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

The rats here were fucking vicious!

They were also fast, the size of small dogs or bigger, and had rabid aggressive tempers, like wolverines with attitudes. Instead of running away like normal mice, they swarmed right to the attack, looking to kill!

Shards speared them all in mid-charge. I didn’t want them nipping at my legs, even with a Barkskin and Force Armor up on me. Rats could nip their way through thin metal, I wasn’t trusting the magic to defy them. Better to spear them with a no-miss Shard each and let the Animal Banespell and Holy Kicker damage take the blighters out.

Normal Shards could deal with anything the size of a cat or smaller. The instant I saw the one the size of a beagle breathing fire, it got a Zojak Quareth to the face on top of everything, crushing its little bones and making sure it didn’t reach me. Not that I was afraid of fire, but damn, the little pests were just not something I wanted to deal with.

Mountain Rats were the big ones that breathed fire, the smaller ones seemed to have color schemes based on personal strength, which mostly didn’t matter too much. I imagined they were a favorite staple of the local shreth. Clearly, the rodents weren’t afraid to go onto the attack.

Out of the thirty homes I went through, only four had active rat’s nests, which I thought about, looked around for tracks, and found the hooves of the sharp wedge design I’d noted on that Summoned shreth, along with some others.

Also, I had seen more of the eagle-sized red wasps flying around, as well as some blue ones nearer the water. I imagined a rodent was a fine bit of prey for them, and the birds definitely got absent the second a wasp was in the area.

There was also a four-clawed set of prints I ran across more than once, standing out because it had a three-footed track... two side claws, and one middle one!

I hadn’t seen what made it yet, but I doubted it would take long.

I had also seen a dozen more Summons, and after thinking about it, let them be. Most were drudges of various sizes and types, along with the wasps and shreth. It occurred to me that they probably killed a lot of the non-Summoned creatures, and thus were acting as pest control. As long as the humans in the area could deal with them easily, they were basically acting as unpaid guard dogs, keeping the vermin population down.

Which made me think that any natural animals around, to survive, must have gotten very good at maneuvering around anything that stood in place so unnaturally, and learned to ignore them or lead enemies to them if they looked similar.

If they were smart, they’d kill a spawn point until it coughed up something similar to themselves, if they could, surrounding themselves with guards that would kill anything but them.

Mmmm. It would be a good way of telling if there were intelligent foes in the vicinity. All the spawns in the area would be cleared until ‘friendlies’ were there, if it was possible.

I hadn’t seen any human spawn points around, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Indeed, it was possible that the local mages learned how to control the spawn points so that humans didn’t spawn. Random pre-programmed Summons killing other creatures they weren’t supposed to might be a problem, and seeing Summoned humans just standing there ready to kill would likely unnerve a lot of people.

Also, the idea that they might end up an unthinking conjured slave of some mage somewhere probably wasn’t something people wanted to be reminded of, if they didn’t know where the Summons actually came from or were congealed.

The only ‘interesting’ thing I found was another crater of blue crystals and skeletal corpses fused into the rock south down the road from the town. It had only a third the numbers of the other one, presumably because it wasn’t as close to the center of the town...

All of the homes had been thoroughly cleared out of valuables. The stuff that was left behind was generally of low-quality to begin with, or was definitely now, after years of exposure. Importantly, almost anything that could be used as a packing device, such as bags, sacks, or crates, was gone, and the only wagons I found were broken ones. Even most of the things with drawers were missing some of them now, although the only furniture was the stuff too large and hard to disassemble, left behind for the bulk. Still, even a lot of the beds were missing, and the mattress stuffing was left behind, if the cloth was not.

The rats loved those.

All this meant people had moved the stuff in a somewhat thorough, organized fashion, taking everything they could and getting out of here. Haste was all part of it, pretty decisive action, and likely later trips had been made in succession to claim as much stuff as possible, maybe even survivors like me going through the place like I was and claiming anything else left behind.

Rusted hoes and shovels were not high on my priority list, either.

In the end, I only gained some scattered coins and a few bits of cheap jewelry that had fallen into nooks and cracks, and that was about it.

I had subbed out Light for Color, and used the Cantrip to mark all the houses I’d inspected with a blue frowny-face circle, indicating nothing here. No need to waste further time looking for much here, just move along...

My daily treks duly noted, I headed back to the town and that stand of menhirs.

I was going to be Casting spells for hours. Every twenty-four seconds, I’d get back the Valence II I was going to be using to Cast Sacred Spell on my I’s, recharging everything smoothly.

In the meantime, Mira was learning that Chaos applied to magic meant spells changed over time. The Fireball of a year ago wasn’t the same Fireball of today, when it came to Spell Engrams. Find a scroll with a Fireball spell on it, and it would take a minute to puzzle out what you were looking at, and even more to take it out and write it into your own books in your own format and style. If the author of it had a particularly weird way of looking at magic, you might not even be able to understand how they approached the spell, and it would be useless to you!

It wasn’t a problem with Isparian Magic. You had to learn the relevant words, and then the method of guiding the magic through the stages of the spell with components guiding and harnessing the energy to achieve the desired effect. Everyone learned the same spell, there was precious little deviation, and while there might be ‘accents’ to a spell based on where you were taught, the Sho, Aluvians, Gharu’n, and even the Viamontians could pick up one another’s libraries of spells and understand all their spells with very little problem.

One of the things the Emperor and Empress of Ispar had been driving was the absolute availability of said spells to people, which had started an unparalleled drive to learn magic among those who never thought they would get the chance to. As a result, there were tiers of students, ranging from the haughty elitist pure Casters like Devra, and a whole bunch of lower-tier people specializing in one or two schools and learning enough of it to accomplish what they wanted.

Sama and Briggs, going for the egalitarian thing, broad, low power. Item Magic and Creature Magic were the most popular schools for day-to-day life. Life Magic was the School that marked you as a serious Caster who did that full-time, operating as a Healer if nothing else, while War Magic meant you were a magical soldier risking your life in battles with magic.

Using the principles of magic based on what I could remember of Web to find the ‘new’ iteration of it was a mental puzzle that was taking hours, and occasional interruptions in my Reps Casting to test out some draw or weaving of the spell. It was starting to take shape, however, Mira exulting in the puzzle and the possibilities, and wondering what it would be like to just be immersed in magic and figure out all of these things, all of the time.

Then she got a look at the thousand and more spells that Aelryinth actually knew, and nearly fainted in disbelief. Separate, disparate spells, not just advanced versions of the same spells as was common with Isparian magic, which in the end... really just had Raised and Elemental versions of the same spells, compared to mine.

It was kind of funny feeling the delight of a person from an integrated magical society enjoying the wonder of true magical versatility, when Aelryinth came from a society that once had no magic at all...

Which reminded me that I had to do the Weird Science boundary tests for this world, too, finding out, for example, if mundane or alchemical gunpowder worked here. If they could... well, now, science and magic co-existing made for some powerful possibilities.

-Science, now?- Mira wondered, and took a peek at the borrowed memories of Aelryinth’s early years, fairly gasping in shock at the wonders of a high-tech society, and the comfort and wealth of even the relatively poor there. And all with no magic at all!

-I, I can see why our magic does not impress you,- she murmured, stunned at what a united society could accomplish, from the highest to the lowest. She watched a recollection of a passenger jet taking off, realized it could fly to the end of a continent, or cross a mighty ocean, without effort, bringing people in mere hours to places far, far distant, convenient and ready, without mighty magic.

I was nearing my rep counts for Sacred Spell, happy with my progress and the quick boost that was coming with it as I came closer and closer to figuring out how to reduce its cost to fit for free into a I Valence.

It would take a thousand reps of II’s, meaning III Slots needed, to do the same with the next Valence, but hey, the Tyranny of Rep Counts was definitely a thing that never went away.

And then the crickets all went silent. It was like a wave of quiet, coming towards me.

I looked at the menhir that had been stoically defying all the magic I sent at it that couldn’t affect it anyway, and without any hesitation hissed out Invisibility, dropping my Disk down to the ground with the crude mat of grass I’d woven to throw over it for concealment. I got out of the menhir ring instantly, looking out for whatever had managed to silence the insect life over such a wide area.

I was about to Cast Detect I to see what popped up when I saw them coming down the road towards me, moving at a trot in speed... or rather, three fellows armed with spears and shields were trotting, and one was floating.

On smoke.

If I hadn’t had my Mask of Clarity, I wouldn’t have seen them in the night. They were utterly black, like 3-D shadows, save for their eyes, which glowed from within with a lambent fury of negative emotions. It was like looking into a pocket of black space, with no features visible save in profile. Three male figures, ranging from teenager in build up through what looked like a warrior, while the female figure had nothing from the waist down but shadowy smoke, but pinged to be the most dangerous of the four.

They were heading right for the menhir along the road, likely because there was still the glow of vivus around it. The presence of negative energy radiated around them like a cold field, and silenced all the insect life with the unnatural chill of the soul, especially with the vivus-laden atmosphere.

Happily, my clothes were still dark, I was now Invisible, and heat-sense wasn’t going to spot me. Still, my hackles rose at the threat level I could perceive from these things, as they obviously weren’t Summons, but free-willed, roving quasi-undead of some kind, drawing off negative energy and possibly Shadow.

I wasn’t even going to Assay them, as it might ping their senses, so I couldn’t get an ID off on them. However, the shadowy grace of their movements, the way they acted as if they didn’t weigh much, and their presence in the manafield bending the magic indicated they were all skilled Casters, and I simply didn’t trust my own toughness in the face of the power of Isparian War Magic, if that was what they were wielding.

Or maybe the higher-level versions of it, that Mira had never seen!