Reroll

“What would be the ‘perfect argument’ to convince you that the baseline humans are people worthy of respect and protection?”

The ‘perfect argument’ is a term from philosophy: It's the thing you can say to a person that not only can they not contradict, but actually convinces of the thing, properly, at least for that person. And if I have the basics of a magical bet down… he's compelled to give his own. Now, with this particular question, I am not interested in the answer itself: It's not MY perfect argument.

It's Merlin's.

Even covering his ears wouldn't help: It's coming out of his mouth. He can't interrupt himself, or escape himself, and it's coming from him, so even were he to go to an area where sound did not work… he'd still be saying it, and would thus still be forced to process what he's saying.

It takes over an hour.  He sits there, nominally talking to me, going over how Mythics come from humans, how humans are capable of great things, how humans originate the Myths that power Mythics and ultimately can't exist without them, and many others. Frankly, at the end, if it weren't for the fact that I don't sleep anymore, I'd be nodding off.

But I do sit through it: It's important he say it.

When he's done, I ask him another question: “Why did you say I ruined you?”

“It will take me years to rebuild my Proxy,” he shakes his head, “maybe decades. Until I do, I'm basically a beginner again.  I'll be losing a lot more in the way of Challenges now, so my score will fall, and others’ will rise at my expense. Sometime over the next several months… I'll no longer be The Merlin.”

Hmm. That's no good: I just got him on board with the ‘keep the humans' plan.  I can fix it, but if I just give that away, it'll wreck his pride more than it already is.  Hmm… “What's it worth to you?”

The current grand wizard laughs weakly, “No, I can't just use one of your amazingly solid illusions: As effective as that would be, a proxy needs to represent the wizard or witch's power:  We have to make them ourselves.  I didn't mention it because that was already clear you were using your own anyway.”

“I don't intend to lend you a shadow,” although I could do that readily enough, “I was planning on restoring your construct to operational status.”

Merlin pauses, “You can't just repair a magical construct once the magic has fled: It's completely dead.  It has to be rebuilt from scratch.”

“Yeah… that's your Myth.  Mine has exceptions to such things.” My Myth is all about exceptions, really… “I can repair it back to where it was if we don't wait too long,” about two or three weeks for now, “What's it worth to you?”

“You would hold my livelihood hostage?” Merlin looks incredulous.

Actually, I'd fix it for free, but that would do more harm than good, as you wouldn't feel you earned it, and always resent me for it, “more like it comes with something of a cost to me,” a few minutes of my time, usage of some minions I already made, and a couple of spell points… that I get for free with this build, “so I kind of need it to be worth it” okay, that last is an outright lie.

“Hmm… you already have me going along with the big thing you wanted…” Marty considers, “...what can I offer you, given how quickly you made that creature?”

I shake my head, “That creature was a puzzle. She has a few very serious weaknesses, of which your proxy was unable to take advantage. Had you been properly prepared for her, that would have gone much differently,” which also means I should prepare a few less fragile minions soon… there's a template or two that allows purchasing arbitrary monsters as construct minions… I should look those up, “At the end of the day what I'll need to make all this work? Reliable allies that can actually think for themselves. My shadows can certainly follow orders and have a degree of autonomy… but short of me giving them orders that amount to them hurting themselves for no good reason, they'll do what I say, not what's right: I can't account for every possible scenario.”

“A reliable ally, huh?” The wizard considers, “I can't say you've been anything but honorable… I mean, you keep secrets, like your name…”

“I literally can’t refer to myself by my birth name, and you had yourself introduced by a title that seems like a name.”

“...your resources, and your nature…”

“I've been upfront about why I'm not divulging that: It could be used against me.”  Probably.

Marty sighs, “...but as I was saying: All your actual dealings are on the level.  So yes, I can be your ally.”

I nod, “All right…” I pretend to steel myself against a painful task, “...I'll go get it done…”

I head down to the arena, look at the shattered pile of jade, pull out my Library, and begin the long casting, backed by the right Life talents.

Specifically: The main talent is Resurrection, which brings a living creature back from the dead. A construct, however, is not a living creature, so another talent is strictly necessary: Esoteric Healing. That permits Life talents to work on non-living creatures too… and thus, raise a construct from the dead.  Now, the Resurrection talent has a rather nasty drawback: The person coming back loses a chunk of their life force. I fix this by way of the Make Whole talent, which can explicitly handle that, and can explicitly be combined with the Resurrection talent.

So in three minutes, I have a very confused jade dragon looking around as I'm putting away my Library.

“Master, what…” the Jade dragon starts to say.

Merlin interrupts with what seems to be a nonsense word, and the dragon immediately returns to statuette form.  

Hmm. I'd complain about slavery, but created creatures are like that sometimes. If my shadows ever actually ask to be free of me, I'll need to think of what I'm going to do… short term, I think I'm going to abandon further use of the Unwilling archetype.

I put most of my minions away, leaving one out to chat.  We start heading back up topside.

“You have far too much raw power, you realize?” Marty chats as we go.

I have my proxy shrug, “Yes. As my Alice persona once said: ‘I cannot be held accountable.’ It's… not an entirely true statement: I do have a couple of real friends that got mixed up in the same Myth I did, and they could potentially hold me accountable,” maybe, “and there's more than one reason I want allies. There's the flexibility thing: The unquestioning obedience I get when I ‘make friends’ is useful, yes…”

“You could probably take over the world with those.”

“...indeed. But that same unquestioning obedience would lead to rules applied absolutely: It would make for a rather rough dictatorship.” I shake my head, “I don't want that.” Among other things, empires tend to shatter when the emperor dies, and I will want to retire from administrative work at some point… assuming I ever can retire at all.

“So you seek out other people to… what, rule with you?”

Eugh, “I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that. I'd much rather leave most societal structures in place and just tweak the ones that bother me the most.”

“Hmm,” Merlin shakes his head, “Good luck with that.  Still… you have my support.”

As we get to the door, I have my proxy nod, “Thanks.  Be seeing you.”

He waves, and I put away my proxy.  I then focus, and use True Teleport to go to a place with which I am very familiar:

Home.

I stay invisible and incorporeal: I can't be who I was, not yet.  I'm kind of tormenting myself, seeing my mom, dad, and siblings going about their day… but I do have something I want to do.

My Mythic Ring, as of last reroll, has the “Soul Vault” property from Mythic Spheres… and “Flexible Bond” from Pathfinder's base Mythic set. “Flexible Bond” isn't generally for players: It lets me lend the item out to a few people (five with my setup).  Which will fit my family members with a little room to spare. The first does a couple things, the most notable of which is let me use my ring as a phylactery of sorts: It will rebuild my body in a day if I die.  Now, individually, neither is useful for me: I keep my ring with me full time, and am already immortal.  But combined?  I can flag up to five people to be immortal... like my mom, my dad, and my sisters, who are all conveniently sitting down at dinner, eating mom’s lasagna. It smells delicious.

Pity I can't join them.

I shake my head, and do what I came to do: Fill four of my five “no dying” slots.  Considering, I also build each a ‘Guardian Angel’: One of my ‘soldier’ build shadow minions for each of them, tasked with keeping them safe.  They're ‘real’ for everyone, but invisible to all senses.  Hopefully they never need to do anything… but just in case, every member of my immediate family will have a bodyguard watching their backs… and if something the bodyguard can't handle crops up, they have a telepathic link back to me.

But the bodyguards have weapons available that will generally get through tank armor in less than a minute, so I hope that doesn't come up.

Job done, I head back to college via teleportation.

And I'm crying….