Ar'Kendrithyst

While Nirzir slept the sleep of the dead, since she was not on a watch, yet, Erick woke up at the crack of noon, just in time for lunch.

Jane had made lunch; she had stayed home today. But even more surprising than that, was that she had cooked.

For a certain definition of ‘cooked’, anyway.

Erick happily took the paper box with the image of rice on it —it was the largest box of the whole set— and grabbed himself some rice, teasing, “I love it when you cook, Jane.”

“It’s quite a magical experience, to be sure. All I do is tell someone what I want, and I get what I want.” Jane stuck a fork in her not-general-tso’s chicken, smiling as she said, “Not quite as magical as the nascent Twisted Vision you made last night.”

Erick paused halfway through dumping some seared vegetables onto his plate. Teressa was looking at him, waiting for a denial. Poi was eyeing him, knowingly. Jane was being nonchalant about it, but she was rather sure she hit the mark, exactly right. And she had.

Erick served himself some vegetables, and said, “So you all talked about that, eh? I was hoping that fact would go unseen for a little while longer. I was going to bring it up… eventually. But. Anyway. I certainly did not plan on that aspect of [Undertow Star], but you’d have to be blind not to notice the way the ambient mana moved last night. Spells don’t normally make mana move like that.”

Teressa softly said, “I was hoping I was seeing things last night. But… I guess I wasn’t.”

“Nope; you weren’t. And now that we’re openly talking about it, we can go ahead and talk about it.” Erick handed the three of them [Luminosity], saying, “I also made this spell yesterday when you were all sleeping. It’s a Particle spell based around extreme light, and I used it when making [Undertow Star]. Its purpose is to deny the magics of non-approved people. [Spatial Denial] is also part of [Undertow Star], as you noticed last night, Jane.

“Both of these things mimic the most widely known abilities of Twisted Visions; primarily the ability to fuck up any escape through Spatial magic, and to also deny you your strongest offensive powers.” Erick said, “I did not intend this when I was making [Undertow Star], but the similarities cannot be denied.”

Poi sent, ‘We’re moving this conversation to silent telepathy before you mention [Duplicate] out loud.’

‘Fair enough.’ Erick said, ‘As Poi has brought up, right before I could, I did not put [Duplicate] in this working. I don’t think I ever would have, either. But that brings me to the next thought: The soul spear.’

Jane and Teressa gasped a little. Poi frowned.

Yes; he was deflecting them off track for talking about [Undertow Star]. Erick wasn’t going to admit that, though. Erick had hoped he would have at least another day to organize his thoughts better, but what could you do? His people were not dummies, after all. He decided to just be glad that other people were seeing what he saw; it helped to confirm he wasn’t being paranoid.

‘Oh my gods.’ Teressa said, ‘They got the soul spear from the dragons.’

Jane countered, ‘Or Xangu had a Vision copy the spear. We still haven’t found the man, or his trail.’

Teressa eyed Erick. ‘Well that’s a dead end, anyway. How would we even check on such a thing? I want to talk about [Undertow Star] more. How deep does this go?’

Erick nodded; back to the main subject, then. ‘Let’s go all the way back to the beginning, to my ideas of a [Renew] spell. I want anyone to be able to cast into an ongoing spell to keep that spell working, but that idea never worked out, exactly.

‘But while we were here, on this Worldly Path, I saw the guards of Treehome use Draining spells to knock down killers. That’s where I got the idea to go in a different direction with [Renew]; to make a [Drain Ward] that could power other spells. It wasn’t till we got here, to Songli, to where I saw the Void Wall and heard the Void Song that I actually went forward with those nascent ideas formed in Treehome.

‘But the Undertow spell I made last night is incomplete, if one were to compare it to a Twisted Vision, and it’s incomplete because I just didn’t think to include those other parts of this spell. I didn’t even think about including those parts until just now, here in this discussion.’

Teressa looked concerned with her lips in a slight frown, exposing her large lower fangs. Jane narrowed her eyes, worried, but in a way that said ‘My gods, dad, what did you do?’. Poi took Erick’s words in stride; probably because he had already figured this stuff out long before now, what with his Mind Mage information network, and everything.

Erick continued, heedless of the looks he was getting, ‘As I see it, there are certain pieces missing from [Undertow Star] that are present in a Twisted Vision. [Duplicate] is the major piece, but I’m not putting that in there. Why would I? No thank you. I also failed to include [Mysticalshape], which is another spell I just learned and then used to great effect, but which didn’t go into last night’s spell. I also used [Spatial Denial], where a Twisted Vision spell might use [Teleport] instead, or— OH! Now that I’m talking about it: a Spatial Magic Domain. That’s probably more correct.

‘That the Vision has a Domain is likely why it recognizes other Domains really quickly.’ He added, ‘Oh yeah. And that’s another thing… Another two things, actually. First: Twisted Visions live in the Forest, of which there are trees, and I just learned some impressive tree magic. So that’s probably a part of [Gate], too, though I didn’t include that, either. But more importantly, as it concerns [Gate]:

‘I don’t think [Gate] is actually about linking two spaces, at all. That’s just what it looks like to the end user. I think [Gate] might truly be about the creation of a being —a summon— that opens up in two different areas. This creature then allows the people who go through the summon at one place to travel to a different place. Perhaps such a creature might even look like [Undertow Star] with tendrils for people to enter through and then exit out the other side, in another place. Or maybe such a summoned creature would look more like a tree? World Trees are supposed to naturally have this functionality, too, after all. Perhaps this functionality is a feature of having bodies that stretch across the universe.

‘But I might need to make a Spatial Magic Domain and add that into [Undertow Star] in order for the emergent property of the ‘[Gate] spell’ to appear out of the working.

‘Or, perhaps, I am completely wrong about that.

‘Probably not wrong about the Space Domain, though.

‘But I pursued [Draining Elemental] in order to produce a framework into which [Gate] could be slotted, so that anyone could expose themselves to the [Gate] and power the [Gate], without me or anyone else needing to [Renew] or recast the [Gate]. In that pursuit, I arrived at the Undertow effect, which is applicable to any spellwork, and which can last forever, if enough people, or monsters, are exposed to the spellwork. But now that I’ve made it...

‘Perhaps the Old Dragonkin Gate Network has a similar Undertow spell working in the background, and since it is a magical construct that has ‘lived’ this long, maybe the Network has gained a sentience. Maybe it has gained a soul. Maybe that’s the answer to Teressa’s concern over ‘what happens when Undertow Star Drains a million mana’, or, in this case, billions upon billions of mana. Trillions, even. Maybe, eventually, when exposed to that much mana, the Gate Network mutated from its original purpose, to become a Twisted Vision.

‘Or perhaps, the Twisted Visions are the fully intact and functional Old Dragonkin Gate Network, but the Gates that those monsters used to attach to are long gone, lost to the Rage Wars and to civilization’s solution to those wars of destroying the Gate Network.

‘Perhaps the writing inside of the Gates Tenebrae has found are truly nonsense words, only there to guide where the [Gate] openings should be, written in a language known only to the Visions, or to the Green Labyrinth, in particular.’

Erick stopped sending.

Teressa, Jane, and Poi, sat there around the lunch table, digesting what he had sent them, and also their food. No one had stopped eating while Erick was sending, and Erick didn’t stop eating, either. Now that he was done, though, Jane had a slight scowl. Poi was surprised, but not talking about his surprise.

Teressa…

Teressa sent, ‘Okay. That was a lot. You might be right about the Twisted Visions… But they don’t look like trees. They look like crystal growths the size of an orcol, planted in the middle of a grove.’

‘Really?’ Erick said, ‘Tenebrae’s writings said they were any number of things that were inside the main monsters of the Twisted Vision, like cores.’

‘Treehome has killed smaller Visions when they encroach upon the city, or when they hunker down in the center of major roads. We know what they look like,’ Teressa sent. ‘They’re almost exactly like monster cores, but only when they’re disturbed. Otherwise they’re just big hunks of crystal planted in the middle of a grove. When they’re disturbed, they summon a monster to surround the crystal. That’s how they move from place to place, too.’

Erick grinned, happy to see Teressa having a contribution to the discussion. ‘Where did you read that? I haven't read that anywhere, yet?’

Teressa said, ‘I looked it up after we left Treehome. Sent some messages to some people and they got back to me, through Poi.’

Poi nodded, sending, ‘That is correct.’

Erick was ecstatic, ‘Oh! That’s great news then, Teressa! That helps me to understand the problem, too. Thank you. Maybe [Undertow Star] is capable of making one of those large crystals? Maybe not. I don’t know anything about that at all.’

Teressa briefly blushed, then shook her head, waving off the nice words.

Jane sent, ‘I wanna know about Yggdrasil. How does this relate to him?’

‘Ah! And that’s another thing.’ Erick sent, ‘I made a World Tree while on the Worldly Path. But is Yggdrasil the World Tree because the blue box says he is? Or is Yggdrasil still locked down by divine mandate, and he will become a World Tree when those locks are broken?’ Erick handed out the box for Yggdrasil, saying, ‘This box has never changed from its initial form.’