Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick experienced a minor epiphany as he went about solving problems. It was ‘minor’ because this was not a new epiphany.

This world had more inherent danger in the form of changelings and ‘holer beetles’ (which were exactly as horrible as they sounded) and monsters in the dark, than him, as a Wizard, trying to make it all better. A lot more. Like, yes, there was a horrible fact that with his power he was able to change a lot of established norms, and that made a lot of powerful people powerfully uncomfortable, but he had a track record with magic stretching back a whole year! …Which, he admitted, was a problem. The people here just didn’t know him yet. His history of being a social worker simply did not matter to them; all they saw was the recent upheaval of established norms.

Erick knew what he was about, even if the majority of the people around him only knew of him through hearsay and news. And this was bad. There was no truly good solution to this problem, for all he could really do was leave behind allies wherever he went. He could prove himself a hundred times over, but the world was a million times bigger than him, and he wasn’t even sure if proving himself as ‘good’ would ever be good enough for some of these people, like the wrought.

At least Kromolok hadn’t outed him yet, because there wasn’t an Inquisition currently on his doorstep. Maybe tomorrow, but maybe not!

The problems of living in a society aside…

There were solvable problems everywhere down here (most of them in the form of monsters) and Erick was very capable of solving these issues. So he did.

From an infestation of water worms poisoning a local water supply which led to the discovery of a nest of cannibals picking off people from the edges of town, to bringing a kidnapped kid home to his parents, to some sort of infestation of thundering ghosts that obliterated an outpost and which no one could remove. [Physical Domain] proved very useful against the ghosts’ Elemental Thunder, but then again, the outpost was so far out from everyone else that it didn’t really matter if the place got cleaned out, or not.

Most of the requests were like that; large problems that were far away from everyone else. Only a few of the requests for assistance had him rooting out problems that were right beside civilization, or which had intruded into civilization.

And so, just like that, in the space of 8 hours, Erick cleared out 29 requests for assistance. Three of the original 32 planned monster requests were more so the issuers could get in touch with him, than for any real physical or safety need. In his time filling out those requests, Erick realized that, while his fears of being found out as a Wizard were real, allies could still be had, and he discovered a lot more about how the Underworld physically operated. His range was only a few thousand kilometers down here but it was enough to plot out the major landmarks.

Stratagold was like a hundred kilometer wide/long/tall boulder with Main Roads crossing all around it, like raised highways encircling a major metropolitan area. But the Underworld was also a 3D space, built up and down, and some of those highways went over or under the wrought Geode. Those Main Roads extended off to the south, east, and west, but not to the north.

Vibrant Falls was to the north.

Erick did discover a continuation of the Main Roads north of Vibrant Falls, but not before he explored what the Falls actually were. A kilometers wide ocean of water was falling through the center of the place, after all; that wasn’t something that one ignored.

Calling it an ‘ocean of water’ turned out to be correct. The roof of Vibrant Falls was connected to hundreds of tunnels where water funneled down from the ocean at the Surface to fall down, down, into the Underworld. Erick expected a maelstrom whirlpool on the Surface, but what he found was more like a series of switchback tunnels that led to smaller tunnels that led to the ocean above.

It was practically sewer maintenance architecture on the level of gods. If calling it the ‘godly sewers of Veird’ turned out to be a technically correct but blasphemous thing to say, Erick would not be surprised. There was definitely something odd going on in those tunnels, though, for the water pouring down was freshwater, but the ocean was salt water, which meant there was some unseen magic happening between up there and down here, and Erick couldn't find that delineating line.

But back to the Main Roads.

The Main Roads (and the various ‘natural’ state-sized caverns interspersed on those roads) were like the anchoring lines of a spiderweb, with Stratagold in the center. The roads did not go up or down very much. It was more like they were laid out flat across what could have theoretically been a layer of Veird. In some places there were holes punched through many layers, like Vibrant Falls, but every layer of Main Road was more or less upon a different Z axis. Side Roads could go anywhere. It was through the Side Roads or other natural breaks between layers that people moved up or down, between the layers of Main Roads.

Mostly, the Underworld was a many-layered cake, with —Erick guessed— about 1% of it made of tunnels or otherwise open for travel or habitation. Stratagold occupied a portion of the Underworld where the Main Roads were rather well maintained, which, Erick guessed, was probably due to Stratagold’s influence. Life underground was certainly different from life on the Surface, in many more ways than the obvious, though.

One of those ways was truly disturbing, once he understood what he was looking at. The monsters were an obvious problem that need not be examined too deeply, except to know that they were dangerous, and prevented a great deal of life from properly taking hold in all these spaces that had been made for people. Because now that Erick was down here, he saw exactly how Veird was supposed to work.

Sure, the land was destroyed and much of the infrastructure was gone, but the tunnels themselves remained. The general ‘sewage system’ of the oceans and waterways remained. Massive caverns that should have held nations were now empty. Skyscraper-sized crystals that should have lit up the dark, bringing light to the deepest parts of this world, were now on the ground and broken in millions of pieces and covered with a millennium of dirt.

But, back when Veird was first created...

This land was meant to be filled with people.

All of it. Filled to the brim with people. Filled with worlds of life.

And yet, it was filled with monsters.

There were a lot of people down here, too, but not nearly as many as this place could support. Just like Yggdrasil’s cavern, the Underworld was only 1% populated. And wasn’t that a kick in the pants. This place had been an ark and now it was a graveyard.

That was ancient history, though.

Erick noticed something more present-day as he scouted out the Underworld. Remembering back to the holographic map of the local t-station network, under the embassy, and connecting that map with the settlements he saw out here, Erick recognized the wrought garrisons in some towns as holders of a t-station. Those towns with a t-station (and with the wrought garrison protecting that t-station and town) formed minor hubs in well-protectable locations. Outside of those main lands there were settlements located near other natural resources, like underground lakes and farmable lands. But those people in those satellite lands were high level and ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. The wrought garrisons were obviously fallback points only to be used in an emergency, which would have been fine, but…

One question kept coming up as Erick scouted the Underworld. Where were the other lands? The other nations, outside of Stratagold?

But there was nothing.

The world was dark down here, and only those people who had access to a t-station, or lived near a place that had a t-station, were able to survive. But the t-stations were not like a [Gate] network, linking everyone to everyone else.

Thanks to his talk with Tasar about shipping, Erick knew that people regularly moved between settlements, out in the deeper dark, trundling along under massively heavy guard and lots of active, protective spellwork. It was only thanks to those wrought caravaneers and the strong mages and other flesh-based defenders of various noble houses that any of these societies could exist at all. People —vetted people, mostly nobility— could sometimes move between t-stations, but cargo could not; there were rules about that. A lot of rules, but with those rules came a lot of help.

It was clear to Erick, from all the evidence sitting in front of him, that it was impossible to make it in this land without a direct connection to Stratagold. That fact had some disturbing implications for just how much power Stratagold had over these people, because it’s not like the people in these places were weak. There were humans and dragonkin and incani on every single fortification wall, casting [Fireball]s and otherwise, right next to wrought commanders. But only the wrought garrisons themselves had runework. Only the wrought garrisons had runic cannons like Erick had seen at Enduring Forge. Only the wrought had t-stations. There were anti-[Stoneshape] runic webs in every wall and under every foundation, but they were hidden like secrets.

City life was safe enough, but it was a very loose definition of ‘safe’. Erick was literally clearing out problems inside some of those cities that had no idea they were under threat. Sometimes the barons got mad that certain responsibilities weren’t upheld by the wrought, but the wrought always said something about ‘not being allowed to do X, and you know we're not’. Erick found himself siding with the barons almost all the time. But at the same time, it seemed to him that the wrought were allowing themselves to be pushed away from responsibility, which… Was a thing.

Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

And yet, it was clear that ultimate responsibility for safety lay at the feet of the wrought. All the fleshy people in this Underworld lived under their silent rule.

Now, to be fair, Erick did not think that Stratagold was doing anything untoward; not at all. But what was happening was that Stratagold held the reins of power, and they were using that power to support other people. Without them, there was no life down here. The Underworld flourished or died based on the whims of the wrought.

… This was probably vastly unfair to them. People could only do so much against the dark; even immortals could not change the reality of monsters everywhere, and of Melemizargo prowling out there just out of sight. Perhaps it was different in other lands, where there were no wrought. Perhaps Erick was simply in the ‘center of a nation’ as it were, and of course, Stratagold held the power while within their national borders. Perhaps handing out runic webs to the people at large had led to horrors in the past, and since the wrought were immortal, they knew not to do that, so they buried their anti-[Stoneshape] runic webs out of sight.

Erick was deeply uncomfortable with what he was seeing, because...

Would he do it any differently? If he had control of a nation, and people wanted to live near him and benefit from his power, would he demand they follow his rules? Would he allow them to make their own mistakes? Erick had already done just that, a little, by slotting himself into Silverite’s reign as one of her archmages. But for Candlepoint, he was very much silent. He was an assistant; not a leader.

Was that the correct path? Was Candlepoint falling apart without his direct oversight? Likely no…

Probably not.

It was arrogance itself to assume that he knew best how to manage anything, just because he was strong. No. Leave the management to others. Erick could guard the walls.

… Which was exactly what the wrought were doing. So maybe he sided with them, actually.

All of this was a topic to bring up with Tasar and the EIPC people the next time he saw them.

Anyway. According to the wrought’s ideology, and unless Erick was wildly misinterpreting what he was seeing, they were doing the most they could reasonably do. And Erick could help with that. Maybe he needed to see what Ryul was doing with Archmage’s Rest, and get in on that, for there was likely more than enough archmage-level work to go around.

Ah.

At that thought, Erick relaxed many of his objections to Stratagold. They did help people, all the time. The problem was just too large to ever actually solve. Or, at least, it was too large to solve with current methods. That’s where Erick needed to focus his goals. Solving systemic problems as well as solving monster problems. The people down here could certainly use more runic webs.

Of course, the downside to interacting with the wrought was the threat of outing himself as a Wizard.

Eh.

People still needed help, and he was going to give it to them.

If the worst came to pass and he needed to run, Erick had already found one way out of the Underworld that didn’t require t-station access. Only the one, though. Erick’s range wasn’t what he was used to down here, so maybe there were more, but Vibrant Falls came down from the ocean, so, theoretically, he could return to the Surface by going up the falls.

That was only in case of emergency, though. If Bright Tea and the inquiry went well, then he would have Stratagold at his back, and then Oceanside came next, and then came ‘finding a Wizard’, which Erick suspected would become something closer to ‘try to figure out this Wizardly shit while dodging Tasar’s various sights’. If things went badly he’d…

Go to Candlepoint? Set up with the shadelings?

No. That seemed like a bad idea for a hundred reasons.

Anyway…

Erick came back to himself, had some physical food and some [Renew] food, and then he went to bed. He slept well knowing that he had done a lot of actual good out there today. Tomorrow, he’d do even more. Maybe he’d even take a look at some of the other letters he got, see if there were any other large non-monster problems he could solve for people.

- - - -

Erick woke. Breakfast was another copied meal and more [Renew]. And then, since a day had passed, Erick tried to make another [Steadfast Ward]. This time he kept it utterly simple, using just [Force Wall] and [Personal Ward] and a good Shaping to Ethereal, making the Force fall in line with the rest of his body.

It turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but Erick was on the right track, for sure.