Chapter 282, 1/6

Chapter 282, 1/6

Being a god was a lot.

That was Ericks first real thought after leaving Xoat and Nothanganathor behind.

And then he left that thought far, far behind, too.

Erick saw everything. He was everywhere. In the blades of grass under the Benevolent Sun of Margleknot. In the heart of his lead Valkyrie, Shivraa, who was in Margleknot for some reason, working with House Benevolence to fix up some housing projects here and there. Far away on the worlds of Abarial, where he had first culled corruption from the Fractal Cosmology, and revived a society from slavery and blood and tumor magics, but now there were gleaming towers and people walking around like normal, and individual choices given back to the people.

Erick flowed through the cosmos like a many-colored light, visiting lands he had saved from corruption and seeing people rebuild with Benevolence.

Wherever he could, he lent a hand.

Veird and Fenrir were not a part of his journey, and he did not think that odd at all.

- -

A man was building a hospital in some small, nowhere-land, because none of the locals had healing magics and they needed spaces for doctors and otherwise. Thats why he was here, using his masonry skills to build. The man didnt have healing magics either, so when he cleaved a rock with a hammer and the rock fell and crushed his foot, he was in trouble. The doctors were still three months from coming out here. Hed lose that foot in a few days, to infection and decay. He didnt know that yet. All he knew was blinding, shooting pain.

The man called out to the uncaring gods, though it was more like a series of expletives than any real call.

Erick heard his call anyway, because the man wore a necklace of gold that was in the shape of a ring with a break in it; a [Renew] symbol. Erick offered a healing touch upon the mans foot. A warmth flowed from his necklace in that action. The man gasped in sudden relief as he grasped his necklace. He was up and walking around in a day. The man knew he had been blessed, but he did not know how, or why. Not exactly. His necklace had never done that before. It had been a gift from his grandmother, who had grown up in Margleknot, in Tir Gael.

He carved a circle with a break in it on an unobtrusive part of the hospital, thanking Benevolence for healing him.

- -

Erick visited a warrior wearing steel and carrying a sword as he prayed at a white spike the size of a tree, deep in the woods of the deep mountains. That spike was actually one of Margleknots small universal connections, but he didnt know that. No one in this land knew that. To everyone but those with a connection to Margleknot, this spike was just an odd, indestructible and unmovable object. People here had attributed some sort of malfeasance to the spike long ago, and so the town around it was abandoned.

People still came here sometimes, though.

The man kneeling at the spike was trying to make his kingdom better, and he had no idea how to do what he needed to do, so he was praying to the lesser gods because none of the larger ones knew how to help. He was actually going down a list, written down on parchment by a loremaster of his homeland. He had paid half of his life savings for that list, and now he was here in the woods, in what he called the cursed land.

It used to be a thriving hub of interstellar traffic, but that was eons ago.

The man went down the list of ancient names, listening to the maddening whispers on the air. Only some of them were the gods answering him. Most of the voices asked for churches in their names, or sapient sacrifices.

When he called upon Benevolence, Erick gave the man a vision of his kingdom between two rivers, lights everywhere, bread in every pantry, meat in every dry storage, and everyone working together. Erick was asking if this is what the man wanted, and the man was flabbergasted that he had chanced upon a name in his list that had actually worked. Tentatively, the man asked what he required for such a gift.

Erick gave him a 50 step plan.

The man accepted the plan, because unlike all of the other gods he had asked, Ericks plan did not have worship me in any of the steps.

- -

Something shifted on Ericks shoulders.

He helped more. He felt more connected to everything.

The weight on his shoulders felt more his own.

- -

Erick felt a twist of something untoward. Something Unwelcome.

He followed the feeling to a land rife with Red. Mages stood upon hills and cast power into crowds, turning people into thralls, into mana batteries, or slaves, or whatever the casters wanted them to be.

Erick cast lightning down from the sky and burned the Malevolence out of every single person there. Those that died flowed into a Grand Reincarnation, to be spilled out on worlds where they needed to go to live better lives, to grow into better people, or to simply have another chance at it all. The mages casting the spells got the same treatment, but in conditions that would actually help them be less like they were.

People were basically good, if they were allowed to be good, if they werent unduly influenced by corruptive forces.

Erick allowed them to try again.

Erick did the same thing to a countless number of other Great Evils, many of which were nowhere near anyone who knew of him, and his Benevolence. That required going out of his way, though. That required power. Power required rest.

When he was weak from doing what no one asked him to do, he pulled back and held within Margleknot and other great sources of Benevolence, and even on Earth, where Personal Scripts had touched and spread, thanks to all the things that Erick had already done

He vaguely realized something was missing, but hed figure that out later.

When he was strong again, helping those who needed help, he cleared out more Unwelcome Malevolence.

- -

The Dragon God of Many Colors stood in judgment over a world that had fallen to a corporation that had fallen to civil war, far removed from everything the God had ever known, and yet, he had known this land for tens of thousands of years, too.

He was brilliant and glowing and black and white, with wings that shielded worlds and claws that tore at continents, ripping out corruption and the corrupt. A horde of Valkyries flowed around him, in orbit and in the sky of the world. Some Valkyries were from Margleknot and other strongholds of the Dragons. Most of them were taken from the planet itself. Most of them were not people. They were animals, and less, for the animals needed to be saved, too, for the world itself was doomed by the civil war.

Nuclear waste, continental destruction, viruses both artificial and incredibly virulent. A huge crack in the side of the world, where they had released a few antimatter bombs. All of that needed to be fixed, and it was not a small job at all. It required a complete reset.

The Dragon God coiled around the entire planet, touching, molding, fixing. He sent a million lives down the Lightning Path, casting them far and wide, into better places, for their place was no longer here. Most Valkyries remained. They held in orbit, waiting while he fixed their planet.

Some of them helped in the fixing. Most did not.

The boiled ocean returned, swelling and blue and deep.

The cratered mountains grew lush with many colors, but mostly green.

The toxic sky twisted with thick air, becoming mana that soaked into the world.

The deeper places, filled with wrongness, placed there for problems for future generations, turned to thick air. The Dragon God of Many Colors laid down hoards of wealth into the planet for them to find, for them to rebuild.

Little Benevolence Dungeon Slimes grew fast under his touch, and then they burrowed into Benevolence Itself, to create Safeholds for those who needed such. Some people still called them dungeons, but the Dragon God called them Safeholds. They would create more slimes and more mana in a side reality next to this one, and that mana would replace what the Dragon God had stricken from this world, as soon as people learned how to use it. Those Safeholds would also allow these people afterlives, where their previous, small gods, had been claiming their souls for themselves, to consume and grow like pestilent diseases, because thats what some gods did. They werent all like the Dragon God of Benevolence Itself. Not by a long tale.

This was a normal day for him.

For the people of this world, this was a day that would be written down in history books and preserved for all time...

The dead cried out for vengeance against Melemizargo. The survivors demanded that vengeance and made it happen as best they could with their meager weapons.

Betrayal.

The gods had tried to take the Valkyries from Erick, after Erick had vanished in his fight with Nothanganathor, and thus, alliances died. Erick wasnt sure how he knew that, but he knew that. He had seen Shivraa on Margleknot, hadnt he? Yes, he had.

Hopelessness.

House Benevolence had retracted, pulling as many people away from the fronts of the war as they could, but the war happened inside their very own capital of Candlepoint. Candlepoint was gone, though, ruined and dead. Yggdrasil was dead, too, blackened and rotting in what remained of Candlepoints lake.

The other half of Candlepoints lake held out in the frozen void of space. Bodies spread in the chill of the void, frozen and inert.

Veird was worse than Candlepoint, by far. Candlepoint was visible from outside the world, because the world had been ripped apart. Veird was a half-exploded metal ball, with its shells of adamantium twisted outward. Something had ripped out of the center of Veird and caused untold death. Probably the Core. Rozeta had said that Melemizargo always could have done it, so maybe he had just up and done it. Considering how they were fighting right now, Erick could see that.

When he had left for the battle with Nothanganathor, everyone had been on the verge of fighting.

In his absence, they had fulfilled that promise ten thousand times over.

Erick could see exactly what had happened even without checking every part of the past.

Melemizargo had tried taking over the Valkyries and Rozeta hadnt stopped him, for what could she have done except lean into his madness? Nothing. She could have done nothing. Melemizargo was losing his power as the God of Magic, but he was still the God of Magic for at least days or weeks, Erick wasnt sure. Melemizargo had used that power disastrously.

Adding to this, the contained problems of Fenrir, the ones Erick hadnt gotten to, had been released. Without the Valkyries there to hold them back, they had spread, and some had gone truly bad down there, too.

Fenrir floated in pieces. Very, very large pieces, but still pieces. Some of those pieces had fallen into the black hole that was the sun. The inside surface of Fenrir had been scoured of life. The exterior grew deadly mushrooms and fungus here and there, among vast, vast swaths of uninhabitable land, made that way because all of the containment magics were gone, and the atmosphere had evaporated

Ericks breath caught.

Quilatalap was mutilated and pinned to an adamantium spire on a crag overlooking the black hole sun. He was not just dead. He was cursed to death. Simple death would have been nothing to him; he had survived a [Chaining Soul Destruction] from a Champion of Melemizargo before. So whoever had done this had needed to get creative, and they had succeeded. Erick wasnt sure how he knew what he knew when he looked upon Quilatalaps corpse, but there was no coming back from this for him. He was frozen due to the cold of the void. He was ripped apart due to some sort of divine curse.

He was beyond dead.

Erick floated down to Quilatalap and pulled his corpse off of the spire, using magic to break the spire but his hands to hold Quilatalap. Erick tried a simple [Resurrection] first, and of course that failed. He already knew it was going to fail.

He could fix this, but...

Erick sighed, and said, I guess Im a pretty terrible god, Quilatalap, because I was negligent enough to not save you, and Im selfish enough to bring you back, out of any peaceful afterlife you might be in right now. I hope you dont hate me for it.

Erick kissed Quilatalap.

Many colors descended upon the corpse, and then the corpse became a man that became blood that then splattered across the frozen void and multiplied a hundred times. And then once more, into Ericks arms, Quilatalaps eyes went wide

He gasped.

Did he hate? Did he forgive, or condemn? Erick was worried for a brief moment

And then Quilatalap hugged Erick, laughing happily. Tiny blackgold wings floated behind him. Youre back. Youre back.

A great tension left Ericks shoulders as he hugged Quilatalap. Sorry.

Its fine, its fine, Quilatalap said, holding him tighter, pressing their foreheads together. He chuckled, flexing his wings as he looked in a hundred directions at once with his other Valkyrie bodies, and also deep into Ericks eyes. He kissed Erick for a long moment, and then he simply relaxed. With eyes of bright blackgold, and a hundred bodies that he was rapidly learning how to work, and all of that, Quilatalap hovered in the void, holding Ericks hands, saying, So things deteriorated when you failed to reappear.

Erick smiled sadly. That appears to be an understatement. He looked around to all the Quilatalaps in the void, most of them looking everywhere but here, while the Quilatalap here only had eyes for Erick. This was the only way I could bring you back, so sorry about that. Do you want to remain a Valkyrie?

I dont want to be here at all, Erick. Everything is gone and nothing is right and theres no fixing this, and almost all of me was Ended, but I managed to hold onto hope for you. I am not Quilatalap anymore. I am a husk, and you need to go back in time and unmake this future.

Erick breathed, and then he nodded.

Quilatalap sighed a little bit, even as he smiled. Do you know what happened? That and my love of you is all I remember.

Ill take the short version, but Im rather sure that Melemizargo descended into madness in his loss of power, broke Veird and much of Fenrir, and killed at least a few gods. He tried to take over the Valkyrie magic somewhere in there.

Not-Quilatalap nodded. That attempted takeover happened at the very beginning. A minute after Fallopolis rescued Shade Oozy and Shivraa and Everbless from the final battle, Melemizargo tried to corrupt the Valkyries into his worshipers in order to stave off destruction. Rozeta agreed with his choice to do that, for she had no choice, and she tried to give over the Valkyrie Weavers in the Script to the other gods, in order to parcel out those worshipers. Melemizargo managed to do something to Shivraa, but then the Fractal Fairy descended and took all Valkyries back to Margleknot. Quilatalap said, Everyone expected Nothanganathor to show up after that, or for you to show up and be mad, and then neither of you did. The Red continued to blast Fenrir and everywhere else it could, though; the war never stopped. This entire land was set up to go out of control with people next to people that would cause wars. Thats what killed most people.

Melemizargo still continued to lose power, and people broke Fenrir. Thats when things really got out of control. Stuff thought obliterated started reappearing and spreading and Melemizargo started taking everyones Mantles back to stave off his death and Most people died. If anyone is still alive out there then I would be surprised.

Erick sighed at that.

Quilatalap said, It was bad. The first to fall was Rozeta. After Melemizargo tried to take the Valkyries, Rozeta told him that it was over. About four days later he killed her for that. The next to fall were Atunir, Aloethag, and Zephyrspray. Koyabez managed to last a while, but even he died. That was a single month since the battle ended. Sininindi fell in line with Melemizargo. Sumtir did, too. Melemizargo himself killed me, Erick. Quilatalap shook his head. I dont know who is alive or not He paused in worry, and then he simply said, He killed Benevolence Itself. Your spaces were strong for a while and it rescued a lot of people, but in Melemizargos last act he He killed everyone that managed to survive. I was there, and then I was out here, dead. I dont know what happened to the others. Quilatalap looked outward and at Erick at the same time, saying, From what Im seeing, it appears he did further devastation to Fenrir, but its only a little bit worse than it was when he killed me. He must have lost his Mantle when I was dead.

Ah.

So thats what had happened.

Ah.

As anger rose within him, Erick felt a weird realization.

He could still feel immense, incredible anger, even as a God of Benevolence.

Quilatalap wasnt angry at all, though.

Quilatlalap smiled softly, and said, I love you, Erick. Go into the past and make this never have happened. I am not Quilatalap. I am a message from Quilatalap. If not for your Valkyrie magic, I think I already would have died. Dont let me stay this way, though. Okay? End this magic before you go.

Erick breathed, and then he took Quilatalap back in his arms, holding him for a long moment. Quilatalap held him back. He was warm.

I love you, Erick said.

And then he ended Not-Quilatalaps Valkyrie self and folded Infinity in on itself, turning back the clock, leaving before he could see Not-Quilatalap fade away.

Not-Quilatalap smiled, though, at the End.

- - - -

Back, back, to the moment of change, and then, to right afterward.