Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

The Mick halted for just a second, ostensibly for those who had jumped free of the Disks to return with their own skulls and spoils. Then Kopf grabbed a stone tile off the ground, carved into a familiar pattern to most of them, and laid it across yet another Disk.

“You and you. Start Burning this crap down,” the Lady Magos pointed at two Stoneholders, who not coincidentally had Artificer Levels.

The two Stoneholders next to the tile looked at the Infusing Pattern as the magical spoils of war shifted over on top of it, then they hurriedly sat down and lit it up with the Artificing magic that would reduce the undead Gear to goldweight Essence that could be rapidly applied to other magical items to enhance them.

The Magos snapped her fingers again, and still not breathing hard at all, the Mick took off again, heading up the pass towards the cliff side.

Adso watched the corpses of the undead Burning away into the healthy purity of the vivic mists as they moved rapidly away on the smooth passage of the Disks, rising and falling over the landscape without the jarring and the juking that would accompany riding wagons or beasts.

Five hundred undead. Dead in basically one spell volley. They hadn’t had a prayer of surviving, even if they’d known what was coming.

Yes, he understood, had been able to FEEL, the glorious righteousness and anathema of her magic to the undead. It had felt like the Wrath of Heaven punching into the unclean, there to wipe them from the world as the unholy, dead things that they were, no longer belonging to or meant for the lands of the living.

He could also feel how judgmental some of those energies could be, and how he could never hope to wield them himself… and indeed, how they might burn him and his very soul for some of the things he had done.

The undead had no chance. He understood very well that a twitch of her finger would have finished the job, and she hadn’t needed the fighters to wipe them.

Harvest the heads, perhaps...

Adso also knew that the Stoneholders were all thinking the same thing as he did. If that army had been them, and she had been standing opposite them, would any of them still be alive?

“Two miles up the pass and then the big jump, Lord Mick,” he said, pushing I Serve back home in its scabbard and returning his gaze forward.

“Aye, that much I remember,” the old scoundrel replied to him, legs pumping tirelessly as he skated uphill.

The Black Aluvian said nothing more, moving with a greater speed and energy than Adso had ever seen, even from before the Fall. He found himself envying his fellow paramount and, if he remembered correctly, occasional student and hireling employed by Master Oswald, back then.

Clearly, this Imperial Princess also knew things of great import and power, and had shared them with the Mick… and there were things that either Briggs didn’t know, or had not likewise shared.

Given all that he had shared, that was not all that surprising, as the Commander’s lore had been a revolution among the Stoneholders, a firm path for them to start on for self-improvement, particularly for those who had only been children at the time of the Fall.

It also mean there might be a bias in who they taught. He found the thought disquieting, and shrugged it off.

Just the knowledge of how to Name his Weapon and help it grow had been priceless. He now wielded a Dagger that was finer than anything he had ever owned, even before the Fall, its only limits being his own and understanding of what it might become.

Still, he could not help but asking, “Has she ever done anything like that… to things other than the undead?” he asked the older paramount carefully.

“Dreadfully wonderful an’ horrifying beautiful shite, aren’t it?” the Mick replied over his shoulder without hesitation. “She knows exactly how it looks, Adso. An’ if the sight of it gives some wild-balled nutjob of a conqueror second thoughts about thinking war is the right way t’ solve all yer problems, she’s done things exactly right, no?”

Adso considered that perspective, and if her character was noble, it wasn’t a bad one, from any standpoint. “And if she is the conqueror?” he had to ask.

“Adso, if ye knew her at all, ye’d slap yerself fer even askin’ the question. Y’know what she loves t’ do?” The Mick glanced over at him wryly. “She likes to stroll around an’ make roads, an’ trails, an’ paths, an’ bridges, an’ cute little seating nooks where folks can sit an’ watch the sun. She pops up Lights so ye can see the way t’ go at day or night in safety, and fountains so ye’ve safe water t’ drink…

“An’ when she sees undead she becomes a machine o’ massacre, an’ make no bones about it. She’ll not rest until there’s naught an undead left on the island, be it the noble fools o’ me uncle in Hebian-To, caught up in a curse she WILL break for them, or the blood-magic born immortality o’ these damned Empyreans sacrificin’ one another for their chance to avoid death.”

Adso took a long, deep breath. There were emotional undercurrents in the Mick’s voice that couldn’t really be feigned, as much fear as respect. “Where does she get such an attitude?”

He was expecting a short tale about slain family an’ friends. Instead, the Mick said, “She says she’s seen what happens to entire worlds when the undead take over, an’ there’s no life, no living, an’ it’s all death, everywhere. They are driven to kill an’ dominate the living, doomed to try an’ wipe life from the world, an’ she’ll make damn sure she’ll kill them all t’ see that never happens.”

Entire worlds? Adso glanced back at her, sitting there so serenely, eyes back to mere silver again, not shining… but there was still a nameless Song rising and falling in the background, and the Weapons of everyone were still gently ringing in time with it, each in its own Note, somehow blending into a greater whole as they did so.

“The great and the Good can be as terrible an’ fearsome in their own way as the great and the horrible, Adso. If not, the horrible would always be winnin’. ‘Tis something we dinnae want t’ see out of the nice ones, but ye know, when the nice ones finally give up bein’ nice…”

He trailed off knowingly, and this time it was Adso’s turn to nod.

It was true. There were people who were rat bastards right from the go, and there were people who were just nice down to their bones. But when you pushed those nice people past their limits, when all their attempts to make you see reason, get along, and just plain shape up had fallen flat, well...

Nice people who stepped over that line were the deadliest damn things to deal with. As you’d pushed aside all reason before, they’d push aside all your reasons after, all your excuses, all your words and lies, and they’d make you dead. They’d do it with terrifying focus, and were nearly impossible to bribe, misdirect, fool, parley with, or turn aside.

The time to do things had been when they were nice, and it was clear that the Lady Magos was absolutely done with being nice about undead.

“The shades? The olthoi?” he had to ask.

“The shades she has sympathy for, hearing how the first were made, but that dinnae give them the right t’ act as arsehats, so she’s all about wiping them an’ setting their souls free o’ the dark. The olthoi… she be having a truly frightening understandin’ o’ the olthoi horde an’ drive an’ queens, but she also be havin’ a lot t’ juggle on her plate.

“When Her Highness says it’s time to pare the olthoi, that be what is goin’ t’ happen, an’ make no bones about it.”

“She really is an Imperial Princess? Her father really is the Emperor of Ispar?” Adso still found it hard to believe.

“Aye, ‘tis hard t’ believe. But me uncle knew both her folks, an’ he believes her to his rotting bones. As fer me, she made that claim in, ugh, Truth, an’ ye cannot believe it be a lie.”

Adso felt the hairs on his arm stand on end, and a shiver go up his spine at the merest edges around that Word that the Mick had stumbled over. “That…”

“The Lady Magos can say it. I can but say that she can say it. And when ye hear it, ye’ll know, an’ that will be that. The old man heard it, he knows, he don’t just believe.”

And that was going to be good enough for Adso, who just nodded as the edge of the pass drew closer.

------------------

The Mick jumped, without any fear whatsoever.

Once, in the days before the Fall, he would have been reluctant to do this. It was true that they’d been able to fall most any distance, land, get some shooting pains up the ankles and knees, and then a minute later it were all healed up and fine and like it never were.

But landin’ and bouncin’ down a slope were two different things. If you didn’t clear the base of the mountain, then you started bouncing down it, and were killed by rapid inches, your broken and battered body coming to a rest at the foot of the mount, before discorporating as you were sent off to the Lifestone.

Deathstone. Still habit, even now...

That were before the Cloudstepping Sandals he could bring up his feet now, or Levitating, or Featherweighting himself, or just plain Flying, if he were of a mind to.

Mists gathered around the Micks’ feet, and he began sliding down through the air. Behind him, the whooping formation of Disks, some of them screaming in disbelief as he took the running leap without slowing down in the slightest to enjoy the view, followed after him.

His scouts were naturally whooping it up, knowing what was coming.

He could feel the air beneath himself, knew that with some concentration he could walk or run upon it like he could the ground. Aye, and jump and roll and dance even, with some concentration and skill. It swirled and dovetailed with the Waveskating Step, the lightfoot he’d been taught and loved so much, streaming vapors extending out from his soles as instead of skating, he began to ski.

Now, skiing was an affectation for the hill clans up in their mountains, where the snow grew deep and you had to get around in it. Splayed shoes, aye, that were possible but awkward, skis were easier, if you didn’t have to go uphill… and MUCH more fun going downhill.

Skiing in three dimensions, that were a whole magnitude more fun!

He visualized a crazy landscape ahead of him, politely asking Her Highness for a route, and she superimposed one over his vision with a flicker of effort, barely paying attention. The Mick grandly started his invisible open-air 3D slalom course.

He swayed back and forth, up invisible slopes and down sharper ones, trailing the Disks behind him like a great serpent, the riders shouting and calling out and holding on for dear life. Then he tilted sideways and up, introducing the first grand curves, looping quickly, tilting everyone on their sides, and the Stoneholders screamed in astonishment at their speed and what was going on, while the Scouts just whooped it up.

They all knew that if they held on, they couldn’t fall off the Disks, and so white-fingered hands held onto the Disks with everything as the Mick began what Princess Kristie had called a ‘roller-coaster ride’ the first time she sprang it on her unsuspecting passengers.

A ramp became a loop-de-loop. A sharp turn to the side became tight spirals descending in a corkscrew, the Disk riders looking up as they streaked past one another in shreddingly fast circles. A tunnel through the air became a drilling corkscrew, up and down the likes to lose your lunch, turning into a straight plunging fall that abruptly looped and rose back up into the air until all the momentum was satisfied… and then they flowed over an unseen hill in the sky and plunged screaming down again.

The Mick had a great time. His scouts, sharing in the Markview of his illusionary path, were enjoying the heck out of it, too, while the Stoneholders could only scream and literally come along for the ride.

About halfway through, the Lady Magos took pity on them and gestured up an illusion ahead of them of the course the Mick was taking, which he thought was kind of defeating the purpose and spoiling his fun. But, finally able to see what was coming up, the fear of the Stoneholders rapidly evaporated and became whooping thrilled screams as he cut through the air on his course.

Rising, falling, spiraling, looping, swerving, inverting, corkscrewing, twisting, and turning at breathtaking speed, the Mick turned a mere short plunging fall into a midair show and entertainment that stretched out more than four miles down the slope of the valley beyond. If anyone on the ground was wondering what the crazy gyrations of the thing in the sky glinting silver from Force Magic and steel Disks were from, well, nobody cared.

They were having far too much fun.