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

Careful spotter teams were indeed moved into position as the virindi sped unopposed along the hilltop trail for over twenty miles, the change in course cuttting at least ten miles off their trip if they’d stayed down low.

Such savings of time and effort were naturally not to be ignored!

They came up to the branching point where the Fychek Ruins were located, and true to maximal efficiency, turned to take the branch going down to the southeast. One more turn to the northeast had them pointed basically right at Soushi, and they zipped down and along the trail in their tight little line, undeterred and not having slowed down for the entire duration of the journey, an impressive achievement.

Of course, they were moving fast, tied together by some sort of TK chains so they could move at the speed of the fastest virindi. As a result, when they hit the pit there was no stopping anything.

Alternate senses they certainly had, and while it was possible to use illusions to exploit such things, I really needed more experimentation to test out some higher-Valence stuff that didn’t give off the telltale glow of magic to them… which was perfectly possible even against things that could see magic. Illusions were designed to fool ALL the senses, such as they are, including magical ones. Even True Sight, which was supposed to see through all illusions, could be fooled by illusions of higher Valence designed to slip past it.

But, nah. The team was hiding behind rocks moved into position on either side of the slope as the virindi came down off the mountain trail at zippedy-doo-dah speed. Ahead of them was the broad pit about thirty feet deep I’d Shaped out of the stone, which was calculated to be enough that even using geomagnetic bouncing, they wouldn’t be able to get out.

At least, not without doing something cute like stacking on top of one another, and they weren’t going to have time to do that.

As for what was covering it, it was simply a paper-thin sheaf of rock, complete with weeds and scrub to blend in perfectly with the rest of the terrain, all held up by a couple nets stretched across the pit to support the ‘lid’, as it were.

Kris pressed the stopper on the rod, the det cord flashed at fifty thousand mph and cut the net’s lines down its entire length at once. The whole thing dropped away underneath them instantly.

Geomagnetic levitation doesn’t actually put any pressure on the surface below it, being a transmagical form of hovering that simply uses repulsion between matter to stay aloft. However, even if they weren’t putting any weight on the pit’s cover, that cover had suddenly dropped away.

Unable to push off anything, the startled virindi sped right down into the pit at full speed, stunned at the sudden change in their material environment and unable to respond fully in time.

If it had been a magical ambush, I had little doubt they would have been able to respond as an entire unit with absolutely breathtaking speed. However, this was the very environment turning against them, and whenever had they ever run into something as simple as a disguised pit trap?

They plummeted to the bottom of the pit, the brown Virindi Profatrix up in the lead actually slamming into the far end at speed with a crunch before bouncing off, was crashing into by the Consul right behind it, and then both of them were bowled over by their Paradox bodyguards still retaining their momentum.

Really, the whole bunch and batch of them just crashed together in a chaotic mess, not arresting their forward momentum in time as they instead fought to stay ‘aloft’ and aboveground, distracted by what was happening, and were also bringing their combat algorithms online to do battle, just in case.

Princess Kristie stepped up coolly to the edge of the pit, her Autobow Drop bearing a new and deadly load: quarrels tipped with chorozite. A half-dozen of them were held in her hair, right at the limits of her Vajra’s ability to handle weight, but she had a full quiver of them riding her shoulder, just in case.

A dozen lugians with good strong throwing arms appeared with her, looking down at the mass of virindi, who were the empowering force that supported the Gotrok and had caused a lethal schism in the unity of the lugian clans.

Dutifully knurled and cast chorozite rocks as big as their heads were raised up. Hovering next to them were Disks with carefully fitted stone covers fit over them, and thus able to support the translucent rocks heaped up on them for the throwing.

The virindi were humming and making noises part machine, part insectile chittering as they looked up and beheld the shadows overhead with the magic-ignoring rocks in hand… and one with magic-ignoring bolts.

Then the bombardment began, and point-blank inundation of the virindi started. The lugians even departing from pitching the rocks, just snatching them up with two hands and bringing them down at point-blank range onto the floating figures below all clustered up in their armored robes.

Metal and ceramics crashed and cracked, and over the edge of the pit zipped some gifts for them.

Shards, girt in vivus.

Those they saw coming, and the alarmed whines and squeals of something so bright and deadly contrasted directly with the dry observation that the ‘utter reality’ they had gifted the lugians with was being turned against them, while simply being at the lip of the pit allowed the lugians to easily step back from any directed War Magic with impunity.

The Servants and Puppets swiftly exploded into purple-violet flames that were instantly devoured by vivus as they popped and collapsed down on themselves. The other virindi just found themselves lit en vivus, but the smashing rocks coming down on them did the real work, completely bypassing the ablative power of their armored robes.

Masks shattered, armored shells were crushed and distorted, energies leapt free. The virindi did try some automatic spellcasting, and chorozite rocks smashed into them and rather disrupted all that.

The Profatrix was the last to go down, its brown armored shell the strongest and most infused with magic, but all that gave it was six more seconds as all the lugians concentrated their fusillade on it. Pounding semi-transparent stones crushed and smashed down into it, and a loud buzzing ‘NO!’ in their language accompanied the rupturing and explosion of unwhite flames that reached up to devour its energy, just as they had the whitened and empty robes that had formed its underlings.

If the three toughest virindi also had holes punched right through them by Autobow quarrels, well, that was on them.

“Anything down there of interest?” Kris asked, looking down over Drop to see if anything was going to start moving in the mound of rocks and Burning vivus down there.

I stepped up to the edge to survey the place, watching the thaumactive armor flaking off like accelerated white rust as it gave up the energies it had been infused with. There shouldn’t be much of anything in there… “Huh.”

Minor TK reached down, grabbed a glimmer of magic, and pulled it free of the unoccupied neck of the leading Profatrix’s suit.

It was a Necklace designed to be draped over a virindi bodysuit, spun of pyreal and some form of crystal I wasn’t Assaying deeply, with what looked like some form of energized diamond at the front of it.

It flew up to my hand, intact and shedding the vivus that was ravaging the damaged bodysuits below. I opportunistically pried off a couple of the plates from the Paradox, Consul, and Profatrix to do some research and testing on before the vivus disposed of them, wanting to know if there was an alternate way through them that did not involve ‘hollow’ weaponry.

“Anyone recognize this?” I blew the image up so that all of the curious lugians watching could study it intently. With their interest in all things rock and stone, if they’d seen it before, they’d certainly know what it was.

The lugians all rumbled at one another, shaking their thick heads slightly as they did. Elder Grumbass said, “The energies inside the jewel are of a hue new to me, Lady Magos. Perhaps they represent something new made by the virindi?” he hazarded quietly.

“Was not green the color used in their Quiddity Weapons?” Corporal Remgok spoke up, actually the senior hurler of the group, his cheek tat proclaiming him a victor in a bunch of throwing challenges.

“Ohhhh, that’s interesting. We haven’t been able to locate an intact Quiddity Weapon.” Which was a shame, as they were an alternative approach to Armor Cleaving, as I recalled. I eyed the glittering jewel and the very… weird arrangement of the magic woven through it. “This does not appear to be a Cleaving effect, however. It is strong, but not in that direction.”

“Guesstimation?” Kris asked professionally, also studying it.

“It’s a magic amplifier. I will go out on a limb and say it stabilizes the wearer’s magic and allows them to Cast a Scarab higher.” The concentric patterns that were far, far more complex than required for the amount of energy involved in them led to that deduction.

Kris glanced sharply at me. “That… is potentially huge. The virindi are re-stabilizing their spellcasting already?”

“Horrible, right? It’s like no other species should be able to innovate anything over the last fifteen years, even if they are intimately interwoven with the weft and weave of the field of magic itself. It’s just not right!”

“Damn straight! Why, we could all go on just with historical knowledge and never embracing anything new, so everything repeats, top stays on top, low born stay poor and broken down, and nobody can reach for the skies except those on the very top!” she retorted brightly, every word just dripping honeyed sarcasm so viciously that any of the listening lugians who might have believed in ‘the old ways are best’ emphatically clamped their mouths shut.

They’d just watched her Autobow punch holes completely through the three toughest virindi down there. They didn’t need to be pissing off someone who could fight any three of them at the same time without any effort whatsoever. They were rock tossers, and they’d never hit her if she didn’t want them to.

“Alright, lower them down there, recover our ammo, and then bury them,” Kris directed us all coolly. “Their Singularity is not going to repeat the mistake of sending more virindi to vanish again, so they’ll be attempting to use alternate resources to find out what happened here. I expect they’ll be questioning the Hea and the Gotrok closely to find out what happened.

“Stonebrothers, this is a zip-it, no-talk event,” she ordered them calmly. “I don’t want the Hea, Gotrok, or virindi to learn what happened here at all. Let them goddamn stew.

“That means you absolutely shut up about what happened, as all the scout teams who played spotter are energetically forgetting this all happened at all.

“As a matter of fact, just to make sure that we have a cover story, we’re going to go up the hilltop road and hunt us down some Gotrok, just so you can all lie with a straight face. As of right now, you didn’t see any virindi, there weren’t any here, and those chorozite stones are for the random Summons the Gotrok like to leave in scattered areas as surprises for everyone.”

The lugians all rumbled their consent. Playing mindgames wasn’t a strong point of their species, but they could appreciate a good trick. When I cleaned this whole place up and made it look like nothing had happened, that was going to be a pretty good trick, indeed!

The lugians sat down on the chorozite-holding Disks and went over the edge to clean up the mess down below. Chorozite throwing stones had value, so they were worth retrieving. Then I’d Shape the entire pit back closed, and there’d be no sign the virindi were ever here at all. Their bodysuits, sickles, and masks would Burn down to dust, and that would be that…