Chapter 284: Epilogue 2, George gets a System

(AN: George is the guy who Erick was friends with back in college, in 1997, who died of AIDS, along with his boyfriend.)

– – – –

George lay on his back, propped up by one uncomfortable pillow, staring at the hospital ceiling.

Dying.

Two days ago an opportunistic infection of the skin had led to sepsis which resulted in a trip to the hospital. George hadn’t been taking care of himself. Everyone had abandoned him and so, he had abandoned himself. And now he was here. His skin hurt. His bones hurt. Breathing hurt. He had shed his tears already, and now he was numb, unable to do anything except stare—

The nurse poked her head into the room and then walked away.

“The fairy ain’t dead yet,” she said, though she used harsher words than that.

Just his luck, he thought, dying fast enough to know he was dying, and yet lucid enough to see the hatred all around him. He couldn’t even get out of bed to piss anymore, so he had pissed himself already. The catheter was out, and no one cared.

He was pretty sure the doctors had skimped on his antibacterials, too.

George had come home to Tennessee when Larry’s family had taken him away, so that Larry could ‘die in dignity’ with his family in North Carolina. They had told George to fuck off. That had been unkind, George thought, for them to do that to both of them.

Ahh.

He was crying again.

He had thought he was done with tears. But nope. The saline drip in his arm was giving him more water to waste on what this world had done to him. On what this world had done to Larry.

If there was an afterlife, he hoped…

He hoped…

He hoped for too much.

And then he died.

– – – –

There was softness, and then there was light.

George was in a hallway. He was standing, or maybe floating. His feet were above the ground, and his legs were kinda wispy. So were his arms and fingers. This did not seem to bother him overmuch, and he wasn’t quite sure why. But he did realize that he was dead. That much was obvious. This fact didn’t bother him much, either.

Behind him was a wall.

In front of him was the hallway.

Beyond the hallway lay light and stone and running water, like a stone garden. People floated through that space, walking this way and that, or rather, floating. They stared at the sky. They stared at the cloudy land beyond. Mostly, they stared at something outside of George’s sight. Something above. Something too big to see all at once.

George found himself floating forward, drawn by the pressure of his own curiosity.

George exited the hallway.

He looked up.

It was too big.

That was George’s first thought.

He wasn’t sure what he was seeing, at first, but he knew it was too big. ‘Big’ in a way that was larger than largeness, or physicality, or anything real at all. This thing— this being was too big.

It was a dragon.

Wings spread wide, larger than a world.

Larger than the entire sky.

The sky was filled with silent, soft lightning, and this thing was the center of it all. It floated, beneficent and caring, and it wasn’t any sort of god that George had ever imagined. But it was clearly a god. It was not looking directly at George, but George got the impression that it did not need to directly see anyone in order to see them. It still saw him clearly.

George wasn’t sure if the dragon was white, like the sky, or black, also like the sky.

He stared for a while. There were people around George, and they stared alongside him.

An eternal moment passed, without passing at all.

And then a flicker of lightning fell down from the sky, like a worming thing, winding its way across the heavens, down, down, down to the platform where George floated, alongside a hundred other staring people. The lightning resolved into a person with limbs and feet that were not airy at all. She was a woman whom George did not know, but some guy, made of ethereal light right over there, knew the woman.

Everyone on the platform watched as the ethereal man turned real in the sight of the real woman.

They saw each other, and love bloomed, the world turning more colorful, reality making more sense.

The man choked out, “Jean?”

Tears fell down the woman’s face. “Dick!”

George couldn’t help himself. He snorted. The guy’s name was Dick? Or had the woman just cursed at him?

But the woman broke down crying to see the sight of the man and the man suddenly sobbed to see the woman, and George knew that the guy’s name was just his name; not a cursing. The woman had been an older woman. The man had been an older man. But in that meeting, in that loving, they knew each other as they had when they were younger. When they first met. They hugged, sobbing on each other, grasping each other, kissing and saying small things only to each other. The world did not matter; only they mattered to each other.

George told himself that sometimes people simply had odd names—

Soft lightning rained down, each bolt resolving into a person when it touched down onto the stone. The people on the stone met people who came in on lightning bolts, and—

And then Larry was there.

George felt his heart ache and his arms open up and suddenly Larry was there, holding against his chest, his own arms around George’s back, holding them tight together. They said nothing for a long while. There was too much to say. Where would they even start? From Larry’s family tearing them apart, to all the time they lost, to how George died in a negligent hospital? Too much. So they just held each other.

And then Larry chuckled once, through the tears.

George laughed, too, hugging tighter.

Larry looked up at George, saying, “Surprised to see you here at the end of it all, Love.”

George held Larry tight, saying, “This can’t be the end.” He glanced outward. “This is the start of something else.”

The platform in the clouds had been full of people. But they were turning to lightning and vanishing, just as the others had arrived. It was not a fast process.

“The start of something, eh? Reincarnation? Weren’t you Christian, though?” Larry asked, tears clouding his sight. He let go, and George let go a bit, too. They still held each other’s arms. Larry said, “I thought you’d be off to the Pearly Gates.”

“Didn’t you expect there to be nothing at all?”

“Maybe there is nothing at all, and I’m having a fever dream at the end.” Larry looked up at the dragon. “A weird dream.”

“Not as I imagined heaven, either,” George admitted. “Where’s the old guy with the beard and halo?”

Larry grinned. “Maybe god is a dragon— Oh! A dragon woman.”

George scoffed. “That’s clearly a dude!”

“How can you tell? There’s nothing down there but scales!”

“… Well I can’t actually tell, now that I’m looking for it.” George added, “But there’s no tits! So not a woman.”

“Bah! Why would a reptile have mammalian characteristics? That’s just silly.”

Both of them studied the big dragon, hanging out at something of a stellar-distance, surrounded by stars in the night sky.

… When had the sky turned to night?

Suddenly, George realized that he and Larry were alone on a platform in space, looking up at a big iridescent/black/white dragon of many colors.

And then Erick stepped out of the sky, and onto the platform.

A moment passed in a quiet attempt to understand what was happening.

And then George felt a spike of utter guilt. If Erick was here, then he was dead, and that meant that he had died from… Oh no.

Larry got there just as fast as George, but he was the first to speak, exclaiming, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Erick! We tried to contain it when we found out but… We…” He fell silent.

George couldn’t have done any better. How do you apologize for giving someone HIV? He decided to just say, “I’m sorry, Erick.”

Erick smiled wonderfully. “Nothing like that happened at all. I’m just here as a friend. Time is wonky here in the afterlife, with many, many years having passed since last I saw you, and yet no time at all. You left a big impression on me back before you died. I always carried your memories with me. I just came by to see you once more and wish you luck in your next lives.”

George instantly asked, “Next lives?”

George was ecstatic! A new life! What could it—

Larry shook his head. “I don’t want that. I want to opt out. I’m done with life. People are terrible.”

George gasped and shuddered, and he wasn’t sure which one happened first, or in which order. He squeezed Larry’s hands, and Larry gave a sad sort of smile, not looking at George at all.

Larry said, “Sorry, George.”

Erick spoke up, “Well sure. That’s an option. But a pretty bad one if you ask me. You don’t have to be humans for your second go around. You don’t even have to live on Earth!” Erick waved an arm up at the sky, where the dragon had been, but all there was were stars in an infinite expanse. “There’s an entire universe to explore, and more besides. Imagine a life! Any life at all! I can set you on that path. You still gotta walk it yourself, though.”

Larry instantly said, “Well in that case I change my mind.”

George laughed. His heart bloomed with warmth and he felt Larry hold him tighter.

Good.

Also! Good on Erick for being an angel. Obviously he became one of those. He was always too good to everyone… George almost wanted to ask him about the deal with Margaret, but George decided not to do that. He had probably moved on pretty far from that old pain, since he was talking about time being wonky.

Erick smiled. And then he turned to them, and said, “I usually hand people off to a caseworker, but I’m going to help you two personally. Do you want something specific in your next life? Most specifics aren’t available, like exact heights or weights or family members, but general ideas are available.

“As an example, you two could wish to be soulmates in your next lives.

“Also, magic is available in all of the flavors you can think about, and more besides. Want a world where everything is almost the same as Earth? That’s out there. How about a world where everyone is an octopus person? That’s out there, too. Weird things, easy things, space travel, immortality, etcetera. It’s all out there, but you’ll have to strive for it and you might not reach it the first go around.”

Larry breathed deep, his eyes going to the stars.

George asked, “The first go around?”

Erick said, “Yup! You can live for as long as you want. If you don’t want to go around again, you don’t have to go again. There are other afterlives out there. Other gods. But you died on Earth, and Earth is under the wings of the Dragon of Many Colors, and so you get a reincarnation in a new life, on a new world.

“In your next life, you might even find some gods out there with some afterlives that you want to be a part of, and you won’t want to do this new-life-thing ever again. If you opt out of new lives under the Dragon of Many Colors, then that is an option, too. Life is tough, and the Dark is always Welcoming to those who wish for an End.”

Holy shit that was big.

Silence stretched.

George didn’t know how to feel, but he did feel hope. A whole lot of hope.

Larry said to George, “I’m gonna be a bastard and say that I want to be with you, but I want us to figure it out on our own, and if we should miss each other, then we can miss each other. No destined soulmates.” He said to Erick, “I want love for everyone. No hate. No diseases. No killing. Just… just love.” He looked to George… Larry said nothing.

Well. George wasn’t too surprised about that, really. He did always love Larry for his independent streak. George kinda smiled at that. He asked Larry, “How about a littlebit of predestiny?”

Larry blushed. “Well…”

George waited.

Larry said, “I’m worried, Love. Life isn’t easy, and…” He trailed off.

He was worried about a lot.

George was worried, too.

Erick softly said, “This is your life, so it’s okay to be wary about it. These are your lives. Individually, too. Death is the great separator. You two do not need to pick the same new life, new world, new existence. You can go separate ways. You will likely never see each other ever again if you choose to separate, but if you rise high enough anything is possible.”

Larry breathed tightly.

George knew Larry, but only in the way that anyone can know anyone else after 7 years of dating and not being allowed to legally marry or join finances or anything, and both of them choosing to actively abandon the heterosexual style in defiance of that sort of shit, too. But here, at the transition, did they want to abandon that sort of perfect union, that they both grew up reading about and wanting, and which they had never been able to have?

Larry looked to George.

George looked to Larry.

George said, “I want the story of us together forever.”

Larry breathed deep. He said, “I’m gonna be honest… I want to be able to love you like you love me, but I don’t think I was ever capable of it. I had too much baggage. I hated the world. But I do want to love you how you love me. I want that kind of love. I don’t know how.”

George’s chest tightened. Tears threatened. “I want that, too.”

Erick’s soft voice wrapped around them, “I’ll set up some dominoes. Make it easier. You two won’t be soulmates until you commit. How does that sound?”

Larry sobbed once, “Yeah.”

George smiled. “Yes.”

Erick asked, “Do you want to remember Earth?”

“No,” Larry said.

“Yes,” George said, at the same time.

The two of them looked at each other.

George asked, “I want to remember it all?”

Larry said, “Give me what I need to succeed, and to know George, and that’s it.”

George said, “If it works out then it works out.”

Larry said, “Yeah.”

“In waking dreams, you shall know each other and your previous life, though only one of you will be good at it,” Erick said.

George only had eyes for Larry, and Larry only saw George. Both of them said, “Sure.”

“Girl, boy?” Erick asked, “Or different options?”

“Boy,” said George, solidly.

Larry laughed once. “Can I be both?”

George raised an eyebrow at Larry, and Larry grinned mischievously.

“Done and done,” Erick said.

Larry and George whipped to look at Erick.

Larry asked, “I can be both?”

“That works?” George asked.

Erick just smiled. “One final thing: How do you feel about fighting a Demon King?”

“… What?” Larry and George asked.

Erick smiled, and it was as though the entire sky grinned, like the Darkness in the depths of the universe found mirth in George and Larry’s question.

Erick said, “The point of this reincarnation system is to help out other worlds out there, and to help out the reincarnators, as well. It’s about growth. Prosperity. Benevolence spreading wide. You, George, were in the army for a while, until you got kicked out for homosexual conduct. But I know you wanted to stay. You, Larry, wanted to be an automobile engineer, just like your father, but then events conspired and you were kicked out of the union. But I know you wanted to remain.

“This reincarnation is the renewal of all of your dreams you ever had, and more besides.”Điscover new chapters at novelhall.com

George felt his skin prickle with anticipation. Larry breathed deep.

Erick offered, “Or, if you don’t like the Demon King option, there’s a world with a corporate overlord who needs overthrowing? That’s a good option, too.

“Either way, I don’t expect either of you to start on those paths in life until around 15 or 16 years old. That’s when your Personal Script will awaken and you’ll be able to grow. Other events might influence your Personal Scripts to unlock earlier, or later.” Erick continued, “Or! Maybe you won’t have to fight anyone at all. I could send you somewhere else and you could just have some peaceful lives. But if you want real power, and the power to help others, then you’re going into an eventual warzone.

“That’s the deal. Real power is granted when you do real work, for the good of others far beyond yourself. Otherwise you can just have a nice life.”

Larry was lost, but he was rapidly finding himself.

George already knew what he wanted. The very moment that Erick spoke of the army, George knew what he wanted.

George said, “The Demon King one. That seems simpler than corporate stuff.”

Larry said, “I guess I could fight alongside George? … Yeah. Okay. Yes. Demon King.”

“It’s not nearly as simple as you might think, but you’ll figure that out.” Erick lovingly said, “It was good to see you both again. Good luck—”

“Wait,” George said, as something finally clicked for him. “What are you doing here, Erick? In this weirdness? In this… afterlife? I thought you were an angel, but… You’re not an angel at all, are you?”

Erick chuckled. “Nah. I’m not an angel.”

The world turned to soft light.

George and Larry were floating again.

Ah?

That was all the time they got in this weird place, eh? They were moving on already?

Larry’s voice was a frantic, distant thing, as he caught up to the moment, rapidly saying, “I have more questions!”

Larry’s voice was lost to the rush of reality, falling away below them.

George chuckled as he flew into the sky with Larry, both of them becoming lightning that shot off into the heavens, twinning around each other, the two of them wrapping around each other ever so briefly, and then they separated.

Earth appeared out of the black, only to rapidly vanish behind a wash of light and color. The colors vanished, all was black once again.

And then there were stars.

George fell toward one of those stars.

Over there, Larry fell as well.

The star revealed itself as a sun, surrounded by planets both large and small. George’s lightning path skimmed the sun’s surface as he rocketed past the heat of it all, flowing through the dark. A world lay in the distance. George instantly knew it was his new home.

His new world.

The planet was blue, white, and dusty green, with small red dots that littered a continent in the north. The red parts were almost like craters—

– – – –

A baby screamed.

A soul was reborn.

– –

A seer on the other side of the world felt the touch of the True Divine upon their brow, upon the mana of the world, and they knew that everything was going to change. Benevolence had touched their world, and it would spread. They grabbed their bags, told their people that they were leaving for a while, and then they set down the mountain, walking fast, their apprentices trailing them, pleading for answers. If any of the apprentices managed to keep up then maybe they would get those answers, right alongside the seer.

– –

A distant baron, cousin to a king in an empire of many kings, died to a Demon King assassin’s blade. The assassin died to knights. Local policies regarding the Demon Kingdom changed due to righteous anger and rage. But mostly, the Empire plodded on, exactly as it had for a long time before the latest change in politics.

– –

In the far south, on an island that people called the Cursed Land, where monsters prowled the deep forests and horrors preyed on the monsters, a white tree grew on the shore of a wide, dark lake. Green fire, like many leaves, spread among the branches of that white tree. A rainbow came soon after.

– – – –

George was born on a world where he was named Gerd, to a family of nomads, in the lands of the Demon King.

Born of a woman and a xen, Gerd was a boy who wanted for nothing, for his mother was the tribe healer and his xenny was a warrior teacher. Gerd learned how to hunt when he was 6, and how to skin a deer that same year. He learned how to read the sky, and words and letters. He had never been good with mana, so he didn’t learn that, but that was fine; most people were bad with mana. He learned the ancient histories of his people, and he learned how to make friends from the other tribes, and how the people of Redriver would always have his back against anyone and everyone else, if they should be his enemies. He learned how to fight in childhood fights. He learned how to hunt and kill in small warbands that went on animal hunts, or demon kills, bringing home dinner for the tribe or saving the tribe from demons. His xenny gave him his first bow and his first antler knife, and his mom healed his wounds, making him all better.

The Demon King came when Gerd was 10.

The tribe could not get away fast enough.

It had happened because their tribe lord didn’t pay tribute to the Demon King, and the Demon King was getting crazy in his old age. Or at least that is what people told Gerd. Gerd wasn’t sure what the truth was. No one really knew the truth. All Gerd knew was that half of his tribe was dead and their fishing spots were littered with poisonrocks in order to kill everything that killfire didn’t kill directly.

Xenny died in that killfire. That same fire almost got Gerd. It left him with scars, instead of dead.

The tribe raced to escape the demon lands.

The march to the ‘soft lands’ was a horror.

They lost another half of their tribe, running from the demons that were under the Demon King’s command. The Empire’s people found them running and saved them. Gerd barely remembered what happened next, for he was too tired to do anything but go with his mom, wherever she went.

And soon, they were beyond the Demon Wall that separated the Empire from the demon lands.

They were safe.

They had to make more sacrifices to stay safe.

They had to erase their tattoos that marked them as Demon King supplicants and they had to learn the language. That was fine, in Gerd’s mind, but the tribe got split and sent everywhere so that they would never see each other again, or at least so they couldn’t see each other easily. Gerd and his mom were allowed to stay together. Or at least that’s what Mom told him all the time.

Gerd ended up in merchant noble’s house running errands, while Mom was in that same house, now living as the merchant man’s third spouse. That merchant had been married to two men, but he had wanted a wife for a while now, and Mom was a healer, so the merchant paid the refugee price and bought her and Gerd at auction.

They were not slaves, but it was tough.

Gerd hated his new ‘Dad’ at first, but the man never struck him, and he always provided Gerd with food, and he never locked Gerd in his room or in chains. Gerd had heard that is what happened to all refugees, but when he told his new ‘Dad’ that, his new Dad decided that he wasn’t doing nearly enough for Gerd and Gerd’s mom, so he bought them all new clothes, even more new than the clothes he had already bought them, and they had a party with cake and more things than Gerd knew what to do with. Gerd discovered he loved cake.

He eventually discovered he loved his Dad.

Dad was a fine enough guy, and yet, he was not Xenny. Xenny was gone, and never coming back. They were dead, and the scars of that death lingered on Gerd’s skin, on his right shoulder and much of his back, where Mom hadn’t been able to heal the flames of the killfire well enough. Killfire was hard to heal. Almost impossible. Gerd was lucky to be alive at all.

Life was hard.

Dad was a good man, but Gerd was still expected to do things he did not know how to do. They made Gerd wear clothes all the time. Stuffy shirts and hard shoes and so many pants. They made him stand tall and learn new languages. They made him learn which fork went where, and how to cook in the style of the people of the Empire.

And life was difficult.

The people in the city didn’t like all the new nomads coming out of the demon lands, with their sun-bared chests and harsh words and lack of fancy etiquette. Some girls down the road caught Gerd one day on a delivery for his father and they beat him with socks stuffed with rocks. It was not a bad injury, in Gerd’s opinion. Life on the plains was rougher and the kids out there were a lot meaner, but Dad still fussed over Gerd’s wounds just like Mom did, and that made Gerd feel loved again.

He almost wanted to go get beaten up just so that he could get fussed over again.

– – – –

The dreams started.

Of another world.

Of another life.

Of a place called Earth, in a land called Michigan.

– – –

Gerd slept and he dreamed his name was George.

He lived a life in a world where pictures moved on screens, rockets put men into space, and war was the least of everyone’s concerns, and yet, George felt sad about the wars that did exist because he didn’t get to be a part of those wars. For two weeks, George lived a normal life, working out at the gym, beating up bigots, and trying to make sense of his life after his discharge from the army—

Gerd woke up.

The dreams faded a little, but not much at all.

Gerd lay in bed for a while, thinking about his dream. The morning sun had yet to crest the city beyond his windows, and all the world was soft, dark blue.

He thought for a while.

It hadn’t been a dream, had it?

It seemed more like… a memory?

Gerd remembered signing… signing some sort of paperwork, while hornless men —weird things, hornless men. Men had 2 horns!— went around with badges on their chests, telling him what a useless fairy he was. It was a strange dream. It felt too real.

Gerd, who called himself George in the dream, signed some papers with… with some sort of hard, solid writing thing in his hand. It was like a quill, but different. It was better than a quill.

By a lot, actually.

Gerd had written on paper with ‘pens’ back on ‘Earth’, but in this world, they used quills. Sometimes some rich people had quills that refilled with magic, but most people used quills from the lepdif bird, who shed its quills every winter and regrew them every spring.

‘Dad’ hated quills. They always broke and they were always more expensive toward the end of fall, when everyone was doing end of year paperwork and harvests and taxes, and quills broke all the damned time.

Eventually, Gerd got up out of bed.

After classes were done for the day and Gerd came home from the academy, Gerd walked into Dad’s office in the afternoon. All day long, Gerd had thought about that dream. That memory. And about the pens he wrote with.

Dad was scratching on paper with one of those very same quills that Gerd had been thinking he hated, once he knew about pens. They used wooden-wrapped charcoal at school and those things were terrible, too.

Gerd waited a moment for Dad to acknowledge him.

Dad grunted, though he continued to write on his papers.

Gerd asked, “Dad? Have you ever heard of a pen?”

Dad hummed a little, not looking up from his paperwork as he checked over shipment manifests. He wrote down something, and then he looked up at Gerd. His face transformed from uncaring work, to loving father, though most people would never be able to tell the difference. He asked, “Nope? What’s that?”

“It’s like a quill, but made of metal…” Gerd paused. He organized his thoughts and continued, “Well. You start with a tube of metal, and then you put a little marble of metal in the end of it, in such a way that the metal ball can spin freely and not leave its socket. And then you fill the metal tube with ink.” Gerd mimed writing in the air, saying, “And then you use it like a quill, but without the need for constantly refilling the quill with ink, and without the need to worry about controlling your strength cultivation too much. Since the pen is made of metal. It should be usable even by those who heavily fortify their strength, like you.”

Dad furrowed his brow a little as he thought. He held up his quill. He was using a holder for the quill, obviously, since he had fortified his body with mana for a long time. That holder was metal. But still, if he pressed the pen too hard then he could easily break it and ink would get everywhere. He had a few small enchantments on his writing desk that stopped that from happening, but it still happened elsewhere he used quills.

Dad looked to Gerd. “Can’t say I ever heard of that.” He went back to writing, saying, “I have some messages I need delivered to some golem crafters who are staying in the grand hotel. Draw a picture of your ‘pen’ idea then you can ask them about it. They like pictures of ideas of new inventions.” He looked up at Gerd, saying, “But if they show disinterest and interest at the same time, then you will know you have a good idea. Let me know if they do that. You can broker deals for things like fish prices, but invention prices are beyond you. Let me handle those if they should happen.”

Gerd smiled a little, “Yes, Dad.”

“Good. I’ll have the messages ready in an hour.”

Gerd went and drew some pictures. They were… passable, to get his idea across.

Soon, Gerd was on the road, jogging into the depths of the city.

An hour further along, and Gerd entered the Grand Hotel and made his way to where the golem crafters were staying. They were expecting him but they were busy right now, so they could not deal with his messages at the moment, and so they received him inside their suite, in a little side room. A servant walked into the room, carrying tea—

Oh my gods, they were beautiful. Long brown hair, a button nose, a thin body. They were 14, too. Or something like that. A beautiful single horn. Amazing eyes.

Gerd was in love. Love at first sight. This was a real thing that could happen? Apparently so.

The servant looked at Gerd.

Gerd looked at the servant.

They’re beautiful.

That was the only thought in Gerd’s head. And then he realized he was staring. They were staring, too, but… Too much staring?

Gerd’s voice cracked, “H— Hello.”

The xen jerked, as if breaking a spell of meeting. They had been stuck at the entrance of the room, and now they had regained themselves. They walked into the room with the tray, saying, “If gratitude m’lord, providing you repast while be waiting.”

… What?

Oh!

They couldn’t speak the language yet?

Gerd smiled at their clunky language. “I had trouble learning the new language, too.” He switched to plainsfolk, “We can talk like this if you want, though.”

The xen gushed joy, speaking in plainsfolk, “Oh my waters! You can understand me!” They happily cursed, “Holy gods of light and dark, damn the Demon King.” They took the seat across from Gerd, happily asking, “Where are you from? I’m Lario, from Laketribe. What’s your name?”

Gerd gasped. “Laketribe! I’m Gerd! From Redriver!”

“Redriver!” Lario laughed, rocking back in their chair.

Gerd said, “We were decimated 4 years ago when the tribe lord failed to pay taxes or something. We never found out what happened. Laketribe was strong, though! What happened?”

Lario shook his head. “No one is strong in the face of the Demon King. I don’t know what happened, exactly. I think someone high up was murdered at some meeting in the Demon King’s palace. Something else happened, no doubt. The leaders made the choice to move before we were moved upon. We heard about Redriver, though. Everyone heard about Redriver.”

Everyone had heard?

Oh…

Was the entire Greater Tribe… scattered?

Gerd shook his head. He didn’t want to think about pain anymore. He was ashamed he even brought it up, since he was forbidden to speak of plainsfolk matters, but Lario was one of them. One of his people. Maybe even…

Gerd said, “Laketribe then… Hmm. We might have played together as kids at the commonground festivals?”

Lario gasped. “Wait a switch! Gerd Lifetaker?”

Gerd smiled wide. “We’re not allowed to use our demon names.”

Lario laughed delightfully. “I think your mom healed my brother’s broken wrist when he fell in the mud at commonground. I think I might have seen you before, too.”

Gerd felt his face heat as Lario grinned wider—

Someone was in the hallway, walking this way, their footsteps echoing loudly, almost on purpose—

Lario realized someone was coming down the hall, too. They leapt out of their chair and stood to the side, demure and head bowed. Gerd stood up, and awaited whoever was coming.

An older xen walked into the room, speaking Empire, “I’m sure I didn’t hear demonspeak, and you both are fine kids.” She glared at both of them.

Lario whispered an apology.

Gerd did nothing, because to apologize was to admit guilt in the first place.

The older xen nodded anyway, satisfied. They held out Gerd’s little drawing of a rolling pen, saying, “Your master’s slow on the deal, boy. I already got this idea from little Lario here, about 3 months ago, and our prototypes were to be displayed to the King and Xing. I would like to know where you came across this idea, because I’ve certainly never heard of it before Lario spoke of it. It’s a simple enough design, though.”

Gerd froze.

Lario looked at Gerd, questioning.

Gerd wasn’t sure what to do, so he answered honestly, “It came to me in a dream?”

Lario’s eyes went fractionally wider.

The old xen hummed. “… Well then. Isn’t that interesting…” Then they said, “Run along back home, boy. Tell your master what happened, if you wish. If he presses us for compensation regarding something he had no hand in making, then I will make his life hell. You may leave.”

Gerd… Gerd walked away.

His eyes lingered on Lario.

Lario mouthed in the demontongue, “Nice to meet you.”

Gerd merely nodded, careful not to let the old xen see him do so.

They probably saw him anyway, considering they huffed.

– – – –

Gerd and Lario met again, later.

And then later still.

They spoke of their dreams sometimes, neither one knowing what to make of the vivid, shared hallucinations both of them had of a world called ‘Earth’. Lario’s master told them it was a nuance of fate and that they shouldn’t speak of it overmuch. They tried to stop Lario and Gerd from speaking to each other anymore, but Gerd and Lario were teenagers, and the stories of their shared dreams of different perspectives had already wormed into the ears of the royal court.

Gerd never got to see the King or Xing in this part of the Empire, but Lario did. Somehow, the story of Lario and Gerd’s shared dreaming became a big story, a curiosity, a declaration of fates, some even said. Dad and Mom found out, and they were merely perplexed, but when Gerd said that he wanted to see Lario more, Dad worked hard to try and get the golem makers to let that happen.

“Oh! Let the two kids mingle!” the Xing eventually declared, enamored with the story of young love.

And so, they were allowed to mingle.

Supervised.

It was okay, Gerd supposed. Lario seemed less and less thrilled about their get togethers with every passing one, but only because of the spies in their midst.

Mostly, though, Gerd and Lario had duties to their dad, in Gerd’s case, and their master, in Lario’s case, so they didn’t get to meet all that often. They still tried to meet, though. For a talk about the politics of Earth. For working on one of Lario’s new inventions taken from this or that place on Earth. For discussing a television show that both of them had seen, but which neither of them remembered in full.

Gerd had no idea what to make of everything happening, but he knew he loved Lario long before Lario felt the same.

Gerd was content to wait.

– – – –

Eventually, the Demon King grew too bold.

The northern wall fell to demon hordes. The hordes were pushed back, but there had been deaths. Hundreds of warriors perished to fight off the horde. Three villages were lost before the army could mobilize.

The Empire called for all young people to be tested for magic, and anyone found capable of actual magic was to be conscripted. Personal enhancements did not count. Anyone who wanted to fight in the army was also welcome, and they would be trained in body refinement, but what the Empire truly needed was mages capable of handling real magic.

Gerd’s mom was almost conscripted for her healing magic, but she was already working at a local hospital and that hospital spoke up; they could not afford to lose her.

Gerd almost signed up for the war, but his mother held him back, crying on him, telling him he could not go.

He decided not to go.

He had no capability with magic and he had no true capability with a sword, anyway, no matter if he could win any street brawl he found himself in, in the increasingly hostile land of the Empire. Gerd was fine with fighting bullies, and he often won, but he wanted to fight demons. He wanted vengeance.

That need to fight was a common sentiment among many plainsfolk. Lario seemed to be the only one who truly understood Gerd’s need for vengeance though.

That brought them closer, but the watchers were always there.

A year passed.

– – – –

Gerd went to bed on an otherwise boring day of schoolwork and war training.

He woke up in a land of glowing white mist, with the ground made of stone and—

There was a man.

A different kind of man.

Gerd knew the man.

The man was him.

Like looking into a mirror that was not a mirror at all, Gerd saw George standing there, looking like an illusion in the light.

George spoke with surety in his hornless-male, human voice, in English, “Welcome to your Personal Script. I will be helping you to make your life and your world better. Here is your starting Status. It’s large, but only because this is the normal size for your Status. We can carve it down to an understandable size soon enough.”

Gerd Lifetaker, [16] [Current Location: Layer 9,201] [Year 879 Demon Era] [World: Ondak]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 32%, 32%, 32% [N/A; not enough resources to matter]

Reson allocation rate: 4% [N/A; not enough resources to matter]

Darkness Level: Child [1 mana per day]

Fractal Level: Blind [0 resons per day]

Benevolence Level: Unoccupied [1 mana per day]

Soul: 1 ; 2 mana per day

Body: 2

Mind: 1

Overall Stability: ↑ [+.00002, -0]

Mp: 4/1,000, ↑ [+0, -0]

Hp: 5/2,000, ↑ [+0, -0]

Pp: 4/1,000, ↑ [+0, -0]

Resons: 1/10, [+0 = +0, -0] [Converts 9 mana to 1 reson]

The human made of light said, “That’s a lot of information there, all of which you know nothing about. For the most part, though, mana is mana. If you want to learn about mana on your own, you should speak to your mother. You failed the previous mana tests, but you won’t fail them this time. It will be a while before you approach anything near your true possible strength, but your growth will not plateau like all the other people of this world.

“They will call you a natural magus, but that is not what you are.

“You are more than that, by far.”

He was going to make a display, wasn’t he.

Gerd was worried about whatever the Archmage was doing, and he was not the only one. Usually there was some sort of grand display, but this seemed… Dangerous. And he was pointing at the mountain.

The Archmage intoned, “I have long spoken of the differences of We Keepers of Mana, and you students, and how there was a great divide between the trained and the unlearned. Today, you step over that divide. You become Keepers of Mana as well. Today, you see what is expected of those at the top, and also of all the people supporting those at the top. For it is not just me up here, holding this power in my hands. One person is nothing. Every teacher and every student standing here today is what makes Real Power possible.

“All of you are the hope of this generation, against all its trials and tribulations.

“May all monsters tremble at your arrival.

“May you Crack the Mountain with your might.”

With a twist of light and ribbons of shadow, the Archmage let loose the spell he had been holding, aiming at the mountain top beyond the parade grounds kilometers upon kilometers away.

He let the spell go.

A beam of light extended from his fingers to the mountaintop and the mountain top, covered in snow, became covered in fire. The world boomed. A pressure wave moved across the sky, parting clouds. And then the rumble moved through the Magisterium and the crowd.

When the fire vanished almost as fast as it had come, all the snow on the mountain top was gone, along with a good chunk of the very peak.

It was one of the largest displays of power that Gerd had ever seen.

It was so much larger than last year’s display, too.

The Archmage declared, “Celebrate! For you are all mages today!”

The crowd cheered wildly.

Gerd cheered right alongside his classmates.

Later, he ended up drinking with his best friend from the Magisterium, Van, who was a second ranked adept, and a bunch of other guys who were all third and fourth ranked; Ooless, Sharald, Mio, and Pendalicus.

Van raised a glass and toasted, “To the only actual mage from our cohort!” With a grin, he added, “May we all be lucky enough to one day have as much mana control as him!”

Ooless raised a glass. “To having so much mana you don’t know what to do with it!”

“To the next Archmage!”

“To the next Archmage!”

“To the next Archmage!”

Gerd blushed as they all cheered for him, rapidly telling them all, “You cut that shit out right now! They won’t teach me any of the good stuff!” He smiled, even though he explained an old hurt away, “They still call me demon-born.”

Van smiled brightly at him, and gave his usual response, “They’ll trust you with their lives one day, Gerd.”

A month later they all went to war against the demons, for the kingdom, all of them together.

A team.

In their second engagement, in what was supposed to be an easy airbombing across a supply line, the demons brought out what the Empire would come to call automatic tracker arrows. ATAs, also known as Deathdealers.

– – – –

The supply caravan of covered wagons ditched their covers.

A thousand golems stood ready to fire.

The crossbow golems raised their arrow frames and ATAs ripped through the sky, like homing missiles from another world, another lifetime. The ATAs did not tear through the cloth airframes at all, for they did not lock on to the largest thing in the sky at all, as most homing magic did.

The ATAs went straight for the riders on the frames.

Gerd was the only survivor.

His mana was still near full, even as he flew back to base, tears streaming from his eyes and renewed vengeance in his heart. He had been shooting spells nonstop to save his friends, to escape the crossbow golems and to run away, but the deserted land was full of golems hidden all throughout the entire run between the base and the target. They had hidden themselves with magics, under vines and bushes and trees and even bare rock, while Gerd’s team flew over them, toward the caravan train. They were setting the trap, and then they sprang it while Gerd’s team tried to run back home.

There had been traitors in the Empire.

It got worse when Gerd got back to base, because instead of launching accusations at the people he wanted to accuse, or even just roar at the world, the Archmage had been assassinated, along with several kings all across the Empire.

The Emperor’s own son had been captured and strung up beyond the Demon Wall as a taunt to the entire Empire itself.

As Gerd sat back in base, shocked to his core to hear everything that had happened all at once, he knew that he had only been spared because there had been a miscalculation somewhere. Mana quantity and expenditure was a relatively known thing, if someone spied and sought out that sort of information. Even at the top end of variance, what a person can do was pretty much a known quantity.

Gerd had graduated at the top of his class, but without any real noble education to him.

The traitors had made calculations that should have been right. They should have killed him.

Everyone else had run out of mana.

But Gerd had not.

– – – –

In the Inquisition that followed the Day of Blood, one of the Emperor’s Men hauled Gerd before a Black Court.

The Black Court was seeing a lot of action these days.

Gerd was not the only person who shouted ‘traitors in the Empire’ to the sky.

And now he was here, under investigation himself.

Atop a black throne, with a black mask over his black robes, an Emperor’s Man inquired, “How did you survive, when so many others did not? When your own classmates and cohort did not? Did you not care about them to save them? Or did you simply let them die, since they were Empire-born, and you are demonspawn?”

Gerd did not let the nature of the questioning bother him. He had experienced worse aspersions long before coming to this dark place. Gerd stood resolute, dressed in his graduate mage robes, his silver cloak on his shoulders.

The first thing he did was to unlatch his silver cloak, and set it aside. The people in the room turned tense. A mage without his cloak was a mage going to war, or at least that’s how it was for a normal mage. Most high ranking mages didn’t care if they wore a cloak or not; it didn’t bother them. But a simple graduate mage taking off his cloak was cause for concern amongst most officials.

They thought he was either preparing to kill himself through monsterization and to allow his monster to kill where he could not, or he was prepared to fight. Because, for all the honor of the culture of this world, people still did dishonorable things all the time. Like the traitors.

The Black Court had already caught so many of them.

The Emperor’s Man didn’t seem worried about Gerd, though.

Gerd explained, “I should have been ranked higher than simply first class. I should have been gifted with an apprenticeship to an archmage, to learn real magics. If I had real magics, I could have turned the tide on the assassination attempt made against me and my friends—” His voice cracked. He had thought he was stronger than this, and he was, but the facade cracked anyway. A tear fell, and he ignored it. “… People have called me blessed, or cursed. Demonspawn is a rather normal name. But I am none of those things. I am not even truly from the Demon Kingdom, or, as we would call it, the plains.”

If Mom and Dad were here, they would have told him to shut up.

He had told them that he was from a place called Earth and this was his second life long before today. They didn’t care; they loved him anyway. He loved them for that. Second Husband and First Husband had been especially in love with the idea, and they saw Gerd as a much more capable person after he told them who he was.

All of them would have told him to shut the fuck up, right now.

But they were not here, the Empire was cracking in a thousand ways, demons were coming through those cracks, and people knew his story anyway. Or at least they should. Gerd had told too many for the Empire not to already know.

Gerd would hide no longer.

Gerd spoke, “I was born on a world called Earth, some thousands of years and stars away, or more. I do not know. I do not care about Earth. Ondak is my home. The Empire is my home. I was reborn here and gradually learned who I was in that previous life over the many years of my childhood. I am sure you have paperwork regarding my dreamings. It was a fanciful tale told in many circles years ago, and it has haunted me greatly here and again, growing up for the second time. Some people called me insane. It does not bother me. I am not insane. I simply know who I am.

“I have been reborn.

“That rebirth came with a gift.

“I can’t do much more than hold mana and turn the spellwork I cast into easy magic, but even that is more than anyone else can do on this world. More than anyone that I know of, anyway.” He dropped an impossibility into the Court, “I have over one hundred thousand mana at my command right this moment.”

More like 200,000.

None of it came from the Mountain, either, but there was no reason to speak of that right now.

The guards to the sides of the room tensed.

Two separate gasps came from beyond the reed wall that separated the Inquisitor’s Room from the Black Court. Many more small voices came after that.

The Emperor’s Man’s mask held still, its false eyes glaring at Gerd. Whoever was under that mask made no move to stop Gerd from speaking, or to ask him to continue. He just waited.

Gerd continued, “I actually have a lot more resources than a hundred thousand mana. I expect my exact capabilities to remain a state secret, though, so I will not be stating them for the Black Court. What I do expect is that some archmage in the Empire will finally take me seriously, and allow me apprenticeship, so that I might learn real magic and use it to obliterate the Demon King off of the face of Ondak.

“Because that is why I was reborn on this world.

“Not many people know why they were born.

“I do.

“I know why I am here.

“I was reborn on Ondak to rid this world of its Demon King.”

Gasps. Words whispered harshly behind a reed wall. Someone spat something. Someone prayed.

The black masked Emperor’s Man leaned forward in his black throne, and his words filled the room, “Who sent you to this world, boy?”

There was no debating Gerd’s origins. There was no disbelief. Gerd had been prepared for that. He had whole pages of words thought up in his head to answer every possible question that could have been asked.

Except that one.

Gerd Lifetaker, George, said, “All I know is that I died on Earth. I met an old friend who was probably not the person I remembered. And that old friend called the power of my reincarnation… They called them the Dragon of Many Colors.”

“Describe them.”

The demand had been fast. Exact. Sharp.

Gerd said, “I only saw them once…” Gerd recalled the Dragon of Many Colors, hanging in the sky. If Ondak had dragons, it would have been easy. Ondak did not have dragons. Gerd said, “I was the size of a person, standing on white stone floating in an infinite sky, and they were larger than the sky. Serpentine neck, face like a scaled dog’s. Arms like a cat’s and a body like a person’s, with legs like a demon’s. Their entire body was of the same scaled nature, with every scale iridescent white… but also black. Their wings spanned infinity. Their eyes were suns. I saw a universe in their body and beyond and…” Gerd struggled. “It was a divine vision. I can tell you how I felt, how I feel, but I cannot recall more details.”

The Emperor’s Man merely nodded.

The space beyond the reed wall was silent.

Gerd waited.

The Emperor’s Man said, “Guilty by association. Death.”

Bars sprung up around the box upon which Gerd stood, wrapping around and above him. Gerd barely had time to consider what was happening when the blades moved in, each of them crushing against his body, his clothes, his skin.

The blades caught upon his skin, though, for Gerd had more than enough time to activate some defensive magics. The blades held him fast. He was not bleeding at all. Not even crushed. Not as he should have been.

Gerd was surprised for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to feel, except that the Emperor’s Man must have been a traitor, too.

The people behind the Inquisitor’s Room started yelling, some of them feeling the same way. The guards shouted at the reed wall, telling them to quiet. Someone pounded on the reed wall, and Gerd learned that the reed wall was more than simple reeds, otherwise they would have broken through.

Gerd was trapped under the crushing weights of too many blades, held down against himself, against the snapping trap that was to kill him. His magics held, but they would not hold forever. His Personal Script was already ticking down by the thousands per second.

Gerd had given many reasons for why he had survived the ambush out in the field, but he had not given all of them.

Hp: 108,183/215,000, ↓↓↓↑ [-1891] Warning! Under crushing/slicing attack!

He was still going to die in under a minute as soon as his Health gave out and his body was truly vulnerable to injury.

Gerd stated, “Please don’t do this. I want to work with the Empire. My entire history says as much!”

His voice was not as composed as he had wanted it to be at the end, but it was as composed as he could have made it.

The Emperor’s Man took off his mask, revealing himself as someone Gerd did not know at all. A xen, with one horn. The people beyond the reed wall did know them, though. There were more gasps.

The xen was a grizzled veteran of a person, with whitening hair and wrinkles.

A loud voice came from beyond the reed wall, “You cannot do this, Sherro! I told you about him because we need him!”

Sherro declared, “We do not need foreign gods messing with our own affairs! He is why this happened at all! The Demon King caught wind of foreign gods on our world and so he scoured all of the Empire for this person right here, and for the other one we already ended.”

Gerd gasped.

Tears came freely.

“You killed Lario?”

Gerd’s heart seemed to break. He hadn’t spoken to Lario in years, but he had never forgotten him—

The reed wall shattered. The guards were pushed back, but they maintained. They held their spears toward the break—

An absolutely ancient xen stood in the break of the reed wall, like a rock in a hurricane, declaring, “This won’t end with Lifetaker dead. You will have removed the possibility of salvation!”

Sherro went, “You seers and your prophecies! Look at the boy! He has twelve blades on his skin and he is still alive! He should have been minced to nothing! He is demonspawn, and he must die!” They nodded to the guards.

Five guards advanced with spears.

“NO!” yelled the Seer. They tried to advance, to stop the execution, but guards stopped them. They yelled, “You’re throwing away our chance to be free of—”

Gerd’s Health failed him long before he was ready for it to fail.

And yet.

This was fine, then.

Lario was dead, and the Empire didn’t want them.

And yet, as the first spears cut into his body, into his chest, his stomach, his thighs and his neck, Gerd did not believe that this could happen to him. He had done everything right. He had lived the proper life of an empire born son, even if he wasn’t born here. How could the Empire throw him away like this? How could they have killed Lario? He wanted to help them. Lario had wanted to help them, too, he was sure.

Gerd had wanted to help.

Gerd died.

– – – –

For a moment, nothing.

And then the Benevolent Dark called Gerd back.

He was not done yet.

– – – –

“So you died,” said a being of light. “It happens. We never expected you to get it right the very first time, so that’s why we made a backup system. Don’t go dying too often, though. The gods of this world don’t know about this backup system right now, but they will if you use it too often, and then the Demon King will know.”

The words were there, and Gerd understood them, but not really.

He was nude, laying on a stone floor, in a small room made of white lights and solid stone. If there was a ceiling he could not see it. There was an archway leading out of the illuminated space, though. A deep, dark forest lay beyond that archway. And here, there was light.

There was also a being of light…

Gerd blinked, and the being of light came into focus.

It was George. George of the Personal Script. Gerd would recognize that pattern of light and his old face anywhere.

Confusion turned to small angers, and then to questions.

“What the fuck?” Gerd asked.

It was a very large question, with many layered meanings. Gerd had asked all of those meanings, all at once.

George smiled, saying, “I’m just one part of your Personal Script, you know. You’ve only ever interacted with a third of me, which is fine. I’m the most talkative. Darkness doesn’t do much more than scream and you have no idea how to talk to Fractal at all. I’ve never been able to really talk about those others, either. Not like this. So this is probably a weird experience for you.”

Gerd furrowed his brows. He stood up and found himself slightly smaller than George. George was… He was different. More solid, maybe? Not just an animated interface that used his own face to make him more comfortable?

Gerd didn’t have time for that.

“I need to get back home, to tell them they’ve made mistakes. If I can talk to someone else— Maybe Xing Ranai from my kingdom can help? The Xing would shove Sherro back into whatever Emperor’s Hole he crawled out of! Maybe I can convince them… all…” Gerd lost steam. “Why are you shaking your head?”

George was shaking his head. “Because you’ve been under surveillance your entire life. They didn’t know much about how your specific oddity of linked hallucinations with Lario worked, but they knew enough. They knew about your resiliency. They knew about your deep reserves of mana. They were going to raise you as a weapon against the Demon King, but then the Day of Blood happened and the Demon King revealed himself as a lot stronger than everyone knew. People died, and the Demon King sent a messenger to the Emperor, demanding that they find whoever had upset his perfect future and execute them, or else he would move on their Empire with the strength of the gods of Floating Mountain at his back.”

The Gods of Ondak were more like arbiters of certain powers, than real gods. They were the ones you had to interact with on The Mountain, when you tried to connect to the Mountain in the Void. That was how normal magic worked on Ondak. Most of the gods weren’t even people. They were just ideas and actions.

That was not how Gerd worked his magic at all.

Gerd had seen a real god before, and even the few times he had Touched the Mountain led him to rapidly decide that ‘power over water’ was not enough to qualify any of the gods of Floating Mountain as gods in his mind. But yet…

To hear talk of the gods actively deciding they didn’t like something…

Gerd felt his skin prickle. “But the gods never involved themselves in anything?”

George nodded, and then began with, “I am your Personal Script, and when you are in here, I can tell you a lot about a lot. I have the resources to do more than I was able to do before. One of the things I can tell you is that the gods of Floating Mountain have empowered the Demon King to be their agent in the world. That is why he, alone, is able to take on the entire Empire of Kings and win, if he wanted. That is why the Empire lets him be the Demon King, uncontested.”

Gerd felt sick. He had heard rumors around the Demon King being an agent of the gods, but those were just conspiracy theories… And yet, they weren’t theories at all, were they.

George continued, “The gods of Floating Mountain used to have the choice to empower the Demon King or not.

“This is no longer the case.

“You must first understand that the gods of Ondak are not true gods. They are more like immortal archmages of vast, yet small powers. They call themselves the God of Fire, or the God of Passages, for example, but they would be called archmages in any other setting. Some might call them wizards, but I would not call them that.

“Before you were reborn here, the Demon King killed the God of Vines and took his raw power, making it his own. From there, he wrapped all of Floating Mountain in vines, sealing the gods away and siphoning most of their power for himself.

“But not before they released a request for help.

“You and Lario and this reviving space here are the response to that request for help.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this earlier. I didn’t even know myself. I’m rather sure if I had known then I would have given that secret away and you would have acted differently in a few situations, and thus you would have died long before now, for the Demon King has agents everywhere.”

Gerd felt sick again as he recalled some major points in his life.

The Winter Ball of his senior year at the Magisterium. The Palace Walk with all those noble brats. The talks with the Inquisitors at the end of Year One and again at Gerd’s raising to a silvercloak. There had been so many times in Gerd’s second life that had seemed pointed, and yet Gerd had never triggered whatever the nobility and the Inquisitors had been looking for. This knowledge right here was what they had been looking for.

If Gerd had ever spoken about the gods being locked away and not responsive to proper requests for power…

Or that the gods were weak, and that they could do nothing against the Demon King…

Gerd had never heard any of this before. The Empire had to know it, though. Maybe some people in the Empire had even helped the Demon King to sew up Floating Mountain.

Gerd almost puked.

But he maintained.

… He heard people.

People were outside of the archway that led into the forest.

A familiar voice, followed by another familiar voice.

Gerd smelled something like meat, sizzling on a campfire, or something like that.

He heard someone pluck a lyre—

A lyre?

The image of George began to fade until nothing was left but a pleasant grin.

Gerd felt possessed by the need to know if what he was hearing was real.

Gerd stood, and he found himself standing upon whorls of wood, on the only flat spot of bark inside a crack in a tree, while the world outside was full of light and voices and the bark of the tree all around him glowed a gentle white. Gerd picked his way out of the tree and found himself standing on a rock, underneath the boughs of a glowing white arbor with a canopy made of green fire and rainbows.

The tree was massive.

Too tall to make sense.

Gerd had walked out of a tiny twist in the gnarled roots. If there had been an archway and a stone room behind him then he could not see it now. But he saw the world outside of the tree.

There was a settlement.

Shining metal buildings lay all around, nestled into the roots of the glowing white tree, like a crescent of buildings surrounding an open space in the middle. The middle was a town square, but it was really more like a circle.

There was a campfire.

People stood around the campfire, lit with red glows and shining warmth.

Van, who had died mere weeks ago, wore roughspun clothing and smiled as he raised a mug of beer to Pendalicus, who was on the lyre, playing a ribald song of sex and war. They were having fun. Ooless, Sharald, Mio. They were all there. They were all having fun and eating and—

And then there was Lario.

They smiled as they sipped beer and watched the guys cavort around the fire, laughing and telling stories of university and Magisterium.

Gerd saw Lario.

Lario saw Gerd.

They gasped.

They leapt to their feet and rushed him, calling out, “Gerd! You’re here!” Lario crossed many meters, fast as he could and crashed into Gerd, hugging him tightly, and it was like they had never spent time apart at all. They held onto Gerd, their head against his chest, softly crying, softly saying, “Your friends are nice.”

Everyone started to rush up to say hello, but they then saw the hug and they looked about ready to tease Gerd.

Gerd’s eyes were wet as he told Lario, “I didn’t know they had gotten you. I walked right into it. I can’t believe I let myself believe they were different from… From humans.”

Lario chuckled, but it was a sad sort of chuckle. “Your friends don’t believe that the state murdered me, but we’ve been here for a few weeks now. They still say that the Empire would never do that to anyone who didn’t deserve it. They weren’t murdered by men in black with sharp knives, coming in the night.”

Gerd held Lario tighter. Lario breathed deep, seeming to relax by the moment.

Van approached, though he had the sense to see Lario and Gerd.

Gerd wondered what, exactly, they had all talked about yet. They looked to have all been living here for a while. The guys gathered around, awaiting their captain. Soon enough, Lario let go, and Gerd stood strong.

Gerd stood tall and told them all, “An Emperor’s Man named Sherro murdered me at a false Black Court.”

Eyes went hard. Hands balled into fists. Disbelief warred, and they looked to Lario.

Lario had the good sense to merely look upon Gerd, but they did grin a little. They didn’t rub in how right they were about the Empire, though they probably would later. Maybe the guys would listen, then.

Gerd continued, “We are not going back to the Empire for help. We will become a fighting force worthy of the continued lives we have been given, and when we are ready, we will destroy the Demon King and free the imprisoned gods. If the Empire should benefit from that, then that is fine. We owe them nothing anymore.”

Van got a hard look in his eyes. He nodded. Mio and the others soon followed.

Lario said, “I’ll do logistics. I’m not directly fighting a war.” And then they summoned clothes out of thin air and handed them over to Gerd. “Not that I don’t like the view, but we are trying to be civilized here, wherever ‘here’ is.”

Gerd blanked for a moment. And then he smiled and laughed, taking the clothes. “When did you learn how to summon stuff?”

“A while ago. I was working in the top secret air yards— But enough about that! What happened while we were gone? I was killed hours after the big kills of everyone. It was all confusion. I heard the Emperor Himself was murdered?”

Van tried to be polite about it, but he also demanded, “What happened out there, Gerd?”

Everyone started talking at once, about everything.

Gerd began, “The Emperor’s son was murdered…”

Gerd explained about the Day of Blood, which caused everyone problems, but which explained why they were attacked so hard on the battlefield. It had been a plot by the demons to kill that year’s top student.

The rest of the talk took a while, and was spent around the bonfire.

When Gerd was done, everyone took a moment.

Gerd asked, “What has been happening around here?”

Lario began, “We have done some scouting…”

That led into talk of flying, and the scouting that they had already done around the Big Tree, which is what they were calling their little settlement, on account of the Big Tree in the center. They were on some island with monsters everywhere, except for here, by Big Tree.

“But flying out from under the boughs isn’t safe,” Lario said. “We have had to make do with long-range sight magics and telescopes to see most of what was out there.”

Sharald spoke darkly, “I died a second time.”

Mio said, “Three times, here.”

Van said, “But we can fly above Big Tree, some. Not too high or the flying monsters get you. If you stay in the rainbows you can see to the ocean to the west. Everything else is mountains.”

“How do you know we’re on an island, then?” Gerd asked.

Van frowned a little, unhappy with the answer he was about to give, even before he gave it, “Go and ask Big Tree to tell you. They’ll probably talk to you. You’re special, just like Lario.”

Lario rolled his eyes at Van, saying, “And you can get a Personal Script, too, if you want to become a Paladin of Many Colors.”

“I’m not becoming no lackey for some otherworldly god,” Van said, dismissively.

Gerd pulled back the conversation, asking, “So what else has been happening here?”

Ooless said, “Mostly monster hunting, as much as we can.”

Mio said, “Not much hunting, though.”

Van said, “We’re all mages, but mana is scarce.”

Lario mouthed solutions to Van’s mana problems that no one wanted to hear.

Van continued, “Lario needs monster hearts to make planes fast enough to get us off the island. Not sure where we’d even go from there, though. Not with this Day of Blood shit.”

Mio spoke up about that, loudly, “Did the entire Empire just lose their damned minds? They decided to side with the Demon King to kill you?! What the fuck, Gerd!”

Van agreed. “I knew the Demon King was strong, but for the Empire to just roll over? It boggles, Gerd!”

Sharald spoke darkly, “The Empire is filled with corruption.” And then there was hope in his voice, “But the Empire and the Demon King are small. Even Floating Mountain is just one land of power in this world.” He looked up at Big Tree, and said, “Wherever we are…” his voice trailed away.

Everyone looked up at the greenfire canopy of Big Tree.

Gerd finished Sharald’s thought, “Wherever we are is somewhere new. Somewhere special.” He looked to them all, and they regarded him in turn, with firelight and hope in their dark gazes. “We will get out of here, and when we do, we don’t have to return to the Empire in order to win our war against the Demon King. There’s an entire world out there. Continent Ardia, below the Empire, where the Sand States flourish. The Lost Lands beyond the eastern ocean, where the People were said to have come from thousands of years ago, and where the Kard people still live. The Small Islands with their travel magics. This world is vast, and our enemy is entrenched, and none of the people on the Continent ever wanted to teach us real magic anyway. The magic we need to win this war. And so, we must seek answers elsewhere.” He asked them all, “Are you with me?”

His cohort already was.

But Lario was not. Not really.

Not until that moment there, under the light of Big Tree, where the bonfire painted everyone yellow and red.

Lario declared, “I’m with you.”

Van started a cheer first and then the rest of them soon followed. Pendalicus took up the lyre again and started singing a song of war and magic, and it was good. They ate monster meat and beer that Lario summoned from somewhere else; even he didn’t know where the beer came from.

“It’s good beer though, right?” Lario said, smiling mischievously.

Gerd smiled back—

“Get a room!” Van called at them.

Lario laughed.

Gerd chuckled, pulling away from Lario.

They did not share a room that night.

Nor did they share a room for the next year that it took them to get off of the island, past the monsters that prowled everywhere. Big Tree was on the Cursed Island, which explained much of that difficulty, though they didn’t find out that fact for a while.

Gerd and Lario didn’t share a bed for a very long time.

But eventually, four continental journeys later, in their early 30s and always seeming to uncover yet another way the Demon King was a problem, Gerd saved Lario from the maws of a demonic abomination, and somehow, a few quiet talks and uttered worries later, they ended up in the same bed. Neither of them truly understood the path they had taken to get there, but there, in a hotel room that was otherwise unremarkable, that was when they kissed for the first time in their second lives.

Falling in love the second time was easy.

That was when Lario joined the fight, directly, and Gerd and Lario fought side by side, in the skies, and all across the globe.

They were the Archmage of Many Colors and the Admiral of Steel Winds.

They and their party became known as the Hero’s Party, though whichever one was the ‘hero’ was up for debate, as all of them proved themselves here or there.

Eventually, the Hero’s Party thought they had prepared enough to go against the Demon King.

They died the second they stepped foot into demon air space, which now expanded the entire continent of the Empire.

They were reborn at Big Tree, on Cursed Land, along with one more person.

The Seer.

The Seer, who had spoken up in Gerd’s defense all those years ago at his Black Court murder, had been murdered themselves, executed by the Empire, when the Hero’s Party tried to fight the Demon King this last time.

The Seer proved to be instrumental in connecting Gerd with Benevolence Itself.

Two years later, Gerd dropped ordnance from low Ondak orbit upon the castle of the Demon King, while Lario and the Crew dropped obscuring bombs from a lower orbit. It worked. It almost didn’t work, but it had worked. It had been the only way around the Demon King’s prognostication magics. They never even met the guy face to face, which was on purpose. Every time they met the guy, they had died.

Killing him from space had been the only way to do the deed.

The death of the Demon King released Floating Mountain, the land of the gods revealing itself above the capital of the Empire, like it had always been there but no one had ever known.

But now they were freed, and the results were… Well.

Nothing much.

The gods had always been do-nothings.

Which Gerd found out was the point of the gods.

At the end of it all, at the death of the Demon King, the Demon King had been ‘reborn’ as well.

He was now the God of No Orbital Bombardments, and he was a completely different person from before. No craziness. No genocides. No assassins. Just an idea made manifest, grown from the final moments of the death of a very large power in the world, which birthed a god that basically said,

“No orbital bombardments unless you go through me.”

The god threw a good party.

– – – –

Lario laughed as they lay in Gerd’s arms, on a reclining couch in their home under Big Tree, swishing some wine in their goblet as they said, “The gods are do-nothings! Specifically! No wonder no one noticed they were trapped! They were still stopping big magics, though! Fuck!”

Gerd chuckled, his big chest rumbling under Lario’s back. “Now now. They made sure no one ever used atomics.”

“Gods!” Lario said, exasperated. “It explains so much! Why I never got that nuclear reactor to work—”

“Why there’s that Big Magic limit, and the mana simply unravels once it gets too large.”

“Why I never figured out antimatter.”

“Now we just need to invent a God of No More Monsters,” Gerd said, grinning as he held Lario.

“Fucking hell yeah we do!” Lario exclaimed, loudly and happily.

Gerd chuckled softly and whispered into Lario’s ears. “Shhh… You’ll wake the team. They’re gonna be taking this hard for a while. They always thought the gods actually did stuff.”

Lario scoffed. “The guys are asleep and I can be as blasphemous as I want to be right now and the guys have their own houses. It’s just you and me, your parents are in the guest house, and my Master is in a different guest house. All the party is done. We don’t have to be ‘on’ right now.”

Gerd held Lario a bit tighter, a bit warmer. His voice rumbled delightfully, “It is just you and me.”

Lario felt his heart beat hard. “… Oh.”

“Got anything you want to do?”

Lario smiled as they sat up. They turned to Gerd. “Let’s make some babies.”

Gerd’s eyes dilated wide. “You’re not joking this time.”

“Nope. Also, let’s get married.”

Gerd’s breath trembled, and then he solidified. “I love you.”

Lario felt his own heart skip a beat. “I love you more.”

That night was magical in a way that neither of them had experienced in this life, or the previous one.

Seven months later, which was a pretty normal gestation period for one of the people, Lario popped out a little girl, as expected of a union between a man and a xen.

Covered in sweat and shining like a god, Lario held their little girl to their chest, smiling brightly, saying, “My gods you were a painful little girl, weren’t you? Yes you were, yes you were.”

Gerd smiled as he sat on the bed with Lario. “Have you thought of a name yet, my love?”

“It’s bad luck to name them before one year old…” Lario held their little girl. “But we can protect her from the mana sickness, can’t we?”

Gerd smiled as his aura touched his daughter, and found that there was no danger of a mana complication at all. Ambient mana touched the little girl, but her soul automatically deflected all outside mana. He had been told about this possibility. Lario had been told about this possibility, too. But Lario wasn’t sure. They were a little scared.

Gerd assured them, “She inherited our baseline powers. She has a Personal Script.”

Lario smiled even brighter, though they were so very tired. They offered, “How about Laria?”

Gerd chuckled. “We’ll name the next one Gertrude, then.”

“That’s a terrible name!” Lario said, laughing. “And besides that I’m never giving birth again. That was painful as fuck.”

Nine months later, Gertrude came along.

Gerd teased, “That one looked easier.”

Lario complained, “You try giving birth next time!” Gertrude began to cry in their arms. Softer, Lario said, “Damned fucking weird people biology. Humans are so much simpler.”

“I love your weird biology.” Gerd kissed Lario on their forehead, next to their horn, saying, “And you asked for it, dewdrop.”

“In the next life you’re the woman.”

“Nah. That looked painful.”

Lario swatted him.

Gerd smiled, adding, “And you’re not a woman, anyway!”

Lario swatted him again.

12 months later, another bundle of joy came along.

Lario complained, but they loved their kids more than they realized they could love anyone, and Gerd was a part of that love.

Another 11 months later, Lario had triplets.

A ‘Full Set’, as they called it. A blessing of a boy, girl, and xen, all at the same time.

“Now that looked painful,” Gerd said at the bedside.

Exhausted, Lario told him, “Swat yourself, dewdrop. I’m too tired.”

Gerd smiled.

With eyes closed, but healing magics already working a little, Lario told him, “Let’s get some secondary parents, please. I don’t want to keep up with all of these kids.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” Gerd asked, “How about Van and Pendalicus? They were talking about adoption last week.”

Lario got to thinking, still tired as heck and covered in sweat. The nurses held the kids and swaddled them, while Gerd’s parents were in the other room, keeping the other kids occupied. Gerd heard their bright voices, asking about their new siblings, and Dad, the old gruff grandpa that he was, was telling them that they’d come out when they came out, and not to rush them at all. First Husband and Second Husband were out there, too, being doting grandparents as well. Lario’s master’s voice was also somewhere in there, but Gerd couldn’t make out what they were saying, exactly. It was probably something about discipline, like usual.

Gerd grinned to hear all of that.

Lario had been thinking, and now they said, “How about we take up the Kards on their envoy proposition? They want someone by Big Tree to talk about logistics with… with plane stuff. I’m too tired. One of the big women would be good.”

They closed their eyes, but then one of the nurses came over with their first of the triplets and handed her to Lario, and Lario opened their eyes and lit up with love and light. Another newborn got deposited in Lario’s other arm. Gerd got to hold his new xen, and they were so very cute, their tiny horn still just a bump on their forehead.

Lario sniffled, almost crying, as they said, “The girls need some female influences in their lives, so let’s get some women in our family.”

Gerd smiled. “Van and Pendalicus and some Kard envoys?”

“All options. I’ll take them all. 6 kids, Gerd! 6! I can barely keep up as it is…” They almost cried again, looking at their kids. “But I want to.”

Gerd chuckled.

Life was weird here on Ondak.

But life was good.

– – – –

Eventually, when Gerd and Lario turned 50 and the kids were in their late teens and early 20s, and ready for adventure themselves, Big Tree would issue a Quest, the Worldly Path, asking them to open a Gate Network to the rest of the universe, and to Margleknot, to start.

But that was a long time from now.

For now, they had kids to raise, right alongside all the rest of their crew and many others, in a town that they called Big Tree, but which everyone else called Hero’s Village.