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

“Only to those overly concerned with Law, and making you conform to the decisions and desires of others. Too many civilizations confuse following the law with Goodness, and they are far from the same thing,” I told Lord Mick.

He huffed his understanding with that point. “And Fortitude?”

“You experienced the greatest lows of your life, and you came out the other side with pure cussed unwillingness to give in. You made it a positive force, not just for yourself, but for others. You climbed out of a pit of rage and despair and you’ve led a lot of people in doing likewise, whether you admit it or not, Lord Mick.

“That is pretty much the essence of Fortitude. Taking it on the chin and falling to apathy or outright Evil as a result happens all too often.”

“Like the paramounts what still don’t want to leave the Vesayans. Lacking a mite bit of spiritual fortitude, aye,” he nodded at no one.

I’d met most of the paramounts still alive by now. He wasn’t wrong. Even the Words couldn’t shake some of them, they just didn’t care anymore. Most of them Chaos had a hard grip on, and they only cared about themselves and their own broken goals and desires, even if it lay at the bottom of a rum bottle.

They rose to cheap and easy power, then fell, and they didn’t have the fortitude to climb out and do what was needed to gain that high point back, especially with all the emotional scarring.

It was life, I had too many things to do, and my Words didn’t include Mercy or Compassion.

I would have to leave them to others, for now.

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The Mick was tapped to stay in Eastham for the short-term and watch over it as it was re-established as basically a frontier position. The fact he got along well with the Aun, had the grudging respect of the Hea, and he and his Scouts understood the ways of a Hunter fairly well meant he had respect and authority there among them, and setting up scouts and patrols and organizing information gathering was what he’d been doing for years.

Wiping the random Summons and Sealing the Spawn points was continuing. Even the Hea agreed the world was much calmer and seemed a lot emptier without random creatures waiting in fixed places for one to stumble across and fight. There were still random creatures, wanderers, and dangers, the phyntos wasps, zefirs, and wisps being chief among them, but the land was open, and much safer to traverse, if not completely so.

They were anticipating a good hunting season as the natural animals expanded more easily into the areas cleared of Summoned creatures.

Word that Gaerlan was trapped on Asheron’s Island by the maneuverings of Candeth Martine, that the Harbinger was there torturing the deranged Empyrean, and Elementals were all over the place there, was quietly spread among the soldiers and adventurers.

More people were coming to dare the reach of the olthoi, especially as the maps were updated, the new hives were considered, and more importantly, the potential for a lot of wealth just laying around to be harvested was spread… if you could fight through the olthoi to get there.

Pretty much nobody was of the opinion they could do so, as yet, but it didn’t stop the young and the older from quietly heading out to clear the landscape, cut into the advancing ecology, Seal more Summons points to stop the spread of the olthoi, and maybe even quietly start pushing back.

The fact olthoi could be harvested for some very good armor and weapons was also a draw, but the fact they were breeding Swarm members en masse kept everyone checked.

Slowly and gradually, more of the paramounts were pulled off of Ithaenc by the lure of better Karma at the Baishi Matron Hive. There was none of the danger of grievver spells, and if the fighting was mean, intense, and tested all of their skills… at least it was predictable and the place easily fled.

Soon enough the place had numbers of high-Level people from all the races frequenting it. They clutched at working Olthoi Slayer weapons, and went in to try their luck on things they could have killed in massive numbers without fail once, long ago, and now had to spend a great deal more time and effort to do so, with precious little reward other than chitin and Karma.

Somehow, that would have to be enough.

The other towns that harbored Matron Hive Dungeons were soon put under intense scrutiny for liberation from the undead. Nanto’s Hive was already being plied around the clock, and even the local banderlings were taking turns daring its depths and the massive bugs.

Uziz and Khayyaban were both still in undead hands, on the eastern edge of the deserts and the territory the undead claimed. That wasn’t going to stop us, of course, and so Briggs was departing to oversee part of that effort, while the main focus was naturally on corralling and containing the Gotrok’s ‘surprises’, eliminating them and the Summons points they came from, and eventually liberating Linvak Tukal.

The Gotrok could feel the noose tightening about themselves, and were guarding their mines ferociously, using only Summons tied to points they controlled within their lairs to fight with and presenting closed doors to all manner of raids and probes.

That, of course, was where I came in.

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Whether or not the Gotrok realized that the ability to put walls up very quickly also meant the ability to take them down quickly was one thing. They hadn’t made the mental leap that I could also dig tunnels very, very quickly. All their little homes inside the stone did to me was ensure that I knew exactly where to find them, and that they couldn’t get away from me.

Kris paced me as I silently cleared away the stone in front of us, her Tremblesense radiating out and able to see any halls or tunnels or other chambers in front of us before I blundered into them. I Shaped it out of the way, forming just a small tunnel big enough for humans for now, our intentions very simple.

The lugian mines and holdings relied on having only one path of entry to defend themselves. Making multiple points of entry would naturally shatter their defenses and destroy their plans. So, I had to encircle the mines, determine how many layers it had, and figure out where to put those entry points.

In better circumstances, a Commune with Nature would have laid out the entire mining complex for me. I could have posted it to a Visual File and we could have made plans that way. This time, I had to extend thousands of feet of tunnels into and around the passages the Gotrok had already made, figure out some of their layouts, and hopscotch around the place as we moved from area to area.

Kris was more than happy to flit out of a hole I opened in a wall in a remote area and go sniffing around. Likewise, I could send out a Wizard Eye and go scanning through the area, both of us putting everything into Visual File and organizing it for the planners.

The chosen mines were both erratic, as they had to follow the ore, and predictable, as they followed traditional lugian patterns of construction and enlargement for living quarters, processing areas, any smelteries and work areas, and for defensive areas.

They also had a LOT of Summons stuffed into areas that normally would be sitting unused, patiently awaiting the calls to battle. Pretty much all of them were the highest level renegade Summons, including many of the Tukora rank.

Advancing into the area with traditional tactics would have been a meat-grinder of a fight, and everyone knew it. However, taking this force out into the open field with our superior ranged and magical advantage would have rendered the Summons worthless.

There were nearly two thousand Summons jammed into the older, worked-out section of this particular mine. The best thing was… they weren’t really monitored much.

Oh, an officer wandered through the place regularly, making sure the Summons had stayed in position and hadn’t strayed, but basically they were out of sight, out of mind of most of the Gotrok. The ones who were pulled out to fight were all located closer to the main gates of the complex, including those who might have been pulled off the landscape and might not be replaced ordered in further and deeper in case of need.

Which naturally was a huge opportunity for us.

Kris tailed the review trails of the keepers watching over these packed lugians, confirming that they didn’t deviate from their paths at all, following them religiously as they meandered through tunnels and assembly rooms where the Summoned Tukora waited patiently for the call to battle.

Very tellingly, there were whole swathes of the suckers who were out of line of sight of any reinforcements, and so would have to be alerted by shouts and the like if there was any fighting.

Shouts could be cut off. Sound Bubble was a very useful spell that way, while Permanent Illusions could make it seem as if they were still there and nothing in the room or tunnel had changed at all.

My students could easily take care of the one spell, and I could come in smoothly behind them and take care of the other.

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Operation Silence went off startlingly well. The keeper was gone not even five minutes when I opened the first of the tunnels into the deeper mines, and our Casters crept out to throw up the Illusionary walls that would block line of sight between locations of Summons.

Then the fighting teams with the Sound Bubbles up around their Weapons came stealing out, the sound of their Armor on the stone contained within the spheres of the magic, and violence erupted into tight little knots of fighting.

The Tukora Summons raged and shouted and did not run away, and so they died and were set en vivus, staining the stone white as they fell and died. The teams quickly leapfrogged from one location to the next in tight squads, bringing the fight to the scouted-out chambers, always making sure to have the number advantage and knowing who was going to take what and why.

As the Summons died and were set to Burning, I covered each area in a Permanent Illusion to look exactly like it had before, even concealing the vivified stone from view. It could even respond to simple questions and commands if required, although naturally none of the Illusionary lugians could leave the area of effect.

It took a lot of mana and dozens of illusions, and the fighting went on for more than twelve hours as we ranged through the more isolated areas of the mines and wiped away all the Summons waiting there.

Scouts posted outside reported dozens of lugians manifesting on previously unknown Spawn points near the mine, too, which were hastily addressed before any of the Gotrok noticed them. We had to take it on faith that they were efficient and didn’t leave any local Spawn points Summons in the forgotten areas, as new Summons popping up in a heavy traffic zone would definitely alert the Gotrok that something was up.

Thankfully they seemed to have done the job right, and the ones pulled into the mines from outside were the ones we were killing, for the most part.

It took twelve hours of fighting in the distant parts of the mine, broken only by the teams retreating into convenient tunnels nearby when it came time for the Keeper to make another round. They waited as the bored sentry made his rounds, did little more than grunt at the unmoving lugians there, and returned to his post without realizing half the lugians he had passed by weren’t really there.

That, of course, was fine by us, and exactly what we wanted to see.