erick’s words ground them down and lifted them up at the same time.

And then the crowd shouted in joy.

The parties started for real.

Erick smiled as he moved back among the people, meeting individuals and finding people who his Lightning Path called to, to help those people meet other people. It was technically night, though the sky was as bright as ever to Erick’s eyes and senses. Someone started a band. Music played.

People from Slave Intake #45 joined those from Intake #38, and the party grew.

Shadow was there, and she asked for a dance, and Erick smiled as he took that dance. It was lively. It was fun. Shadow was a great dancer, and the music was full of percussive beats and slamming feet and clapping hands and thrumming heat. Someone started a choreographed number, somehow, and the former valkyries somehow got into that, putting on a show, all of them dancing in sync.

Erick smiled at that, for Shadow was likely to blame for the choreography at least in part. Fae parties were wonderful, though.

And no one dropped any nukes or otherwise on the House that night.

Perhaps the most amazing thing was that some of the former slavers apologized, some apologies were welcomed, and generally everything was a whole lot easier than it had any right to be at all. Some former-valkyries were spreading rumors that this is what heaven should be; a time of atonement and forgiveness and moving-on.

Those seemed to be very popular rumors.

Erick already saw the start of some sort of worshiping stuff happening and he did what he could to stop it by directly saying that this was not an afterlife at all, and that life was still here…

But then people countered that life at House Benevolence, with automatic young-machines, was practically the best sort of ‘afterlife’ that anyone could ever ask for.

“So long as no one starts worshiping me, then that’s fine,” Erick eventually conceded.

Mentally, Erick moved up some plans to get other gods involved in all of this stuff, because he did not want to be worshiped at all. Cascadio would probably sign up fast enough. Who else? Who knew—

Oh!

Maybe… The gods of Veird? Yeah… But those guys were all the way over on Veird. They had no influence here… Except the influence that Erick gave them, yeah?

… Could Erick set up a Grand Unified Church for them all? Here on Margleknot?

He could probably do that. They probably couldn’t appear because Veird was under Quarantine, but as long as people didn’t worship Erick then that was a win in his book. Erick wasn’t sure exactly what his bargain with Yggdrasil for his nascent godhood was doing, and he didn’t want to find out.

He would set up that church later.

Some time during the end of the party, as the slightly shaded sky gave way to full brightness once again, Lanzoil spoke with Erick, talking of the need of a manaminer for true defense of the land. Erick agreed. It was time to get one of those, for sure. Maybe Erick could even learn what the Foundational Bans of the Script truly were, though he kept that thought to himself for now.

In that calm moment of the world turning bright and party goers making their ways to their own new beds, or the beds of new friends, Shadow spoke of a meeting with Witch Aragathara.

Erick decided to do that meeting, first.

- - - -

While most of House Benevolence was white, it did have a lot of grey and black accents here and there.

The Queen’s Castle was a reverse of that, being black with white accents. It was sharp corners where House Benevolence was soft domes. It was arrow slits in tall walls while House Benevolence was big open windows. But the Queen’s Castle still had benches for people to sit on and balconies and party areas, though they were smaller than those located in the structure of the House, at the center; more intimate, perhaps. The main marker of Queen’s Castle were all the sharp lights that produced harsh shadows here and there, and the overhead lamps that hung directly over the center of every walkway, those lights hanging over bases to cast flickering pools of soft shadows, like carpets.

And then there were the drapes and veils and all sorts of fabrics.

The Benevolent Dark Queen seemed to love her drapes and veils and fabrics. Erick kinda thought they were an unnecessary security risk, because a lot of stuff could hide in rooms where half the walls had fluttering fabrics on them. ‘Was that fluttering over there a person hiding, or just the wind?’ ‘Who knows!’

At the same time, those fabrics gave Shadow’s people lots of room to hide.

Erick felt that to have all those fabrics at all was to invite a game of cat and mouse into one’s own home.

Shadow had smiled at that, when Erick mentioned that one time. She had said, “Erick. If someone wants to skulk around in my house, then I welcome their attempt and will teach them proper manners when they invariably fail.”

Erick had laughed at himself, saying, “I suppose that is what would happen!”

Shadow had smiled.

And now Erick was here again, in a meeting room in the Queen’s Castle, with a nice view of the glass-covered garden outside and below. Warm sunlight cast warm shadows across a greyscale oriental-like carpet under Erick’s shoes. He took tea with Shadow and Witch Aragathara, their tea service sitting on a delicately-carved marble tea table between them, with Erick and Shadow on one side and Aragathara on the other. This was a nice room for meetings with nice people.

Erick wasn’t sure if Witch Aragathara counted as a ‘nice person’, considering how much credit she took for her former companion Nothanganathor’s rise to power.

Aragathara had been a very old woman. Now, since her [Reincarnation], she was a mousy young woman, with pale skin, freckles, and orange hair and eyes. She looked like a 19 year old human, yet she still had an oldness about her. Perhaps it was a timelessness, but no. It was definitely an ‘oldness’. She made Erick think of grandmothers, especially with the softness in her bright orange eyes, and the dirt under her nails and on her various gardening clothes. She had just come from there.

Shadow began, “I trust the garden is working out well, Aragathara?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Aragathara said, smiling a little. “It’s perfect. All the Benevolence in the air does wonders for the sugar content of my greatberries and the density of the wheat grains. I can’t wait to make a fresh cobbler. I haven’t had one of those in millennia.”

“Good to hear,” Shadow said, sipping her tea.

Shadow was allowing Erick to set the tone, then.

So Erick asked, “Will you be pursuing lichdom again?”

“Doubtful. That will be the backup plan,” Aragathara said.

“… Oh?” Erick asked, an eyebrow raised.

Aragathra said, “Maybe in a decade or two I might try for lichdom — and there’s no time like the present to start setting that up, of course— but that is the backup plan. When I first rose to power I started off with resonwork and I can already tell that I’m set up to succeed there, and I have Darkness and mana production now, and that Darkness and mana is growing, even from this conversation. I get the distinct feeling that when I do enough to secure your trust and your futures and the future of House Benevolence that the knock-on effects of such a foundational growth will propel me to Ascension even if I actively avoid following the paths of direct power. I never got there before, but I’m a few decades away from ascending this time. I will, of course, be Ascending under Shadow’s control.”

From her look, Shadow had already heard all that before. She was perfectly composed.

Erick was not perfectly composed. Erick sat back in his chair. He sipped his tea. It was good tea. He set the tea down and said, “Okay then. I hope your rise to true power goes well for everyone.”

Shadow relaxed a fraction.

Aragathara bowed in her seat.

Erick asked the air, “I’m kinda surprised that Yggdrasil isn’t here for this.”

Words appeared.

We had long conversations yesterday while you were making valkyries.

Shadow nodded.

… Erick nodded too, he supposed. He wondered what Yggdrasil thought of the valkyries. He would ask him later. Erick looked to Aragathara. “Let’s talk about Nothanganathor and the destruction of Margleknot’s avatar in the Painted Cosmology.”

Aragathara sat straight, and reported, “The general timeline is not set, because Margleknot’s time frame is always shifting, but roughly 12,000 years ago there was a tournament to decide who would become the next God of Magic of the Painted Cosmology. By that time I had known Nothanganathor for a few thousand years, having been a companion of his whenever he came to this uber-universe.

“When I first knew him, he was a precocious lad, prone to fits of magic and domination like any dragon. I was originally an enemy of his, because he wanted to be the king of my world, to add it to his hoard. Me and my sisters drove him off every time. Back in that time, he had his Shadowed Sun style, and he was more domineering than good or evil. Somewhere along the way other enemies cropped up and Nothanganathor proved himself as a better ally than enemy, and we helped him to become emperor-in-truth.

“A hundred years later corruption came to my world, and 90% of our people perished. The infection ended when Margleknot came to our portion of infinity and eradicated the danger and rescued the survivors.

“We moved to Margleknot after that.

“Nothanganathor raised a land in Margleknot, rapidly becoming a true Power. My eldest sister, Ara, was his right-hand woman, and the mother of his children. This sort of existence lasted for a thousand years, all of us having long turned to liches in that time, but Nothanganathor remained a dragon, of course.

“He worked tirelessly to destroy corruption and to study corruption so that he could destroy it more easily, in order to gain more allies here. He was a superb emperor. He was also the only real link this universe had to the Painted Cosmology as well, to the Darkness, because the Painted Cosmology did not have many people who cared to be a link between Fractal and Dark, and the Darkness had forbade Margleknot from planting one of his roots into that universe.

“But Margleknot had avatars, and the Fractal liked to speak to the Dark anyway, so Margleknot sent avatars into the Painted Cosmology, into the Dark. He had been doing this for a very long time. Just small people, always; disconnected from him, without any true power or memory. They lived their small lives, then they died, and the soul returned to Margleknot, and such was the way in which communication happened. Long before the tournament for Godhood, Nothanganathor and Ara and sometimes the rest of us would venture into the Painted Cosmology with Margleknot’s avatar, keeping them relatively safe for a few decades on this or that world, but never interfering with their lives.

“This was because the Fractal wanted to experience those lives.

“It was during these sabbaticals of overlooking one small, unknowing life of Margleknot that Nothanganathor grew to hate the Painted Cosmology, for every time Margleknot’s avatar died it was due to someone from the Painted Cosmology, either a Shade or even Shadow herself at least 4 times that I was personally aware of, doing the deed. Margleknot didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes we were friends with the unknowing avatar of Margleknot, though, and seeing them always die to the people of the Painted Cosmology was… it was hard.

“And that’s not even getting into the main problem of being away from our Empire in Margleknot. That was the ultimate reason that Nothanganathor turned to Evil to solve a lot of problems. The Good people of Margleknot had a way of tearing down our Empire every time he went away.

“Don’t get me wrong. Our Empire was certainly evil in many small ways, but we enjoyed a level of prosperity that few on Margleknot ever have, before or since… At this point of the tale, if things were how they had been long ago, Margleknot would have reminded us that our Empire was still small and messy compared to some of the greats. That little back-and-forth banter used to be exactly that; friendly banter.”

Aragathara got a brief, far off look in her eyes, of times long ago.

She continued, “… And so, because Good kept harming us, Nothanganathor turned to Evil to solve problems and keep them solved.

“We grew.

“A lot.

“When we grew, Nothanganathor needed to keep Other Evils in check, because we had officially stepped into the Balance War. I won’t bore you with those details, but eventually some problems arose that required us to do things we did not want to do, and which required power.

“And so, we figured that Nothanganathor’s mother, the previous Goddess of Magic, was doing a shitty job, so we orchestrated a killing event in order to take that Mantle of Godhood and move our Empire to the Painted Cosmology. The details of that were long and sordid, and kept away from Margleknot completely… As much as one can, anyway. Business done outside of Layer 0 was the best way.

“And so… I poisoned 350 gods of the Painted Cosmology with what is known as Goddeath Corruption. It is a rather good killer of gods, but it needs to be made rather specifically and applied carefully… Those details would fill a few libraries. So. Moving on: I made the brew. I planted the curses. I let them stew and gods died. Most people didn’t care about those deaths, because most of those gods we targeted were Evil, and very minor. Ikaramaliana’s poisoning was actually a secondary effect because she investigated every death that happened, and because the Painted Cosmology had no natural defenses against Goddeath Corruption. Ikaramaliana’s greatest weakness was the same weakness as all god dragons, and she had none of the defenses that would have kept her safe; she was too proud, and she had no companions. Only servants.

“The tournament to seize the Mantle of Magic came about in short order, only 230 years later, about 50 years after Ikaramaliana’s death.

“Nothanganathor would have won, but Melemizargo rose victorious instead.

“Melemizargo only won because he had captured and tortured Ara, my eldest sister and Nothanganathor’s wife, for information.”

Aragathara took a moment.

Erick took a moment, too. That was a lot. Erick had gone into this meeting knowing that there was going to be a lot, but he had not expected to hear that Melemizargo had tortured the wife of a competitor and brother. How true was this all?

Erick glanced at Shadow.

Shadow nodded.

… Right. She had been there, for sure. All of this story was true, then, as much as a Wizard War can be true in any specific, singular way.

Aragathara continued, “From there, Melemizargo rose as God of Magic, and broke Nothanganathor's everything. All the strongholds all across the Painted Cosmology. All of his personal power. All of his personal Truth. And then he cursed Nothanganathor to a sideways life as a leviathan, which was widely considered the lowest form of dragon… by dragons, anyway.”

“Leviathans are my children, too. There is nothing wrong with them.” Shadow said, “But I would have simply killed Nothanganathor had I known he would return like he had.”

Aragathara looked sorrowful for a moment.

Erick asked Aragathara, “You sound sad that Shadow has done all of this to you and yours, and yet now you have become beholden to Shadow of your own volition?”

“I have,” Aragathara said, solidly. “For a long time, I hated Shadow and her ink. I hated her and the Painted Cosmology, too, for what they would do to Margleknot’s avatar. I was right there with Nothanganathor to help him come back from death, to rebuild himself into our emperor again, to become something truly Malevolent for the good of our people. It was during this time that we raised up Wraithborne, and Agatha, my other older sister, became Morbion’s right hand woman.

“You know the ring world that sits around the Evil Death sun? We made that. ‘Wraithborne Tower’ used to be our land. Our people. Our prosperity. We brought out what it could really be.

“But our Empire started to fall down the same trap as all Evil Empires. We became too Evil. So we abandoned Wraithborne to Morbion, who is now in charge and doing well. Nothanganathor did not want to abandon his land, but he had to, for he had lost power.

“… But back to the story:

“On one of Margleknot’s avatar journeys to the Painted Cosmology, long after Nothanganathor regained much of himself and we started overseeing that foray into the Painted Cosmology again, Nothanganathor killed the world that the avatar had been on and captured that avatar’s unique Sign of the Fractal. He corrupted that Sign into his own universal-level of power. He called it his Sign of Power, and it became his Truth, in true. It’s a little slice of Infinity that is entirely his. He hides all the gods he has killed behind that Sign of Power. He hides everything that is of any worth to him at all behind that Sign, including my sister Ara’s corpse.

“The Fractal never caught on to this subterfuge… Or perhaps they enjoyed the new experience. I do not know. Margleknot never caught on; of that I am sure. He was… quite angry earlier when I explained this to him, and then showed him some memories and other proofs and opened up some hidden caches for him in some hidden parts of the universe. If our relationship to Margleknot was not ruined before, it certainly is now.

“I will show you those truths, as well, but… From the look on your face this telling is truth enough…”

Erick was frowning. He schooled that expression away. “Continue.”

Aragathara continued, “It took another several thousand years before Nothanganathor was ready to Sunder the Painted Cosmology with his Truth, in an attempt to recapture the Mantle of Magic from Melemizargo, to lift his curse and become the God of Magic that he always should have been. I helped him, because I thought he was doing something else besides Sundering that universe. I thought he was seeking to Sunder his curse. He might have even succeeded in doing that, if that is what he chose to go for, for Nothanganathor was very good at achieving his goals. He was a great man. A great emperor. A perfect… everything.

“But sundering his curse is not what he chose to do.

“I followed him forever, but it wasn’t until you came out of Veird with your story that… I went investigating, in true. As soon as the Sundering happened I —of course— began to suspect. Everyone did. Nothanganathor had saved a piece of the Painted Cosmology and his brother in the process, and was then granted stewardship on that world? His now very-weak brother, whom Nothanganathor was known to speak of eating, if he ever got the chance? The implications were obvious. But I did not want to dig deep. I did not want to see.

“In truth, no one cared about a dead universe except for a few people and Nothanganathor. The Painted Cosmology was done. The story was big when it happened but Nothanganathor spoke of how he was saving what he could, and then came more good words…

“Margleknot moved on.

“But now a different truth is coming to light.

“And so, I came here at the end of my life, to repent for my part in that horror. Perhaps Nothanganathor was true in how he didn’t cause the Sundering, but that is doubtful. I want to repent. I want to bring about a perfect empire. I want to roar at Nothanganathor myself, to ask him if it is all true. That is why I pledged myself to Shadow. That is why I pledged myself to you, Apparent King, and to House Benevolence.

“For to kill a universe is the gravest of offenses, and Nothanganathor certainly did that. He needs to be brought to justice in whatever way is final.”

Silence stretched.

Erick had listened to everything, and saw that Aragathara was speaking a truth. Her truth? Nothanganathor’s truth? The truth of the Sundering? Perhaps all of that, and more.

What did Erick gain from listening to this story, though? Anything new?

The part about Nothanganathor killing Margleknot’s person-avatar in the Painted Cosmology. A Slice of Infinity all of Nothanganathor’s own. The part about how Shadow and Shades killed that avatar whenever they could, but they didn’t sunder it… Probably.

Erick asked Shadow, “Did you sunder Margleknot’s avatar when you found it?”

“No. Never.” Shadow said, “We killed it and sent it back home.”

Erick looked to Aragathara. “I have not met the man yet, but it seems to me that Morbion is pretending that this isn’t a big deal. The Fae Council are pretending this isn’t a big deal, too. Like Nothanganathor isn’t a MASSIVE part of their history. Even the Fractal Fairy only cares about reconnecting to the Darkness in whatever way they can. No one seems to care much at all about Nothanganathor or Veird, except for me, Shadow, and Yggdrasil.” It seemed like some sort of application of Malevolence, and it probably was. And yet, Erick asked, “Why?”

Aragathara was a little flummoxed by Erick’s question. She came up with an answer quick enough, saying, “Because Nothanganathor never liked to work in the light. He was always a dragon who should have been Darkness. It was who he was. It is who he still is. Finding any solid information on the man is near impossible. But the Council and Morbion have been working without Nothanganathor for almost 1,500 years at this point, and that was more than enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that a tragedy was a tragedy. There are many other users of Malevolence besides him these days, too, so they don’t even really need him.

“The Council only needs Nothanganathor for massive universe-ending problems, but small users already user Malevolence to find and destroy those problems before they become problems.” Finding her stride, Aragathara said, “And Margleknot is home to an infinity of problems. The amount of effort that people are giving toward this old Nothanganathor stuff is about normal.

“The past is the past, and no one cares about it except for those it still affects, and that means me, and all of you. Quite honestly, Nothanganathor is old-cauldron, and you’re going to end up killing him soon enough… Or maybe you won’t.” Aragathara said, “No one is quite sure how you’ll solve that.”

No one was sure? Had he not told them all— Ah. Erick had been offering redemption to many people, including great Evils. They thought he was going to offer redemption to Nothanganathor, too. Shadow glanced at Erick, for she was also wondering what Erick’s solution would be, now that all this truth was getting out.

Aragathara clearly hoped that Erick would see fit to forgive Nothanganathor. Perhaps that had been her true goal in coming here, aside from saving herself from the oblivion of a corruption-fueled soul-death.

Erick said, “I won’t offer him redemption.”

Aragathara strongly said, “Good. You shouldn’t. Universe killers should be beyond all redemption, even if he does plan on bringing it back if he wins.”

… What?

Dissecting that statement had Erick spiraling through a bunch of different thoughts. First, Aragathara was trying to be ‘on Erick’s side’ and prove that she was a faithful member of his House, to keep in good standing with Shadow. But she still hoped that Nothanganathor could be forgiven. And yet, she truly believed that universe-killers did not deserve redemption. She was a flurry of emotions in the hitch of her voice and the straight of her back and the tension of her hands upon the armrest of her chair.

Well.

People were complicated.

The whole situation was kinda complicated… if Erick let it be complicated.

Hearing that Nothanganathor has a bunch of souls inside of him, though…

Well. That was kinda… a thing. To hear that Nothanganathor was planning on bringing back the people of the Painted Cosmology had Erick thinking of the Black Gate and Melemizargo with the shadow-infected crystal towers of Ar’Kendrithyst and of the dungeons.

And also, now there were the valkyries.

Erick’s latest magic was tailor-made to Siphoning Nothanganathor’s power and then multiplying rapidly and assaulting him through pure numbers, and then, perhaps, carving into that sun-sized beast and pulling out a treasure of souls… But could that work?

Would that work?

It would probably work.

It would need to be a battle less of annihilation, though, and more of complete dismemberment, which would be more difficult.

And yet… To let Nothanganathor bring back what he killed?

That would be what Erick was doing right now with the valkyries. He was killing things to bring them back.

… The situations were not the same at all, though…

As Erick’s thoughts spiraled—

Shadow had a much simpler reaction.

Shadow scoffed, “He’s not resurrecting my universe with him as the god of it all.”

“He probably changed those souls to worship him, too.” Erick said, “All he needs is the mantle of the God of Magic and he could bring back the entire Painted Cosmology and kick you out, couldn’t he, Shadow?”

Shadow stared at Erick. “He’s not resurrecting my universe.”

“I wouldn’t want him as a god-dragon either.” Erick asked Aragathara, “How do you know that is his goal?”

“He’s always wanted the Painted Cosmology for himself; for that universe to be his True Empire,” Aragathara said, “It was only because of the actions of his family and the destruction of countless versions of Margleknot’s avatars, many of whom had become friends, that he doesn’t want the Painted Cosmology Fae or Melemizargo’s line of dragons to exist anymore. Nothanganathor even sucked up as much of the Painted Cosmology as he could in order to save it, though Melemizargo managed to keep a lot of it himself.” She paused. “… Or at least that’s what I think Nothanganathor was able to do with his Sign of Power. He has been using that part of himself to hide things in his own personal hoard for a very long time, so it makes sense he captured as much of the Painted Cosmology as he could.”

Erick was slightly conflicted in a very odd way.

“We’re still killing him,” Shadow softly declared, “And it doesn’t matter what hostages he might theoretically hold.” She said to Erick, “Your valkyries can capture any souls that he might be hoarding, so his hostages don’t even matter. We’ll get back as many of them as we can, and that’s that.”

Okay.

Yeah.

This was too big to make any decisions right now.

Erick suddenly stood, ending the conversation there. Aragathara rapidly followed. Shadow took a moment, but she stood, too. Erick said, “I appreciate your candor and answers, Aragathara. This is a lot to think about, from the fact that I seem pulled in a direction to create something amazingly useful that turns out to be exactly what I need to continue forward, to the fact that all of the Sundering is a result of some sort of family feud from 10,000 years ago, to the idea that Nothanganathor has… What? The souls of those who died? Or actual stuff?”

“Probably souls and the rarest, best treasures,” Aragathara said.

Erick nodded. “Sure.” He continued, “All of this has been informative. I need to go make more defenses and more war, now. I can’t quite tell what is going to happen in the next 24 hours, but it’s going to be big.” He said to Shadow, “I’m rather certain weren’t attacked at all since the assault of Slave Intake #38 because they were looking at that whole event and weighing options. We need to be prepared when they come with a flag of truce, because we’re not giving them a truce at all.”

Shadow nodded, saying, “Of course.”

“Later,” Erick said, and then he turned to lightning and flew to the main House.

- - - -

Erick landed in front of Querkooda, his second Ruby, and a few engineers who were working on the [Infinite Imaging]. Lanzoil was there as well. Erick’s arrival was a fast interruption.

Erick wasted no time. “Hello everyone. We’ll be getting that manaminer now. How do we go about that? I heard the Aetherium Bazaar was the place to go.”

After a short pause of thought—

Lanzoil said, “Yes. The Aetherium. I have a standing appointment for us that we can use or not.”

The meeting they had been having suddenly reorganized. The engineer that had helped to make the Awakening Machine, Tris, spoke up, “A manaminer would clean up a lot of the problems with the Imager. It makes magic work well with tech if you set it up right, and I know how to set them up right. Did about a hundred of those before now.”

Erick said, “Good. Glad to hear it.”

Querkooda asked, “Can we even trust the people who sell these things?’

Lanzoil said, “The one I have in mind, yes. It’s an organization of Knowledge Mages who are allies with the Good side of Margleknot. They put in a request to speak with us four days ago about possible manaminer purchases and I vetted them long before that. They’ve been around for thousands of years.”

Erick narrowed his eyebrows for a multitude of sudden reasons, mostly to do with Knowledge Mages being able to exist in this universe at all, and if there were ties with the Script of Veird in some convoluted way, and what was up with the Goddess of Knowledge of the Painted Cosmology and the possibility of her ‘body’ being somewhere inside the blue Core of Veird. But the thought he most focused on was, “How did that request come in?”

“The mail room,” Lanzoil said, “It’s a miracle we even noticed their message, since it was a normal, small message that came through with ten million other requests.”

“Finding a single spark in a storm,” Tris mumbled, reluctantly accepting random chance as not that random at all.

Erick silently agreed with the man, and then said to Lanzoil, “Let’s go meet them.”

Lanzoil said, “They can come here?”

“… That’s probably a better idea, though I do want them to bring pictures of what their offices look like so I know who to complain to if they end up selling us a trap.” Erick asked, “And what is a Knowledge Mage in this universe, anyway? They’re Book Mages back home. We also used to have a Goddess of Knowledge back home, too.”

“Their offices are well known and haven’t moved in eons, but yes, we can get those pictures,” Lanzoil said. “And a Knowledge Mage here is pretty much the same thing, but with tech additions.”

Tris spoke up, “Some are artificial intelligence ‘gods’.”

Everyone looked to him.

Erick asked, “Really? AI gods?”

Lanzoil asked, “Like, machine things?”

Querkooda said, “I have trouble believing that. There has to be souls somewhere in them.”

Tris was growing comfortable around big powers, which was good for him and for House Benevolence, because he continued to speak without worry, “They get a soul most of the time, but the young ones are pretty much just machines. The machine ones can do more than the living ones, too, so they try to stay machines, or very low-level living things. So yeah. More like gods than people. That’s their preferred route toward power, too; helps them solidify themselves in a way that simple tech can’t do. They’re all over the tech side of Margleknot.” He frowned a little, adding, “It’s been that way for hundreds of thousands of years, I thought?”

Lanzoil shrugged. “I never got to the tech side of things.”

Querkooda said, “Me either.”

- - - -

In a room of House Benevolence, a short time after deciding to actually do it, Erick stood for a different sort of meeting. One he rarely got to participate in these days.

He was going to buy something important.

The room was already filled with diagrams and offerings, all of them in the shape of floating orbs of various colors. Power readouts that Erick didn’t fully understand floated alongside maximum size and population readouts that Erick did understand. The price tag for all of them was the same, though.

In soft gold words, floating in the center of the arrangement, was the price.

The price tag was relatively cheap, too, and something he was already willing to do.

But of course, the people here to sell him all these things still had to give their presentation. The company Erick was buying from was called Powerminer Incorporated, and they had sent their head saleswoman to make this transaction. Her name was Felicia Starzine, and she was a winged elf with 8 tiny gold wings hovering at her back. Her partner, and also the ‘owner’ of the company Powerminer Incorporated, was a floating blue cube by the name of Stackz, with a ‘z’, and he was an AI. The small blue cube was just a part of him; his main body was located in the Aetherium Bazaar, at PI’s main offices

In a surprising turn of events, after introductions, Felicia came right out and said, “As you can see, the price is the same for all of them. We want you to set up a manaminer with automatic reincarnations, like you have done with the valkyries. The normal version you showed off, though.”

“Sure. I can probably do that.”

Felicia paused, going still, completely unable to believe that their price tag was being honored.

Stackz was similarly still, the floating blue cube turning a slight shade darker, and then brighter. And then Stackz asked, “Really? You’ll really honor this request?”

“Should I not?” Erick asked.

Felicia paused.

Stackz paused.

Erick smiled, and asked, “It’s because you get access to that same magics, right? As a part of the deal of installing one of these?”

Felicia and Stackz both spoke over each other, vehemently saying, “Absolutely not!” and, “Never ever!”

Now it was Erick’s turn to be surprised. Perhaps this was a part of the tech/magic gap of Margleknot showing itself, and yet… manaminers were magic, right?

Erick said, “I feel we are probably talking from different dimensions. I don’t see a problem with automating my magic, and yet you do. I feel that you will be stealing something from me, and yet you say you will not. What is going on here?”

Felicia paused, unsure how to answer. And then she said, “Your manaminers are your own. We do not touch them or even know how to access them after we hand them over, for that’s how we built the system. If you break it and you cannot fix it on your own and need another one… Then you have to buy another one.”

Well that was part of the miscommunication solved. Good to know.

Stackz spoke, “We approach everyone who can resurrect people and erase curses with the request to do exactly that with their manaminers we sell them, and we usually have to pull back that request to some monetary value. Every person who is capable of actually erasing Contract magic and other Evil sorts of powers are… They’re heavily targeted by assassins and thieves and otherwise. We would never take the magic that you imbue into your manaminers… for… for so many different reasons.” He said, “Security of the systems we sell you, which is the major one. No one but you can operate your manaminer, as Felicia said. Even if we could take the magics that you put into a manaminer, which we can’t, this specific magic we ask you to put into your manaminer would make you targeted by Wraithborne and various assassin organizations, which does put you at risk. That’s the main threat, here. Then there’s much more insidious ways of those Evil people ruining your everything if you go against them, from infiltrative Contracts to other systemic soul poisonings of the manaminer. And… Well those are the major points of discrepancy between our points of view… Probably.”

Ahh… Yeah. Erick understood those issues. Contracts could poison a manaminer, then?

Interesting.

Felicia said, “We envision you taking over Slaver’s Den and installing House Benevolence using one of our miners to make this a land of reincarnation and new lives.”

Stackz said, “And that means you’re a target.”

“One we would support!” Felicia said.

“And one we would probably need to be supported by,” Stackz said, speaking in parts with Felicia.

Felicia continued Stackz’s thought, saying, “As soon as you get a Good manaminer up and running— I mean. Not ‘Good’, but a basically-good manaminer— We become a target, too.”

Stackz said, “We’re one of the major purveyors of manaminers, and because of that we’re under a lot of Contracts from Wraithborne. We’re located in the Aetherium Bazaar right now, and that affords us a whole lot of defense, but we would wish to move a few offices here… And honestly to start a branch of Powerminer Incorporated inside House Benevolence. We would ask to be one of your first allies, and to spread as you spread.”

Felicia said, “Business is good, but we didn’t get into this manaminer business to make money.”

Stackz said, “We got into this business to do Good.”

Erick tried not to grin. He said, “I think that sounds wonderful. Perfect, even. I could easily see myself working with a branch of people from Powerminer Incorporated, to make them a part of House Benevolence. Good to have good news. But back to the actual product stuff: I have some questions.”

Felicia tried not to beam too much joy.

Stackz glittered, though, which Erick assumed was joy for AIs. “Please ask away!”

Erick asked, “Do you know of the Script of Veird? Can I do a leveling system like that? I’m thinking simpler, though.”

Felicia looked hopeful, but she looked to Stackz.

Stackz easily said, “I have dissected what I could about the Script from the dossier of yourself, Ascendant Flatt. The Script appears to have many functions that are impossible with current manaminer tech, for the Script appears to have a whole lot of real power put into it, and it operates under different ideas from a lost cosmology. Powerminer Incorporated is believed to have had some history out of the Painted Cosmology, for the earliest known manaminers come from there, but we have no idea how those manaminers truly work, for we’ve been over here in this universe since our inception 75,000 years ago. The level of Authority granted by the Script over its people and land are… Well that’s a thing we just don’t offer with any manaminer we sell. You have to empower them yourself to get them that powerful, and I don’t think you can without godly power. The manaminers we offer are a lot more about ease of life and safety in a given area. We can certainly add on a few things, though. Do you have anything specific in mind?”

Those sounded like acceptable limitations.

Erick said, “An Awakening Machine, to awaken Benevolence inside everyone, and also the reincarnation magics.”

Stackz said, “Easily doable, along with the normal array of standard defensive options.”

“Good.” And because he was here, Erick decided to ask a question that had poked at him for a very long time. Erick asked, “As professionals, do you know what the three Bans of the Script might be? Dimensional, Infinitesimal, Propagation.”

Stackz easily said, “I can give you professional guesses, but nothing definitive. Firstly, it’s rather common to call limitations in a manaminer as something close to what they actually limit, rather than what they actually limit. Security through obscurity. With that in mind, I’m rather sure that the Dimensional Ban is for disallowing travel between Layers of their reality. Probably made to keep Veird safe from a threat they could not see due to Malevolence, or perhaps Nothanganathor made the Dimensional Ban in order to make Veird more controllable. He was there at the beginning of it, from my understanding.

“The Infinitesimal Ban is probably a limitation on depth of space in any given area; a limit against traditional Spatial magic, as in the size of things versus the size of other things. This is a common way to prevent

“Propagation is a standard anti-propagation limit. It’s just common sense to make spellwork degrade itself instead of build itself. That’s basic anti-corruption, right there.”

Erick smiled at that. Yeah. That all seemed correct. He asked, “What is the way in which the manaminer actually mines people? I thought that was either Infinitesimal or Dimensional.”

“That’s a basic application of Authority,” Stackz said. “Not a Foundational Ban at all.”

“… Huh! Well okay then.” Erick nodded. “It was great to meet you. Now! I must be off to war again. You can continue this discussion with Lanzoil here and probably a bunch of other guys from the House, like the guys in our engineering division.”

Lanzoil stepped forward. He bowed and then stood straight, saying, “I have a lot of deep questions regarding everything.”

Erick repeated, “Nice to meet you, Felicia, Stackz. War calls.”

Felicia and Stackz bowed and bobbed respectively.

And then Erick turned to lightning and zapped outside of the geodesic dome surrounding the House. He had wanted to spend more time with Powerminer Incorporated, especially if they were going to be allies, but war called, and Erick needed to answer.

- - - -

The sky was clear of obstructions and there were no bombs dropping except for maybe the verbal sort, and in a few minutes. Erick hovered where he needed to be, and took stock of the situation.

Shadow was there waiting for him, shaped like a human queen and floating in stylish black robes. Querkooda was on the other side, in the air, hovering as a pale gold dragon.

Erick remained himself, for now, wearing some glowthread clothes.

And in the distance, an abomination hovered.

It was a man of several tens of arms, an assortment of necks and pelvic areas, and no legs at all, with the center mass being a good 8 or 9 torsos of various people. There were a few heads on that thing. All of them stared at Erick. All of the being was sewn or melded together, with some various metal bits and bobs here and there. It was Underling Chains; the only true ‘Power’ of Slaver’s Den. He was only a Power because he couldn’t easily die, though. He was, perhaps, one of the worst kinds of liches. Querkooda had spoken days ago about how Chains was definitely soul-planted in lots of slaves the universe over, just waiting to hatch in the case of the death of any of his smaller parts. In that way he was closer to a Talent, like Eldawae.

There was no Captain Shackle or Underling Walara to be seen.

Underling Chains floated forward.

He stopped 50 meters away.

Erick asked, “What brings you here, Chains?”

“I wish to bargain,” Chains said, “Leave this place and we’ll release all our current slaves. Continue your war and we sunder billions.”

Erick said, “Sunder them.”

Silence.

“… Ah,” Chains said. And then he added, “We’ll really do it.”

“I’m sure you will,” Erick said. “How about a counter offer: Declare the complete and total surrender of Slaver’s Den, and I will treat you as well as I have treated all the people of Slave Intake #45 and #38.”

Chains glared hate in his many eyes, as he rattled, “You are making a deep enemy, Ascended Flatt. If it takes me a thousand years, I will see you and your people eradicated from existence.”

“Careful now, Chains,” Erick said, “You might upgrade yourself from a simple pest that is easily forgotten to someone who actually draws my full attention.”

Chains went a little still, though he was composed of a lot of body parts, so none of him was actually still at all. And then he breathed in several sets of lungs and bodies, and pulled back, floating away. When he got far enough away, he stretched, as though his image had been pulled toward Centrics, his city, spaghettifying. As soon as he started stretching that way, the rest of his body followed, and within a single moment he was gone. He left behind some blood and bits of flesh, as though they were torn away from him for moving too fast.

Weird.

Erick said, “That was a weird way for him to leave. What was that stretching?”

“Some sort of transportation power,” Shadow said. “Not his, obviously. Grafted onto him.”

Querkooda said, “I am surprised we haven’t seen more weird magics.”

Erick said, “I saw a lot with Slave Intake #38. Mostly minor stuff, though. One guy pulled the color off of a wall to hide. Didn’t work. He burned in valkyrie fire anyway.”

Querkooda smirked. “Valkyrie fire, eh? I heard them calling it blackgold fire.”

“I like ‘valkyrie fire’,” Erick said, “Some people were calling it that last night and it sounded better than ‘blackgold’.”

Shadow said, “If you come out in favor of using the word ‘valkyrie’ to describe the various powers of your new warriors then people will continue with that belief and that confluence of Elements will be named ‘valkyrie’. From there, someone will give rise to that actual Element, and it will be a lot cleaner than Vile-plus-Exalted-plus-other-stuff.” Shadow looked to Erick. “Or you could go with ‘blackgold’, but that seems rather boring and unproductive of any future powers.”

Erick almost wanted to scoff. Instead, he said, “I have a hard time believing that a halfway-Element for Vile and Exalted doesn’t already exist, though I haven’t heard of any; I assumed it was Banned on Veird. I’m sure that Good and Evil must have a halfway-Element, too, even though I haven’t heard of that one, either.”

Shadow smirked. “Vile and Exalted and Good and Evil’s halfway-Element are called Balance. Two different versions of Balance, though.”

“… Ah. I don’t like that much at all.” Erick said, “Let’s go with Elemental Valkyrie, then.”

Shadow’s grin widened to actual happiness.

Querkooda asked, “Shall we attend to the rest of the war?”

“Yes,” Erick said. “Let’s go see some would-be valkyries. Shadow? Will you be joining us?”

“I want to, but no. I will attend to the manaminer you’re purchasing.” Shadow said, “When they request to imprint blood or soul prints or mana signatures, you should do a double-layer system with office codes, like the Relevant Entities of Veird, and with a Castellan of the House, like with Rozeta. Who to pick for a castellan? I do not know. Certainly not me.”

“… Huh. Okay. So that’s how that works on Veird, then?”

“Pretty much,” Shadow said, and then she stepped away, vanishing.

Querkooda changed subjects, asking, “Where does that name come from, anyway? ‘Valkyries’?”

“Old Earth mythology about a god lifting up servitors, to gather the souls of the worthy after they died in righteous battle, to bring those warriors to a good afterlife and to prepare them for a final Apocalypse War known as Ragnarok.” Erick said, “I wasn’t aware I was making that spell with that much meaning when I went into the spell creation, but when I got close, I realized what I was doing, so I went for it, and here we are.”

Querkooda raised an eyebrow. “Ah.”

Erick smiled. “Sometimes things have a way of working out well.”

- - - -

In a large room under heavy defensive magics, far away from House Benevolence, Erick stood before 5 people who would become valkyries. Querkooda was there, too.

Three of them 5 people were from the original population of this new House Benevolence; former people from Slave Intake #45. Those three had since displayed prowess and skillful growth under Querkooda’s army training, and they were Querkooda’s tentative captains of the new Valkyrie Battalion. They were Griffin, Hendry, and Shivraa; human, elf, and some sort of ice-based half-elemental person shaped like an elf. Erick had never heard of Shivraa’s race, and he simply had not asked, so he didn’t know. She was more ice-Benevolence now, anyway.

And then there was Reena and Xai from Intake #38. Both of them were elves, though Reena looked more wood-elf than a normal elf, like Xai.

They all wore white tunics and pants, and nothing else; those clothes were going to get ruined, anyway.

All battles were naked-time battles once you got to a certain level of battle, and Erick tried not to think about that too much. Jane had been fighting like this for a long time, though, what with all her various [Polymorph] forms—

Erick got his head back in the moment.

This was a big moment.

Erick said to all of the five, “This is not a magic that was meant to raise up souls into warrior forms. Reena and Xai managed it, though. Not sure how that happened, exactly, but I approve of that happening. From what I have gathered, they both bore a deep hatred and a need to make things right. Perhaps that resonated with [Blood of the Valkyrie], and that is what caused their empowerment.

“And so, we are here.

“I cannot guarantee that you will retain your sense of self once subjected to this spell, but I can guarantee that you will remain a warrior on the battlefield, and should you survive, you will come back and be reborn once again in Benevolence. Your time as a valkyrie is a time of war, but you are not just warriors. You are so much more than that. You will come back from this, and you will likely come back changed.” He asked, “Knowing this, do you still choose to follow this path?”

Griffin, Hendry, Shivraa, Reena, and Xai, all took a knee as one, saying, “We pledge ourselves to House Benevolence, to be the instruments of War when needed, and to return to normalcy when War passes.”

Erick felt the air thrum, and then he said, “Your pledges are accepted.”

Querkooda shielded himself.

And then Erick case [Blood of the Valkyrie] on each of the new valkyries at the same time, empowering the spell with resons and purpose, solidifying pledges to bodies in ways that he didn’t fully understand, but in which he knew would work exactly as he wanted it to work.

Five orbs of blood crushed five volunteers into gore and red.

There had been no screams at all, for it had happened too fast and these five people were fully welcoming the soul magic cast upon them.

One by one, the five valkyries stood up from the ground, each of them shaped like the person they had been, but nude, and with red skin of various shades. Blackgold wings of swords swept out of their backs. Crowns of blackgold floated above their heads, and baleful red eyes opened up in those crowns.

Griffin was a valkyrie born with a blackgold sword in one hand and a shield in the other.

Hendry was surrounded by countless small blades, each of them sparking.

Shivaa was a being of palest violet, floating already and slightly shorter than the others, with a cold fog rolling off of her and her whitegold swords.

Reena was a beautiful woman, standing tall and proud and palest red. Her blackgold weaponry was almost like tarnished gold, instead of blackgold.

Xai was a handsome man of dark red skin, awaiting orders. His armaments were mostly black, but with gold at the center, like veins in black metal.

All five of them looked to Erick, and all five took a knee. “Apparent King!”

Good. It worked.

Erick checked the mana in the air. He scoped out each of their souls and bodies, checking for weirdness, or danger. What he saw was five people who had auras well contained to their bodies, and a strength of purpose that most people never achieved. Erick wondered how their propagative auras would manifest, but he was already pretty sure he knew how they would; he had created this magic, after all, and this time he had empowered it with resons, to make it work exactly as he wanted.

Erick said, “Rise.”

Querkooda dropped his shield—

The five valkyries tensed up…

But Querkooda was fine. He smiled, saying, “I can’t even feel an aura. You there, Hendry. Hit me with a dagger.” He held out his hand. “Right here.”

Hendry looked to Erick.

Erick nodded.

Hendry hesitated, but then he move a hand and one of his tiny daggers flew out and—

Skittered off of Querkooda’s hand. It did leave a mark, though. A little scratch… And that was it. No glowing red Blood Magic lines or infectious Death.

“Again,” Querkooda said. “Until you get that dagger all the way in there. Try to infect me.”

Hendry shot a single dagger into Querkooda’s open, steady palm, seven times before he got the dagger to pierce through that flesh and come out the other side of that hand. Querkooda tensed his hand, making a fist, breaking the floating dagger into motes of red, grey, gold, and black magic. That magic lingered on his flesh for a moment, but that was it.

He wasn’t infected by the Blood.

Erick smiled, for he was happy to know that this had worked out exactly as he wanted.

Hendry asked, “It’s supposed to instantly infect, right?”

Erick nodded. “Yes, and no. The answer right now is ‘no’, because none of you are connected to each other right now, except in the most basic of ways. You don’t have the necessary excess mana to make your auras strong, to infect others. When I broke the red [Spellsurge Weave] yesterday, that breaking removed the ability for the valkyries to infect others easily, and it also removed their ability to coordinate. I am glad to report that this remains true, though I am sure that if you really wanted to, you could infect a much-weakened target, and you could probably coordinate with each other in a more visceral, mental sort of way.

“What will make you true dangers is when I hook you up to a [Spellsurge Weave] to form an actual node network, to propel your powers into the infectious sort of stage.” Erick continued, “We will be doing some tests in the coming half hour to get a handle on all that, and then we go to war.”

And then Erick conjured a [Spellsurge Weave] imager in front of himself, among the gathered people, and had it target nothing at all. The white image of their surroundings began to manifest from a white weaver that floated above the preparation area; mist turning to hologram. Soon, the map populated with imagery centered about 20 kilometers upspireward from the House. The valkyries, Erick, and Querkooda, stood within that image.

It was a wasteland out there.

Erick looked to Querkooda.

Querkooda put his shields back up.

And then Erick targeted the valkyries with the weaver. The five of them populated the map like five little blue dots, and Erick asked them, “Feel anything?”

The five valkyries looked a bit lost.

Reena spoke up. “No, sir.”

Erick nodded. “That didn’t work, then. Trying the next experiment.”

Erick was very glad that didn’t work.

It would take more than simple targeting to connect them to a Weave.

Over the course of 45 minutes, Erick began to truly understand what this magic could do, and what it could not do.

Mostly, he figured out that [Spellsurge Weave] had to be summoned alongside [Blood of the Valkyrie] for the network of valkyries to manifest once again as a misty red map, and then each valkyrie who wasn’t already part of that network had to step into the red map and extend their aura into the image, to connect to that network. Once they were connected, their auras turned infectious.

Really infectious.

It was easy for Erick to clean himself of that infection. The Blood never got past his skin, and even then the Carnage Death was easily shoved away like dust billowing away from broken spellwork.

Querkooda was easily infected, too; Just standing beside a valkyrie was enough. It took him some doing to rid himself of the infection. He couldn’t do it while he was inside the infection area, either. He needed to get out of the valkyries’ natural aura range, which was about 4-5 meters if they were relaxed, and 10 meters if they were focused on battle. Reena could push her aura out to 25 meters when she focused on it a bit. But when Querkooda was out of the area of effect, he needed to actively purge the infection through aura work. He could purge the infection, though! Which was good news.

When the infection was dormant it was kind of a ‘burning body’ sensation, or needles all over the skin, according to Querkooda. It was nothing major. Nothing he or any other Talent would have actual trouble over.

Erick imagined that those without proper aura control would not be able to purge the infection at all, and they would have trouble. A lot of trouble.

As for the valkyries themselves...

Once connected to each other, Valkyrie fire erupted from their crowns and each one of them turned sharper, and stronger. They connected mentally to each other, to naturally share memories and power. Rapidly, they learned to move around each other and various obstacles Erick set up, their movements having turned from rote strength and power into something a whole lot more graceful. They danced without dancing, moving through obstacle courses, their blades turning shape and deadly.

After an hour of testing, done mostly to ensure that all their minds still seemed all there and to ensure that they could disconnect and reconnect from the network themselves, which they could, Erick decided that this was enough. The new valkyries were still themselves, but they also were a whole lot more than that.

“It is time,” Erick said.

Querkooda, once thoroughly cleaned of infection, went back to the House, to oversee the defenses of the land there.

Erick and his valkyries moved outside of the ‘Valkyrie Command Center’, as the valkyries were now calling it. Standing above the hidden white roof, Erick looked to the sky and canceled most of the hiding magics of the VCC. Illusions came down, revealing a white castle made of eternal stonewood.

Erick said to his valkyries, “You will remain here while I infect a few cities at once. This will ensure your mentality passes on to the newborns. You will be joining those war efforts soon, by flying there. From there, all of Slaver’s Den will be falling today.” The valkyries already knew that, but Erick had said it aloud for the people watching, because they were surely watching. But to actually call upon them, Erick turned to the sky, and said, “Yggdrasil. I am now releasing wide-scale [Blood of the Valkyrie]s upon Slaver’s Den. This is my official heads up to you. Propagation magic is being released in 1 minute.”

Yggdrasil stepped out of the air, to stand in front of Erick. He looked concerned. “Are you really doing this, this way?”

Erick looked to his son, and said, “I am.”

“Then I request 1.34 billion resons to enact a quarantine. That number might increase if your magic becomes unwieldy. This should prevent the propagation of your magic to other parts of Margleknot, but it is not 100% certain. Quarantines are never certain.”

Erick didn’t expect that, but he rolled with it. “What about the propagation of the Major Contracts, or whatever they’re called?”

Erick was worried about the indiscriminate sundering of billions, as Chains had threatened, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. Getting rid of great Evils was always going to come with a cost.

Yggdrasil said, “It should prevent those from triggering outside of Slaver’s Den, but again, that is not certain.”

“How not-certain?”

“The quarantine should work against most non-Power threats, which means you’re the only one really able to break it once it goes up.” Yggdrasil said, “But those Major Contracts were written by Powers. By Morbion and others.”

“I accept the reson cost, then. Please deduct it from my account.”

Yggdrasil nodded curtly… He paused.

Erick waited.

Yggdrasil breathed, then said, “… I stayed out of this decision of yours to do this valkyrie thing for a while, father, but…” Yggdrasil said, “This is probably going to work exactly how you want it to work, but the aftermath is going to be… Unknown.”

Erick nodded. “I’m aware. Sorry for worrying you.”

“On the plus side, Lord Dakka is now seated amongst his harem, watching on every screen he can find, giggling like a child for their awaited afternoon candy.” Yggdrasil said, “So I’m pretty sure this is exactly what he wants.”

Erick huffed a tiny laugh, then said, “If he can uphold the standards I expect out of allies, then he’s invited to watch from here—”

“I agree!” Lord Dakka slipped out from behind Yggdrasil’s big green body, smiling, giggling. The fae of war and death wore rusted metals, his wings fluttering rust into the air, as he said, “But I want to participate!”

Erick rapidly decided, “Can you keep infected people from running? That’s my only worry about this.”

“I can do that and so much more!”

Lord Dakka’s giggle turned into a peal of evil laughter as he vanished into his own cloud of rust, his laughter turning deeper, darker, to become a rumble that filled the world. The sky darkened a fraction.

Scant white clouds began to change to something redder—

Yggdrasil said, “I was already planning on keeping people from running, but this is probably better. Good luck, father.” And then he stepped away.

“See you later, Yggdrasil.”

— clouds of rust filled the world overhead, blocking out the sky of Margleknot, but not before brilliant gold hexagons came into being between the continent of Slaver’s Den, and all the rest of Margleknot. Words appeared on the gold, and all of those hexagons read the same thing:

QUARANTINE

Erick moved on.

Down below, Erick had already scoped out targets on the Weave image. He was focused on Slave Intake 22, 9, and 17 right now, with his targets being ‘Graduates who wish for Death’. He had 37 targets, but that would change, and fast.

Right now, the spell had no power to infect anyone else.

But then Erick flowed [Renew] into that spellwork, pouring power into weavers far, far away—

Reena gasped, followed by smaller reactions from Xai, Hendry, Griffin, and Shivaa.

Reena softly said, “I feel them. They’re coming.” She smiled. She laughed. She declared, “And I’m going to help them now.”

Reena flickered with blood, exploding into nothing, gore spreading wide and far.

… Okay then.

Several hundred kilometers away, and thanks to a map below the valkyrie blood map that was targeted to ‘valkyries’, Erick saw as Reena reappeared at Slave Intake #22.

Erick kept feeding power into the red map, as he said, “I guess you can blood teleport. That’s useful.”

“Sir!” Xai said, and then he exploded into gore and reappeared at Slave Intake #22 as well.

Erick asked the other three, “You know how he did that?”

Griffin, Hendry, and Shivaa each had unsure looks upon them—

Shivaa suddenly floated straighter. “Oh. It’s like that.”

She exploded into frozen blood, and then left. She reappeared at Intake #9

Griffin and Hendry looked to each other. Wordlessly, they exploded into gore, too. They reappeared together Intake #17, an Erick wiped away some drops of blood on his face and body.

Rapidly, the number of red dots on the infection map vanished, as people died. Those dots reappeared on the white ‘search for valkyrie’ map, on the floor below the red map, and soon, blue dots began to multiply.

Erick checked to see where Dakka was.

“… Where is Dakka?” Erick asked the air.

Lady Aelorika, wrapped in flowers and green, stepped into the space atop Erick’s Valkyrie Command Center, sighing, saying, “He’s that blue valkyrie dot over by Slave Intake #22.”

“… What?” Erick was already looking down there. He guessed, “That one standing off on its own?”

“That’s the one,” Lady Aelorika said, seeming down, as she looked out into the rusted sky, the faint glow of gold barriers faintly coming through there and there. “I’m pretty sure you’ve done this magic too well. I’ll try to damage control after this is done.” She looked to him. “It really would have been better if you would have become Good.”

Erick had a sudden thought. “You tried to get Nothanganathor to declare himself as Evil, didn’t you.”

“Yes. He would have risen to become Emperor of Wraithborne, like Morbion did. Nothanganathor’s danger would have been contained as well as used, but instead he fixated on Veird and killed a universe.” Lady Aelorika said, “This is what happens when people enter the wider world of Margleknot and then fail to leave behind their tiny homes, with their tiny matters and tiny problems; we all get dragged down into the depths of depravity. I pray this doesn’t happen to you, and that you go on to solve more problems than you create. Good luck with your war. We’ll speak afterward about Veird.”

Lady Aelorika stepped away.

And Erick continued to funnel mana into the red map until the valkyries’ Siphons powered themselves, and then went further beyond, into growth. It didn’t take too long. 5,000 warriors. Last time it only took 3,500. This time the battles went a whole lot faster, too. That’s what happened when you had an army connected mentally to each other, each able to share in the duty of shriving Slaver’s Den, all together.

The war went quickly and way too slow at the same time. Every second was a horror interrupted, and every second gave birth to a new horror, and hope. Mostly hope.

Attacks came.

Erick, Shadow, and Querkooda repelled them all.

When the first 20,000 people turned to valkyries, Erick decided he needed someone to get some of the horde to come home, to be reborn, so he poked at the map with his aura and some resons, flowing in some intent for a speaker to come out. It was an experiment that had worked before, but he didn’t know if it would still work, but since they could blood-teleport then maybe—

Shivaa appeared out of the red mist map like a floating ghost, only to come back to solidity, to float through the map and upward. She reached the roof under Erick’s feet and flowed through that roof like a frozen mist, to kneel before Erick above the Valkyrie Command Center. “My king. I heard your call. What would you have of us?”

“You’ve reached a critical mass. Have those who wish for their new lives to start flying into the normal area by the red pillars to be reborn. Have those who would move on to a next life beyond Margleknot to fly to the gold pillars, which I will be setting up soon. Those who judge themselves or as I judge them as the worst of the worst shall be moving on; they will not have a choice otherwise.” Erick said, “I’ll be enacting wave 2 of the valkyries in a few minutes, enacting infections in the cities out there that have no one. Those groups will need to be reinforced fast.”

“The warmachine obeys.”

“By the end of this war, I will be finding someone to be the lead valkyrie, to stand with me and send out orders to everyone else. Maybe a trio. Keep that in mind. You may return to the war.”

“Sir!”

Shivaa vanished in a splash of frozen blood, adding to the red slick already present on the roof of the Valkyrie Command Center. Erick returned to the war. Glancing down at the map below the roof, below his feet, he saw blue dots begin to flow toward House Benevolence, located on the side-ish of Slaver’s Den.

Erick activated wave 2 in all the other Slave Intakes, and also in the major cities of Slaver’s Den, in very specific locations. In Den, which was the Showcase City, filled with weird powers and weirder slaves, like a cross between New York City and a zoo. In Glams, the city of sex, overseen by Underling Walara, the demon succubus. In Centrics, Underling Chains’ city of hard cases and dangerous slaves. And in Anomalies, the main city of Slaver’s Den, where Captain Shackle oversaw everything. The only spot where the infection did not take at all was in Anomalies, the most well-defended city.

But everywhere else, Valkyries stepped out of the gore of the downtrodden and powerless, to bring grievance to the slavers.

And so it went.

Erick didn’t know if Chains tried to activate any of the sunder-kill Major Contract switches in any of the hidden locations out there in Slaver’s Den. What he did know is that the valkyries managed to get to every single location with one of those Major Contract hubs, as outlined by Kakalakot, and protect those locations. Kakalakot of the Slavehold’s information about all of that had been invaluable. Erick hoped the man was doing well, wherever he was. He might have doomed billions to slavery, but he had saved billions of lives today from sundering.

And so it went.

It was all kinda easy. But then again, when you had a few thousand temporarily-converted minds all working together to make vulnerabilities like billion-kill-Contract-switches obsolete, and the knowledge to actually do that, and the preparation and determination to make those vulnerabilities obsolete, then good things had a way of working out.

Still though…

A lot of people were dying today.

And Anomalies, Captain Shackle’s city, was proving to be particularly difficult to breach. The valkyries didn’t seem able to get more than a kilometer inside the walls before their blackgold fire gutted out and common guns killed them. They reformed outside the city with their brethren, but they couldn’t get past many of the barricades and Erick was absolutely sure that Captain Shackle had some hidden depths to him that—

Something rippled across the world.

And several million of Erick’s valkyries, currently attempting to attack Anomalies, simply evaporated into broken mana. Further afield, waves upon waves of blue upon the map below, all across Slaver’s Den, wobbled.

For a moment, Erick was stunned. Just what had Captain Shackle done?

… And then Erick knew.

As the map resolidified, Erick knew.

“Fuck,” Erick said, some of his worst fears confirmed. They didn’t manage to get every single Contract Nexus, and worse than that… “The killswitch can transfer inside of the valkyries in certain situations.” He asked the air, “The Quarantine still worked though, right?”

Yggdrasil stepped to Erick’s side, looking furious at the horizon, and at himself. “The Contracts are still there in the valkyries and they’re mostly inactive, but that pulse got inside of them… And it bypassed the Quarantine.”

Erick felt the blood drain from his face. “How bad?”

“112 million people. I thought our Quarantines were better than that, but it appears these Contracts are better than they should be.”

Erick had a moment, and then he got back to war. “Captain Shackle is being pursued by the fae forces of Margleknot, then? He should be, right? For sundering people on layer 0.”

Yggdrasil was furious at the horizon. “Captain Shackle had an underling do it, all the while telling that person not to do it, but in a way that everyone knew that Captain Shackle was giving him the order to pull the switch. Captain Shackle survives, and the person who pulled the switch is now a war criminal. Lord Dakka has already called a Hunt and that person is already being erased from the world, slowly being sundered in a much worse way than what they did to all those people they destroyed. Even their name is being erased, for I do not recall it.”

Erick wasn’t sure what to say, except… “So Shackle is still there, then. Inside Anomalies.”

“Yes. Him and his remaining Underlings are hiding under his Authority. That’s why your valkyries haven’t been able to break the walls, or survive inside for more than a minute.” Yggdrasil said, “You’re going to have to break his Authority to end this.” He said to Erick, “He hasn’t actually broken Grand Law. We cannot advance on him. You can.”

“Then that is what I will do.” Erick said, “But Yggdrasil… I am guessing that Malevolence is what allowed those Contracts through your Quarantine. I am guessing that Malevolence can do a lot more than simply pierce a Quarantine. I postulate that it can kill a universe in a similar way, through slow poisoning.”

Yggdrasil had already had those thoughts and probably a lot more, both since this morning when he spoke with Aragathara, and since this latest horror. He stared out across the rust-red sky… And then he turned to Erick. “When you’re secure in this land, after about a month, I'll drop the time dilation between Margleknot and Veird. Nothanganathor has been requesting… a lot of things. His avatar will come to Margleknot and I and the Council will be having words with him. You can be there, but you’ll be a spectator unless called upon.”

Erick had mixed feelings, rapidly vibrating between rage and then worry. He decided, “I’ll be there.”

Yggdrasil softened with an ageless sadness, and for a moment, Erick saw Margleknot more than he saw Yggdrasil. “I thought I had it contained.”

“It’s not your fault, Yggdrasil. Malevolence is a blight that needs to be eradicated, and I am rather certain that no one here is taking the precautions they need to take against that evil. That is by that evil’s design.”

Yggdrasil frowned, but it was at himself. He said nothing.

Erick said nothing.

And Yggdrasil stepped away, vanishing into Elsewhere.

Erick continued the war until nothing was left but Anomalies, where about 7 million people crowded into a city meant to contain a million.

All the rest of what had once been Slaver’s Den was now either a valkyrie waiting for orders to proceed, or back to being a normal person who was rapidly trying to put their life back together after being a slave for years, decades, or in some cases, hundreds or thousands of years. Millions of people were in that boat, all wanting to know what was happening now, or if they could personally kill their former captors, or if they could free their former captors because they were good people, or if they could get away, far far away. There was no leaving this battlefield, though.

Erick’s [Grand Reincarnation]s, and reson-empowered [Reincarnation]s that sent people elsewhere, still worked. Yggdrasil had said that Erick could break the Quarantine, so that wasn’t too surprising, since the Quarantine was made by Yggdrasil’s roots and power (and also Lord Dakka) and while most things could not enter or leave, souls traveling on [Reincarnation] could, just like how the Contract Nexuses could still affect people outside of Slaver’s Den. Erick supposed fae could come and go as they wanted, too.

Lotta holes in this Quarantine, actually.

Erick wasn’t privy to those conversations about all that, but he certainly knew that those conversations were happening.

Organization from there took four days to get everyone in refugee camps and to send off the worst offenders that the valkyrie horde had captured. Erick put up a bunch more Benevolence dungeons to power everything he needed empowered in House Benevolence, and in the rapid expansions of his lands.

It was a disastrous few days of war and reclamation, with back and forth battles between standing valkyries and forays from Anomalies, and Erick rapidly making infrastructure and otherwise. Erick made more maps to break up the war away from a single point of failure. He appointed people to positions of power. He made duplicators to rapidly make food for everyone.

It was necessary.

And one more battle remained.