The walls were gold. Pillars held up a sky. A hoard of treasure floated on an ocean of Red that was made of chains and lightning. Erick was among that hoard. He was a spot of Black, chained to one of the pillars. Somehow the pillar was connected to Nothanganathor, providing him with mana. Over there was a spot of Blue. Over there was a small garden. All of those powers were chained to pillars. Every pillar held a power; a universal Mark.

There were countless pillars.

Rafts of this or that floated on the Red Chain ocean, each of them holding a treasure of power. Some of the rafts floated below the surface. Some of the rafts floated on a surface that held above Erick, forming the sky. This Sign of Power was ocean and ocean surfaces all the way up, and down.

There was too much of nothing to see, and so Erick ignored it.

- - - -

Erick spent ten thousand years in that hoard, and the hoard grew like an ocean with tides.

Erick watched the treasure build.

He had seen the pattern before there was a pattern.

The hoard of Universal Marks simply grew, for they were usable without being used. Other things were not so chained. Sometimes a thing, like a mirror or bowl or spear or otherwise, would appear on a raft and then leave; gathered and then used. Sometimes a thing would stick around for a while. Buildings floating on islands stayed the longest, but they came and went as well.

The Marks never left; they only piled up.

For a good thousand years, or however-long, there was a really nice temple of water, or something like that, hanging out in the depths of the Red-chain sea, but then the temple vanished. Used, Erick imagined.

And then the real items started to appear. The ones that mattered for what was to come.

They were golden orbs, wrapped in Red, and they floated upon the Red Chain ocean like eggs. They were not eggs at all.

Erick recognized them as Node Network interchanges, though they were certainly not Erick’s Node Network interchanges, and Nothanganathor did not call them that. But that is what they were. First, there was one, and it was tiny. A second one appeared and it was massive. Different variations occurred, and then came standardization; the vast process by which that which works gets repeated, over and over again.

Millions upon millions of standard-order interchanges came and went, like a flow of water. Nothanganathor made them, or picked them up from elsewhere, but considering no one else knew that he had done the Sundering Erick assumed that Nothanganathor had made them himself. Maybe he had had help to make them, but then he had killed those helpers. Erick did not know.

And then one day Nothanganathor appeared, like a worm in the blood, and he organized the hoard.

The rafts with their treasures went down to another layer of the oceans’ surfaces.

The interchanges came up to Erick’s level, and soon, he held, tied to his pillar, above and among an ocean of golden eggs. Still though, Erick saw things that were not eggs. Nothanganathor was not done collecting treasure.

The vast, vast majority of the hoard belonged to those orbs. The Sundering nodes.

Tied to his pillar in the ocean Erick couldn’t see everything, but he saw a lot. He recognized that large, purple, Jupiter-sized arrow, as the arrow that Nothanganathor had used against him in the last battle; the one that had simply appeared in Erick’s chest, before his [Animadversion] had reflected it. That thing was locked behind several failsafes. Erick watched Nothanganathor come back to the Red Chain ocean a few times to renew those failsafes several times over the centuries. That purple arrow remained as one of his largest weapons. It radiated something like Death, but worse. Pure Sundering? Perhaps, but in a more malicious sort of way—

Suddenly, the hoard started to thin.

The Sundering nodes went out like a river of purpose.

This was the seeding, then. The preparation for the Su—

A person popped into the Red Chain Ocean, already dying but not finishing that death. Red Chains grabbed that person and locked them down, layering Red around them so deep and thick it turned to crystal, and the chains dragged that crystal into the depths.

Many people started to appear in the Red Chain ocean.

Wherever a golden node blinked out of existence, a person came back.

This, then, was Nothanganathor drawing people into his Sign of Power and replacing them with a Red facsimile? Yes. That is exactly what this was. This was face stealing at the height of the skill. This was how Nothanganathor would ruin any cosmology he ever wanted to fight, for he would not fight. He would replace people with perfect copies and those copies would fight for him, or maybe they would just be themselves, and then Nothanganathor could just use them as targeting systems for a Sundering.

Yes.

That is how he had done it.

The final piece of a horrible puzzle that Erick never wanted to figure out, he had discovered.

Every single person on Fenrir was a Red copy too, weren’t they.

Even if Erick and everyone won, Nothanganathor would simply Erase them all with a Sundering effect.

But that was in the future.

This was the past.

This was the dispensation for the Sundering of the Painted Cosmology. Over 9,000 years in the making, or maybe something like 11,000 given Time Magics. Nothanganathor planted tiny red-gold dots on this world or that world of the Old Cosmology. Each one held a targeting magic for Malevolence.

It was a Doom.

Time passed, and redgold spheres went out, and people came in, only to fall into the Red-chain ocean and be dragged to the depths, to be placed under Nothanganathor’s complete control.

It was a horror.

Erick could only watch.

Erick had tried to affect the past in many ways but he had always been stuck, unable to move off of the tracks he had been witnessing. He raged.

But then Erick saw it, and the chains around his body became less, for his rage and his Need countered history. He wasn’t going to risk a paradox, which would be noticed. He wasn’t going to make ‘a change’ at all. But he was going to subvert everything that would ever come after this.

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Because a red-gold sphere labeled ‘Veird – Idyrvamikor’, floated in front of him.

It was not actually labeled that at all. None of the spheres were labeled. But Erick saw what he saw, and he understood everything.

The targeting system for Veird, for the Sundering, would get turned into Rozeta’s son, and Rozeta’s son would be drawn here, into the Red Chain sea, to fall into the depths. A copy would become the Idyrvamikor that everyone knew and loved. After the Sundering, that very same person would cause the Rage of the Orcols, in an attempt to undo the Death of All Halves. That Idyrvamikor would also become the cause of the Dragon Curse, with his brother, Kirginatharp, becoming the vector for that Curse for the rest of Veird’s existence.

This, then, was the greatest way in which Erick could ever hope to affect the future, in the only way he knew how, because in seeing this golden egg here, Erick knew what had gone wrong in the Sundering.

Veird was never meant to survive the Sundering at all.

It had never had a chance.

This sphere would become Idyrvamikor, on Veird, and thus that targeting system would kill that entire plane of existence.

Time stopped in Nothanganathor’s Sign of Power. The ocean stilled. The chains no longer rattled.

Erick slipped out of the chains that bound him to the pillar, and then he dipped down into the ocean. Idyrvamikor’s sphere floated in front of him upon the Red Chain ocean, and Erick touched the sphere with a spot of Benevolence—

Erick’s hand exploded before he even touched the sphere.

It seemed he couldn’t simply save them all, could he? No. These artifacts were too well made. They were like Solomon’s [Silver Heart]s, but with hidden purposes, like Melemizargo’s dungeon master slimes. Erick doubted even gods could see the Red-beginnings of these people, for if they could, then Melemizargo would have been able to stop the Sundering...

Maybe these things didn’t actually replace a whole person, but instead replaced enough of them to give Nothanganathor perfect leverage over that person?

Yes.

That seemed more in line with Nothanganathor’s whole thing. Just replace enough of a person to give him total control when it mattered.

Erick would have to do what he did with Jane, back in that delivery room, to fix this. He couldn’t wipe away the corruption of Malevolence, but he could take the Malevolence into himself, and change how it expressed itself in the real world, allowing a freer future.

So that is what Erick did.

He placed his injured hand onto the surface of Idyrvamikor’s orb, and said, “I understand your pain, Nothanganathor. I accept your pain, but I deny your choices. You will succeed everywhere else, but you will not succeed here. I claim this pillar of your power for myself.”

The redgold sphere flickered gently, as Erick’s adjustments took hold.

It was enough.

Erick floated back up, into the air, to slip back into his chains, wrapped against the pillar.

Time resumed.

Idyrvamikor’s orb went out, through a portal of Red, glinting with a hint of Benevolence underneath all that redgold. But it wasn’t really Benevolence. It was more like Benevolence masquerading as Malevolence, and yet, in that masquerade, it was truly Malevolence.

The redgold Node Network went out and Idyrvamikor’s existence came back.

He was a big, long dragon, and he fell to the bottom of the Red-chain ocean, insensate, just like all the rest. His copy was out there, on Painted Veird, or somewhere nearby. If Nothanganathor’s plan had worked, then Idyrvamikor probably would have sabotaged the manaminer that would have become the Script, and doomed them all. Rozeta’s son would be there at Veird during the Sundering, so sabotaging the manaminer seemed like the thing to do.

But Idyrvamikor wouldn’t do what Nothanganathor wanted him to do; not this time. Not in this grand working where Nothanganathor would be too busy to notice every little thing. The system had a lot of redundancies, but...

Idyrvamikor would malfunction.

Nothanganathor had built himself upon so many different pillars, but the one that gave him the greatest strength was the one that Erick had just taken for himself. The pillar that made Nothanganathor the Arbiter of Veird, as dispensed by Margleknot and the Fractal Fairy. The pillar that started it all, which was built upon a foundation of Sundering.

Nothanganathor thought he was the cause of Veird’s survival, because it was all part of some great plan of his. But. No. Erick had been the one to claim that seed of strength, in whatever way it could be claimed.

It was almost time to see that seed bloom.

Erick did not try to move again, to undo even more of Nothanganathor’s Grand Evil, for the chains around him were tight, and getting tighter. The Darkness had probably helped Erick slip free of his chains to facilitate his undercutting, but that crazed assistance was done for the moment.

The Moment was yet to come.

- - - -

Now.

Right now.

This, then, was the Sundering.

Erick knew it was happening before it happened.

Tangled in chains tied to a pillar hanging above the Red Chain ocean, inside Nothanganathor’s Sign of Power, Erick witnessed the ocean flow away, all the way away. The bedrock of the Sign of Power was exposed for the first time. Bodies and trinkets lay scattered upon the ocean floor like beached whales and evacuated tide pools.

Nothanganathor curled in the center of it all, a massive white leviathan, wrapped around a bright pearl that infinitely spun inward and outward at the same time. It was the Sign of Power that he had stolen from Margleknot, and it was the center of this ritual, though the seeds had been planted long ago. Nothanganathor used his face whiskers to direct mana flows around the pearl, to pull and push at infinity.

Erick looked up, and saw Nothanganathor looking down.

Erick looked down, and saw Nothanganathor studying the Sign of Power, directing it to work how he wanted it to work. And then Erick looked further down, into the Sign of Power, and he saw himself hanging on a pillar far below.

The Sign of Power contained an infinity, in truth, and now that infinity was being used for fel purposes.

Nothanganathor spoke to his Sign of Power, “For Ara.”

The infinite horizon boiled.

The floodgates opened.

Everything that had left came rushing back in a tsunami of Primal Lightning, red as the blood of billions. The ocean screamed with souls and Darkness and every Element of every color, all of it drowning in Red, Red, Red.

And then the oceans swirled.

The oceans diverted, each power to its place in the layers of this infinite Sign of Power, each slice of this personal Layer filling with organized power.

Nothanganathor kept the slice of this Layer with his Marks of Power separated and central to the ritual. He saw everything rush by, though. He directed his power perfectly.

Erick watched, chained to his pillar, as the Red Chain ocean grabbed each dead person, killing them further if they needed it and ripping them into their constituent parts. Most everyone was dead, and those that survived were dead soon enough. They were just souls right now, and only a few of those souls gave any trouble at all, and not that much. The Red tore at them like a blender.

Souls went that way.

Bodies went that way.

And the Dark Marks within every single person flowed toward Erick.

The Dark inundated him.

Erick accepted it all.

He accepted the pain.

He accepted the memories.

Erick Became the maddened Dark. He Became the raging, fighting, tearing, touching, knowing, questioning, remembering, feeling...

Loving, gentle Dark.

He

Became

Simply

Xoat.