Ophiel loved Earth. It was quaint.
Mostly, Ophiel loved Earth because he got to see where dad grew up. He got to see all the influences that turned him into who he was, from the lack of free housing to the lack of common help, to the over-reliance on comrce as the best way to make things better. That sort of economy had done a lot for Earth, but the place was a dump and the oceans were rising and precious few people were doing what needed to be done in order to prevent a catastrophe that everyone saw coming. Precious few people could actually do anything about those problems at all.
Dad could, though.
The year was 2024, almost 5 years since Dad and Sis had left this place through a planar tunnel. That planar tunnel had happened because the Fractal wanted to speak to the Dark, and it sent Erick and Jane… or maybe Dad and Jane sent themselves. The manners of how universes talked to each other was via 'particles' of people, and personal agency was important in those talks, but had that ball rolled downhill because it chose to roll down that hill, or was the nature of the universe, of 'gravity', doing most of the work?
Whatever the case, the Fractal was speaking with the Dark lots these days in the ways of action and exchange, and that's what the Fractal wanted. The Dark theoretically wanted that, too, but who really knew aside from Dad.
Whatever the case, the place where Dad and Jane had co from was falling apart, and Ophiel was here to do what he could for the place.
Ophiel was shaped like a normal human person of 22 years old. He was mostly in 1 body, but he had left a part of himself in the Benevolent Safehold he had planted in Antarctica in order to watch over that place. His wings were hidden behind so Elental Fairy which had effectively dismissed them from this plane of reality. And so, wearing a teeshirt and jeans, and with dark eyes that glimred rainbow if you saw them at the right angles which he didn't feel like changing at all, Ophiel walked through the cities of the United States.
Mostly the midwest.
He hopped around, taking a little Step here and there to get around. Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Fargo, Oklahoma City. Wherever the Lightning flickered, Ophiel moved. He cured a man's cancer, he shut off the gas in a house so it didn't explode, he helped a woman with so groceries and a few smaller things here and there. It was nice to do that for people. It was a lot easier than the usual help he did, which was to rescue people from monsters, usually pulling them through [Gate]s into Benevolence Itself and then setting them back down elsewhere. The Lightning told him what he could do, if he wanted, but Dad didn't expect Ophiel to do everything. Mostly, Benevolence was already working on its own to do things here and there.
Ophiel watched as an insurance agency experienced a 'catastrophic' failure in its new AI program that was designed to automatically deny claims, and now it was approving everyone. That was nice.
The lightning flickered a lot, and it never stopped, so eventually Ophiel decided to stop and take a break.
Chicago seed nice enough so he stopped there for so food.
A pizza? Yes, a pizza.
Ophiel went into a pizzeria and got so deep dish stuff. It was pretty good! As he ate he watched the people walk by the windows, going this way or that, completely oblivious that their world was going to change forever. Ophiel was here to do that. He just wasn't sure where to start.
Dad hadn't been certain, either, and he wasn't about to make decisions for worlds that were not beyond saving themselves.
Dad had told Ophiel, "I've got so good ideas but all of them are bad in certain ways, so before I do all of that, I want you to tell how you would do it, and we can talk about it. The girls and Evan want nothing to do with the place and Yggdrasil is too busy on Fenrir, but you showed interest in Earth, so... How would you introduce Earth to the universe, Ophiel?"
Eating pizza in a little place in Chicago, Ophiel wasn't quite sure how he would introduce Earth to mana and magic.
Ophiel could just make a scene sowhere. Show off his wings and his multiplicity. Get on the news. Make a few scenes everywhere, really… Except he had wings and they'd think he was so sort of Christian thing. Even if he turned into his Big Form and showed off all his eyes and stuff, they'd still think he was Christian. Probably even more so, really.
And then there was the House of Resons.
And… Yeah. Ophiel was probably going to contact them soon.
He saw their touch everywhere. In that climate change activism gathering over there. In that public broadcasting station over there, educating kids about morals through puppets. And in that big bank-thing over there, across the street.
It was not just a bank. It was so sort of market manipulation thing, or sothing. Ophiel noticed the big building because it was filled with all sorts of people who had all sorts of small magics, and Marks of Benevolence. That's why Ophiel had decided to have lunch here at this pizza place; to study the marketplace a bit more.
Also, the owner of the place had a Mark of Benevolence and Darkness. That was kinda common since they went hand-in-hand most of these days, but the big dude making the pizzas had a Mark of the Fractal, too, which was very rare outside of Personal Scripts. And there were no Personal Scripts on Earth. Not yet. So this guy had been given a rare gift, and possibly because he saw what no one else could; he saw possibilities everywhere.
Which is probably why he opened a pizza shop across from a big market/bank/thing; a lot of people with suits ate here all the ti.
Ophiel finished off his whole deep dish, large-sized pizza. A waitress had spotted him eating and eating, and was amazed, so she had told the head cook, who was also the owner and with three universal marks in him, that 'soone was eating the entire big pizza!'. The head cook had stuck his head out of the kitchen to see a few tis as Ophiel kept eating 1-pound slices of pizza.
A few waitresses clapped happily when Ophiel finished. So of them said they thought he couldn't do it, but then he went and did it!
The head cook smiled, saying, "You must be hungry, kid!" He set out so garlic knots in a to-go box, saying, "I packed this full just for you. Free! On the House."
The guy had said 'house' like 'House', full of aning. The only people to get the 'joke' were himself and maybe the cashier over there, who seed to be the guy's wife. She raised her head a little, and then marked down another tic on a private tally beside the register.
Ophiel happily took the box, asking, "On the House of Reasons?"
The head cook paused.
The cashier perked up a lot more, narrowing her eyes at Ophiel.
The head cook smiled wide. "I knew you seed like a good guy! Yes! The House of Reasons! You've heard of them?"
The waitresses all scoffed and went back to doing normal waitress stuff, though one of them muttered sothing about 'that cult'.
"I've heard of them from my father, but now I'm actually going to go find out about them myself."
"They're great! They helped to start this business and I make all the best pizza in all of Chicago now. I should introduce you to so people..."
And so began a month-long order of events that started with Ophiel getting introduced to one person, and then another person, and then, with a few more words said here or there, Ophiel ended up at a big House of Reasons eting on a Tuesday night. They were so of the nicest people Ophiel had ever t, offering him housing for the night when he told them he was currently holess, offering him als when they asked when he last ate and he said a day ago, and helping him et other people when he told them he was looking to make big changes in his life, and in the world. From one local chapter to the next, Ophiel couch-surfed around with purpose, thanks to the kindness of strangers.
He helped wherever he went, too.
A little healing here, a little bit of money miraculously appearing over there, helping to look after a baby while a mom went and did an errand, and just talking to people, learning how Earth worked.
Eventually, Ophiel ended up on a plane flying to Hawaii.
He could have gone there himself and a lot faster than a month of getting around on Earth, but this was working well. Every single person that t him seed to lay eyes on him and know sothing big was happening, and how he could help them and everyone else. But eventually they moved him up the chain of command. Ophiel hadn't told anyone about his real intentions here on Earth yet, but… Soon.
He was pretty sure the higher ups knew sothing was up with him, anyway. Sothing big. Even if they didn't know, then they knew in a Benevolence sort of way. At least so of them… Right?
This was the right way to do this, Ophiel reflected, as he watched the Hawaiian islands co into view beyond the windows of the plane. This gave everyone ti to get ready.
- - - -
Butterfly Prognostication was rather simple.
If a dark butterfly should appear when Deborah was strolling in her garden, asking questions, then the answer to her question was sothing close to, if not actually, 'no', depending on the appearance and disposition of the butterfly that crossed her sight. If a light butterfly should appear, then the answer was sothing like a 'yes'. Moths were an acceptable divining tool in a pinch, but who really knew with those guys.
But the Hawaiian islands didn't have many true black or white butterflies, and so she had needed to get creative with her interpretations of the local flutterers many years ago. It was one of the reasons that she loved this place the most, actually.
The Asian Swallowtail held a special place in Deborah's heart, and in her butterfly magic.
The Asian Swallowtail was mostly black and white, but sotis the white was more yellow, and the female had blue and orange on the tail, while the male had very little blue and orange. They made excellent prognostication buddies, because even as much as a twist of the wing or a shaft of sunlight or shadow could turn them into a myriad of different answers.
And sohow, about 500 of them had molted from so unknown citrus field or sowhere, and they were fluttering all over her gardens, outside of her house.
Deborah had woken to the sight with a gasp, and then began making big, sweeping preparations for the war. Because the Asian Swallowtail was a sign of Grandpa. The Founder. It was the butterfly she had associated most closely with him, and there were so many of them. She had woken everyone she could wake. She had told people she trusted to keep eyes open. The House of Resons, inside the House of Reason, was on full alert.
That had been a month ago.
The mania had mostly died down and Deborah had lost a lot of political favor when nothing big happened right away.
Deborah was convinced sothing was happening, though. She just couldn't see it.
Deborah sipped her coffee as she sat at her desk, watching the wall, filled with screens, each of them holding a live stream from a butterfly garden she had personally started in this or that part of the world. And she worried. Each garden needed to be maintained for the butterflies, but she had mostly hired out that sort of help, so each of these gardens was not a perfect weather vane of the world.
But it was easy to find young witches who were eager to learn their power, to learn what Deborah could teach them, and they needed so prognostication tools anyway, and so, Deborah piggybacked when she could. Even her main garden, here in Hawaii, was mostly maintained by younger witches. Deborah just put her touches onto it every weekend; trimming trees and bushes and weeding the flower fields. Deborah simply didn't have the ti to maintain the gardens like they should be maintained, even if she was only maintaining a tenth of the House of Reasons that she used to control.
Several more splits of faith had occurred when Grandfather left five years ago, and more splits might be happening sooner, rather than later, thanks to Deborah's mania...
And yet Asian Swallowtails were still everywhere, on every live stream from all parts of the world, and if not them, then other black and white butterflies. Marbled Whites in England. African Caper Whites in South Africa. Ohgomadaras in Japan. Particularly white thona Themistos in Brazil. Where did they all co from! Where did they hatch! So of these life cycles were not this long, but the butterflies were still alive, a month later.
So people in the House thought Deborah was doing so sort of stunt.
So people were on even higher alert, though; like Deborah.
And right now, a very white Morpho Luna was hanging out near the cara in the xico garden, fluttering its wings. It looked rather rainbowish-white-black as it moved. Normal Morphos, or rather the ones that everyone thought of, were iridescent blue. This one was white and black and iridescent anyway.
It seed rather cheeky.
Gail walked into Deborah's office with a stack of reports, looking nonchalant about everything happening on the wall.
Deborah asked her, "Look at that one there? Doesn't that Morpho Luna look like the cat that got the cream?"
Gail plopped the papers down, giving a glance toward the wall… She paused. She humd. "Maybe it's a bit… Aggressive?"
"But in a subtle sort of way?" Deborah asked.
"Maybe in a 'this is happening' sort of way." Gail said, "That's Marianne's garden, isn't it? She's always been focused on that war of yours."
Deborah stared at Gail, saying, "It's a real thing. We were warned, Gail."
With perfect diplomacy, Gail said, "I believe that the warning was real, but I also believe that the Founder was always going to win his war. That's what my own vine reading has told for the last month, ever since this whole mass maturation event started."
Deborah paused. She looked at her old friend. "… You actually did a reading? Recently?"
Gail winced. It was obvious she had not wanted to tell Deborah that, but Deborah knew things sotis.
Deborah grinned, and then huffed a laugh. "Your reading must have turned out just as bad as mine!"
Gail said, "The vine curled too much. It started growing in squares, though. Not sure what that ant. It's still 3 days out from flowering, too, so… I didn't want to tell you before the actual reading happened."
Gail had been with the House of Reasons for 20 years, and though she wasn't as fast with her magic as so people she truly knew how to make the best predictions on long-ranging questions, though her vine magic did take a long while to mature to a readable state.
Deborah said, "I've told you a hundred tis Gail, your readings are exactly what they are ant to be; you just don't understand enough to know the full extent of what you're looking at."
Gail sighed a little. "If the Founder would have told us more, then I would have been able to read the vines better. Anything I ask the vines about him always goes weird."
From any other person, Deborah would have worried that those words were a prelude to yet another departure; another splitting of the House into smaller and smaller fractions. But Gail was just blowing concerns into the wind.
Deborah said, "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out when we need to." She picked up the stack of papers Gail had brought in, shuffling through them, asking, "Anyone interesting?" She picked one out a random—
Her fingers sparked with static as she opened the folder, briefly seeming like the brightest thing in the room. And then the static was gone, and Deborah imagined she had imagined that.
Gail sucked in a breath, though, saying, "That one, that you picked out. Oh my gods."
Deborah breathed shallowly as she looked down at the open folder, at the image of a young man, taken from a security cara, and then a few more images at local gatherings of the House of Reasons over the past few weeks. He looked rather cute, in a nephew sort of way. Like Deborah needed to give him so food and fatten him up. Black hair, dark eyes, but otherwise a rather plain, North-Arican-white sort of complexion…
And yet, the image of him smiling at the cara had caught Deborah's gaze.
A flash of insight ca and then went.
Deborah breathed out as she sat the picture down, and then briefly looked over the reports themselves. Mostly, it was personal recomndations from the Chicago branch. They had all seen the kid's spark of goodness and they wanted it nurtured, even if they didn't quite have the words to describe their reasonings. Such was the Touch of the Founder, as so people called it. The House of Reasons was a very large organization, but only a few people at the top knew what the rest of them all knew.
That magic was real.
That power could be had, in the service of good.
And that they needed to support each other, for whatever might co.
Deborah closed the portfolio on the kid, and then softly said, "I want to et him, Gail. I need to et this 'Ophiel Flatt' today… It has to be a fake na, right?"
"Absolutely. From what I heard it took so doing to get him the plane tickets. He has no paperwork or social security number or anything like that."
Holy shit.
Deborah got up from her chair, saying, "He's staying at the hotel, right?"
Gail paused. "… Maybe you should let him stay under observation for a day or three."
"Nope!"
- - - -
Ophiel sipped a drink out of a coconut as he sat by a pool, by the ocean. Tall palms waved in the gentle breeze and the world slled of sunscreen and salt. Life was good. Everyone here had magic, too, which was nice to see. It felt like ho again, but in a lesser sort of way. The air was not thick with power, and yet power existed. All of the power here was Benevolence, too, which was just… really nice, really.
Ophiel smiled as he sat in the sun, in his black board shorts, drinking his drink and waiting.
He was also down at the Safehold in Antarctica, fixing up the place. More than a billion people had been ushered through there, onto other worlds and other lands. The backlog was massive and kinda hard to get at due to the breadth of ti separating this day and age from all the other years in Earth's history, but so far no other gods had interfered in the necessary ti magics. So far, the reincarnation of every dead soul to ever die on Dad's Earth from the last 75 years was going well.
When so of those souls from that long ago were told about their options, only about half of them chose to live again, elsewhere. The further back the magic went, the less likely people were to accept reincarnations and the harder it was to place people in new lives. Fenrir was taking a lot of them, though.
This wasn't the first world that Ophiel had reincarnated, and it would not be the last, but by the pure nature of the situation, this sort of situation didn't happen too often. After all, how does one discover a world that doesn't already have a fractal god on it? Not very often. Going through any normal channels at all, to find an unclaid world, would be going through those channels, and all known worlds were claid.
That's what made them 'known worlds'.
Perhaps Earth was claid, too, but Ophiel had yet to see any signs of soone disallowing the grand reincarnations at Antarctica. Eh! Ophiel put that problem out of his mind.
He focused on the present, because Deborah was coming out of the hotel, wearing a veiled swimsuit and a big hat, looking like a normal sort of person simply coming out to the pool by the ocean.
She got a coconut drink of her own and sat down two lounge chairs away from Ophiel.
"Ah! This is the life!" Deborah said, smiling, starting up a conversation with Ophiel, a 'complete stranger'. A lot of people in the House of Reasons did that. They made attempts to make people feel more welco, and to foster a sense of community.
Ophiel smiled back, saying, "It's pretty great. I'm Ophiel. Nice to et you."
Deborah grinned. "Deborah. What brings you out here, Ophiel? You look a little young to be vacationing alone."
"I'm here for this House of Reasons thing. They put on a plane and shipped out here, said I should et so people and they'd help figure out my life."
Deborah grinned. "Those people are great! They own this hotel. Let anyone co in and hang out as long as they attend so seminars first. That's why I'm here."
"I already went through one of those. Most everyone on the plane did, but you weren't on the plane? Are you a local?"
"Not originally, but I've been here for 15 years and I love the place. I am in the House of Reasons, though, and I'll be doing intake this year," Deborah said, dropping the casual act a little. "Right now I'm just eting people where they are."
Ophiel chuckled. "That's a good way to do it; et people where they are. It's usually less disruptive that way."
Deborah blinked a little, and then she smiled softly. "Where are you from, Ophiel? That's a pretty nifty na you got there."
"Dad gave it to on a world far from this one, called Veird, where he and his daughter fell to about 30 years ago, but also just 5 years ago. Ti is wonky at vast distances, and when Layers and gods are involved."
Deborah's heart beat erratically as her eyes went wide.
Ophiel smiled softly, saying, "He won his war, Deborah. It's solved, fixed, forevermore, and he sent back here to decide how to bring Earth into the greater universe. Want to talk about that? Or do you want to hang out at the pool for a while?"
Deborah's eyes dilated as she breathed deep. Her chin wobbled with emotion as her throat clenched. She wasn't convinced, though. She quietly asked, "Do you have proof?"
Without showing anything at all, Ophiel looked at the empty, blue sky, and said, "It looks like rain."
Deborah's heart skipped a beat as the empty sky flickered with new clouds, rumbling with distant thunder. The clouds rolled in, and the rain began. The rain did not touch them at the poolside, though. Rain cascaded around a [Weather Ward] that Ophiel had put up.
The rest of the world vanished behind the sudden rainstorm, but it was a soft sort of rainstorm. Gentle, and yet obscuring. The perfect thing to use to hide a small eting, and yet, if people were really looking, this eting wouldn't be hidden at all.
Deborah stared at the sky, at the rain.
Ophiel sipped his drink, letting her have a mont.
Deborah looked to him. "You really are… connected to him?"
Ophiel sat up properly to face Deborah as he let his wings out, all large and black and rainbow, saying, "Yes. I'm—"
Deborah jolted out of her seat to stand on the pool deck, exclaiming, "What the fucking fuck?! He said he wasn't god!"
"… Er." Ophiel put his wings away. He stood up, too…
And he wasn't sure where to begin.
Deborah demanded, "Was he a god, or not?"
"Okay! That's a good starting point. He was not a god. He is now. He's not the god of Christianity. But obviously there was so influence here and there and dad's a god now, for sure. I'm his son, one of his paladins, and since you're his adopted granddaughter..." Ophiel held out a welcoming hand, smiling, saying, "Nice to et you, sibling Deborah. Or niece?"
Deborah looked at his hand for a mont.
Ophiel waited.
Deborah grinned, and then she chuckled. She shed a tear as she laughed, saying, "I'm the aunt. You can be my nephew." And then she hugged him, saying, "Welco to Earth, Nephew!"
Ophiel chuckled on Deborah's shoulder, saying, "I'll have to introduce you to all the others soti. You've got, like… a lot of siblings. We're all sort of connected to dad in various ways."
Deborah held tight, asking, "He's okay, then?"
Ophiel held her back, saying, "He's good. Dad won his war. Earth is safe from the bad ending, but now we're here and we have to make a good beginning. All secrets will not be secret anymore."
Deborah pulled back, wiping away a sudden tear as the rain fell all around their little [Ward]ed area. She stood facing Ophiel, saying, "Let's start with so nas, then. Can you finally tell us his real na?"
Ophiel smiled, saying, "Dad's na is Erick Flatt, though a lot of people call him a lot of things. Apparent King. Wizard of Benevolence. Dragon God of Many Colors. Light in the Dark. Benevolent Darkness. Savior of Veird and Father of Yggdrasil. God of the Bright Path. God of the New Path. Hand in the Sky. There's a lot more and he's racking up more nas every single day. Every new world he visits and saves from disaster gives him a different na. I assu you have a few nas for him here. He told a lot about what he had done on Earth, but not everything."
Deborah wiped away another tear, saying, "We call him the Founder, mostly. I called him Grandpa, though."
Ophiel grinned. "I just called him 'Dad'."
Deborah laughed happily.
Ophiel asked, "Have you made many plans to integrate Earth into the wider universe?"
"Oh gods," Deborah said, still laughing a little, and yet understanding more of the situation by the mont. She had clearly been expecting a day like this for years now, but it overwheld her a lot more than she had expected it to. She said, "We have so plans. None of them were deed acceptable. We tried bringing in so governnts across the world a few different tis but we had to abort those plans when the prognostications pointed toward everything going wrong— and you do not want to ignore the prognostications. We found that out the hard way a few tis." She breathed deep, then said, "The main problem is that powerful people like to prey on the magic of the House of Resons in order to use it for themselves, and that was bad, so relations broke down. But twice now, so people broke from the House in order to work with those other nations, trying to change them from the inside, even as they used their power for their own efforts. The China House and the Russian House… We barely have contact with them anymore, and the Arican House is… It's complicated. We talk to them the most, but… I am not the lead of the Arican House anymore." Deborah paused. She asked, "Would you like a tour of the place? We can talk about so of that stuff… But I need to know, first..." She spoke seriously, "Will Grandpa be coming back?"
Ophiel said, "He's pretty busy back ho on Fenrir, and in the Painted Cosmology beyond." He clarified, "Fenrir is a dyson sphere around a sun with a radius of about Earth-Distance, while the Painted Cosmology is another universe beyond that land. Him and the other gods and a bunch of fae are building all of that right now, using the mana made on Fenrir and the new universe itself to fund the expansion of that universe. That other universe is entirely self-sufficient, but more growth is better at this stage of the project. It's a forever-project, though, so they're taking constant breaks."
Deborah blinked a few tis. And then she said, "Oh yeah." She picked up her coconut drink. "We should have this discussion inside."
Ophiel conjured so grey robes onto his body, asking, "Is this the proper look?"
Deborah looked at Ophiel, and then she broke down in tears, sobbing about how this was really real, and how she had felt so lost, and then Ophiel hugged her again. She hugged back, but only briefly, then she patted him on the shoulders and chuckled as she stepped back.
She looked embarrassed as she said, "Maybe sothing a little less ominous."
Ophiel opted for a normal Hawaiian shirt, but in greyscale and black and white.
"Better," Deborah said. "Now let's go blow so minds. You can turn off the rain, though."
Ophiel smiled and flicked so power at the sky, unraveling the working he had put into the heavens. The rain soon stopped, and Ophiel walked beside Deborah into the House of Reasons Hotel…
Ophiel spotted the coconut drink maker kneeling on the ground, a rosary in his hand as he mumbled prayers to the divine. He looked up at Ophiel and then purposefully averted his gaze from Ophiel.
… Ophiel did not wince —much to his own surprise!— and let the prayer happen without interruption.
As he walked into the house, he told Deborah, "I'm not an angel, the angels I know are nothing like what popular dia shows here, and I know my black wings probably ans sothing to you due to your butterfly magics… I'm not sure how to handle that, exactly."
Deborah laughed as she wiped away another tear, saying, "It's a whole can of worms, isn't it." She smiled. "Birds are terrible for prognostication and I banished them from my concerns ages ago."
Ophiel laughed at that.
Several people were standing around the hotel lobby as Ophiel and Deborah reached it. There were four maids and four people in various fancy clothes, from one woman wearing a suit to a Japanese guy wearing a semi-formal yukata. All of them were looking Ophiel's way. The Japanese guy, and his two bodyguards, had just walked into the front door, while Ophiel and Deborah had walked in the back way, from the pool.
Deborah froze as she saw the Japanese guy.
And then Deborah pointedly ignored the Japanese guy, and gestured to the woman in a suit, "Ophiel, this is my right hand woman, Gail." She raised her voice, saying, "Everyone!" She glared at the Japanese guy. "—And Toshi—" She added, "Ophiel is the Founder's son. The Founder is not coming back yet, but he will be back soon. Start rumors if you want. We're not hiding this. The Reunification of the House will begin today, in the standard outline for such a reunification that I have outlined in the past."
People gasped.
People stared at Ophiel.
Without moving, Toshi threw a [Benevolence Jolt] at Ophiel, who easily caught the magic and held it in his hands. He probably called it sothing besides [Benevolence Jolt], though. What would he have called it? White lightning? Eh!
It didn't hurt.
The confusion of Ophiel's arrival and Deborah's declaration vanished in the light of that lightning. Everyone glared at Toshi, while his bodyguards backed him up.
And then Deborah yelled at the guy, "WHAT THE FUCK, TOSHI!"
"Kill the Buddha," was Toshi's only response.
Gail retorted, "That's not even what that saying ans."
Ophiel flickered away the lightning in his hand like it was nothing more than static, saying, "You attribute way too much divinity to , Toshi-chan."
Toshi narrowed his eyes at the honorific 'chan'.
Ophiel grinned.
And thus began 3 days of rather complicated political chaos that Ophiel mostly sailed through, playing his cards close to his chest, for now. When the initial chaos turned to solid desire for questions to be answered, that was when Ophiel told Deborah that he was ready to start giving out all the details, and answering all the questions.
"But I'll need to give a presentation, first," Ophiel said.
"Oh gods, Ophiel," Deborah said, "I don't think we're ready for that yet." She tried, "Next month?"
Ophiel grinned. "We're ready now."
- - - -
Several heads of the various Houses of Reason sat around a large U-shaped table in a conference room in Honolulu. All of them had extra people with them, and though Deborah had limited it to 2 extra people, so had as many as 5. The extras sat at the back of the room, practically stacked together. So people stood outside of the room.
Ophiel had intended this to be a top-level dispensation of information, but it was what it was, and that was fine.
Toshi softly argued with a woman from the Russian House, nad Kudrina, about how this was really happening. He did not like any part of this. Kudrina still didn't believe this was happening at all, and that it was all so sort of ruse, but she was here anyway.
Other disbelievers had simply chosen not to co.
Deborah was one room over, beyond a thin door, softly yelling into her phone. And then she hung up. She walked back into the room, keeping her face serene. "It appears House China has chosen to simply not co, and their representatives here in the hotel are walking out."
Kudrina stood up and spoke in a thick Russian accent, "We never should have co back, either." She looked at Ophiel. "He is a charlatan. I do not know how he got the magical might he has, but the rain had to have been a cooperative effort from the Hawaiian House, and we will be looking into that."
Toshi stood, saying, "Your House is in disarray, Deborah. We are glad we left it."
Deborah looked about ready to strangle every single person in that room.
Another person stood up to walk away.
Ophiel was currently in a few different places. Most of his attention was on the Safehold down in Antarctica, where a billion souls had already been processed. Benevolence's reach through ti was mostly done, but there would always be so gathering happening due to the nature of slices of infinity, and the multiverse. Dad's original slice of Earth was on to normal operations, for now; Everyone who died on Earth from now on would be funneled through there, and given choices.
And so, Ophiel had so spare bodies to throw at this particular non-cooperation happening before him.
Ophiel had been waiting for more people to gather, but it appeared the room would grow less crowded, instead of more.
Ophiel stepped to the center of the U in the conference room, and said, "I will now prove that I am not a false paladin."
Toshi scoffed at the word 'paladin', starting to say sothing, but he never got far.
Ophiel opened [Gate]s, the rings of lightning revealing lands beyond this sterilized office space. One portal opened up to a specific place near Beijing, China, where an old man nad Jin Jin stood in his 'office', looking at the world beyond, where a large wall separated him and his building from the forested mountains beyond. Jin Jin was the leader of House China, though he hadn't been allowed to do much in a long while.
The people in the conference room could see the man looking at the wall beyond his compound, and how he was dressed in plain clothes with ID tags on his sleeves. He had no computer on his desk, and he had no electronics anywhere in his 'office', but he did have papers.
Jin Jin turned and saw the portal. He smiled, and said, "Ah. Hello. I was wondering how this was going to happen. I just step through, yes?"
Ophiel had not spoken to the man before now, but Benevolence had a way of letting people know when stuff was happening that was good for them, and that's what Ophiel was doing right now.
Ophiel said, "Yup. Co on through."
Jin Jin ca on through and smiled as he saw everyone else in the room. "Ah! Friends. I have missed you all. How has the world been since my imprisonnt?"
Stunned silence.
No one said anything.
Ophiel told Jin Jin, "I'm already picking up your compatriots and depositing them downstairs." He held up several pill-shaped trackers that were still covered in blood. "I took the liberty of removing all of your trackers, as well." Ophiel set them on the table, and then [Cleanse]ed the blood from his hands, as he turned and said to the Russian woman, Kudrina, "Your situation is stickier. We can discuss that later."
More stunned silence.
Kudrina went stoic as a few eyes turned toward her.
Ophiel dismissed the [Gate].
Jin Jin was busy getting his seat at the table, so that is what he did while everyone else just stared. When he sat down he happily asked, "What's happening, my friends? Who is this young man who rescued us?"
Ophiel forestalled the drama of the mont, raising a hand to conjure a lightward image of Fenrir about two ters across. He moved that image to the back of the room, saying, "I'm the son of your Founder. I know him as Erick Flatt. Dad."
All possible conversation died in its crib as Ophiel conjured more lightward images.
Veird with its onion-like layers of land carved away to reveal the whole structure. Size comparisons of Veird to Earth. Comparisons of Veird to Fenrir. He made so nurical notations in the air, giving relative population numbers of the various lands, along with percentages of habitation. Fenrir was currently at a population of 3.9 trillion. Veird was at 16 billion, which was a vast improvent from before the Red War. Earth was at 8 billion.
Fenrir, with 2 million moons around it, had a total surface area sowhere in the 5x10^19 area. With its population of 3.9 trillion it was still only .000002% inhabited-by-average. It was actually a lot less inhabited than that since most people lived in communities of various sorts, condensing population down to civilization centers held together by gate networks, but Ophiel's displayed numbers were fine for as-the-[Fireball]-falls sorts of comparisons.
That wasn't counting the Painted Cosmology beyond Fenrir, though. Ophiel displayed that particular land-space number as ∞. That population was unknown to Ophiel, since it was growing all the ti. He put up a '
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