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

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The Wisps started boiling into the eastern side of the island before they made it up and around Asheron’s Mountain the required several times. A virtual fountain of Wisps erupted into existence as the vivus spread around the edges of the Rift in the south, and the Elementals they killed respawned out of the Rift on top of them to continue the fight with mindless enthusiasm.

I snapped my head around as I felt a locus of magic moving to the south and up the mountain.

“Problem?” Briggs called out immediately, the Mick instantly backing up out of shooting range.

“The Wisps must have breached Candeth Martine’s Summoning Circle.” There was massive amounts of magic going off over there. “The Essences there are being massively engaged by Wisps, and Candeth has moved before they focus on him. He’s...right in the middle of the Rift on the south side right now, keeping the energies spread out and redirected. Clever choice. Both forces are paying attention outside, and his defenses are enough to endure the Rift, since he’s the anchor for it.

“He’s keeping this going. We can continue as long as we want.”

Briggs nodded, slowly looking over the flow of Wisps moving north. “Eleven o’clock, Lord Mick,” he pointed, and the line of archers formed up to keep taking potshots as long as they could.

The Karma being made here was going to go down in tales for decades. It was time to share it.

I turned and lit the candle on the top of the Wagon.

----

On the shore, near a thousand men, lugians, and Aun were gathered on Disks and Barges. Their attention was riveted on the magical conflagration and fires blazing so bright even from this distance, but their heads all turned at a popping sound.

The candle in the hands of a young-looking man with white hair standing upon his own custom green and brown Disk flared and died.

“Bring down the Shoreward!” King Borelean ordered from atop the Battlewagon made to be his personal ride.

Mages gestured with precise Casting practiced many, many times on Shorewards on the Vesayans. Circles of magical force drifted out, sparking as they touched the Shoreward, and then visibly and rapidly expanded, linking up into one another into a gap in the Shoreward big enough to admit the entire waiting floating fleet.

Oswald the Green Hunter turned about, and started moving. Cross-linked Disks, Barges, and Wagons were pulled after him, snapping into alignment as he picked up speed and began streaking across the waters with the speed of someone Flying… but his feet never left the Disk underneath him, although he was moving far faster than anyone else could move a Disk.

To be expected of the Green Hunter.

He’d be across the strait in about ten minutes, and then the main force of archers and rock-tossers would join the fight until they ran out of ammunition.

There were Itemized piles of thousands of throwing rocks waiting, multiple quivers of arrows joining them. Tear the papers, and stacks of ammunition would materialize for everyone to use.

There was only one rule: no spellcasting whatsoever. Watching the constant fall of those Meteors coming down from the sky, everybody was quite determined not to Cast if at all possible. Getting out of the Shoreward might be a bit harder than getting through on the way out than the way in…

---

Briggs went out with his Cloudstepping Sandals allowing him to walk on the water, and rapped on the Shoreward with his Hammer Endure to admit the flotilla into the shallower waters, everyone watching him with impressed faces as he shattered the screen of force casually with such gentle taps.

That included Oswald, who shook his hand in greeting. Briggs turned and led the way as the Green Hunter pulled the rest of the eager fighters along behind him.

In scant moments, the new ranged attackers had arranged themselves next to us, their Spotters were in place, and our fusillade of Wisp-killing salvos increased by a factor of ten.

They didn’t have Prismatic Stones, but it was just Wisps, and they didn’t need them. If they needed one more archer per target than we did, that was fine. They were there to get as much Karma as they could while the ammo held out.

More fun, when all of this was done and over with, we were going to have a LOT of ammo to collect…

The lugian rock throwers made the biggest first impression, as their hurtling stones did more damage than arrows or bolts did, and no Wisp ever survived more than two, with occasional crits catching them square and popping them instantly.

They also ran through ammunition pretty quickly, but a certain someone in the mirror had faced no problems making actual tons of ideal ammunition for them, then Itemizing the mounds into sheets of paper.

A Tapestry could have assembled even more ammunition, but the pile of stone would have been too big and heavy for any of the transports, meaning it would have had to be put on the ground, and that would mean being tied to a location. There were ways to do that, but it would have taken more manpower just being used for labor and Disking rocks around, and we didn’t want the bother if we had to run.

So the lugians picked their targets carefully, calling out boasts to one another, and impressed all the archers with the power and accuracy of their throwing arms repeatedly.

There was no shortage of Wisps to kill, boiling and spreading backwards from the Elementals at the Rift, although the spread towards us paused as there were no bright targets for the Wisps to focus on.

Instead, they followed existing flows up and around the mountains, spreading like storm-tossed waves to the north and south as they expanded towards where the Elementals were still fighting.

Nobody protested what was basically a turkey shoot against foes who weren’t coming after us, at least not in numbers… and if any did turn to come right at us, well, that was what the Spotters in the middle of the line were watching for the most.

Nothing was allowed to get within spell range of us before we popped them. Once they started turning on us, it was time to retreat or we’d rapidly be overwhelmed.

It was fine. The Mick was prepped to run at any moment, Briggs could pop the Shoreward and lead the whole formation out into the open sea. The Shoreward would quickly mend itself and stop any Wisps from following us out in numbers.

The Wisps died in droves, the tally moving into the thousands now, and throughout the killing, the bombardment from the Elemental Harbinger up on the mountain never stopped. Rains of Lightning and Acid fire were coming down from above, obliterating hordes of Wisps, cracking and crashing down portions of the spiral around the mountain… but never enough to break it, the ley line reinforcement of the stone too high to damage, drawing in the magic even as it hit the stone, perhaps even responsible for the pulses in the Rift that led up to it.

It couldn’t collapse the trail to the top, and it couldn’t stop the Wisps from coming up, even if only a tenth of the numbers starting up the spiral actually made it to the fight with the Elementals.

A tenth of endless numbers was still endless, and the Elementals were still dying, still being pushed back.

Another black current was wrapping around the southern and northern sides of the mountain, chasing the Elementals in place on the eastern half of the island, mowing them down like two great shadowy waves of water. Walls of hundreds of spells between the two forces marked blinding boundaries that were slowly and inexorably being pushed together over the blasted and fused stone of the place.

The jaws of blackness were closing, and nothing the Harbinger did was going to stop it, it seemed. Certainly the Land was venting up a LOT of corruption in the form of the Wisps, but equally obviously it had a lot of it pent up and ready to spend.

The Aun had picked off Wisps from the Black Atoll on the Vesayans for a month. It had been the best workout their archers had gotten in years, and they’d been quite thankful for it. Even paramounts had come down to Ithaenc to kill them, leaving only after they ran out of ammo, and the Wisps still kept spawning…

The Aun had guessed somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand Wisps had been killed before they stopped coming, and that had been a little island well separated from the mainland.

That was an Elemental Rift cut deep into the earth, and the mainland wasn’t far from here. Whatever the Land was drawing from, it was clearly deeper and much more plentiful than what had been in the Vesayans, and the Harbinger’s existence here wasn’t helping matters.

Still, it was going to be a finite number and amount, and the blazing bright line of Elementals of all stripes fighting, dying, and being brought back out of the Rift was simply not going to end, unless and until the Harbinger died and the Rift was allowed to close.

Once it did, then it was only to pull back and wait for morning Renewal to come, wiping the vivic stain from the land, and there would be no more Wisp respawns. They could then be swept from the length and breadth of the island by the archers.

Now, it was only for them to reach the castle, the Harbinger, and start that little chain of events.

Princess Kristie’s impatience and equal resolve radiated through the Marklink. She was obviously in position, ready to strike, and likely watching the unending display of magic from the Aberrant thing that was the Harbinger with polite disdain, desiring only to kill it dead and get rid of it, not impressed by the show.

Par for the course. If she was all grown up, it probably couldn’t hurt her at all, and she’d grind it down with swordwork without too much trouble.

Still a ways to go for that, however.

-------

Kris shifted her weight slightly as she saw the first reflection of spells on the stones of the shattered main gates of the palace.

Three of Asheron’s great Diamond Golum servitors, carved up to look like crystalline soldiers armed with mighty magical Weapons, were scattered in pieces around the courtyard. Most of the open area was scarred and blackened in swathes and stripes, locations where ley line emanations had blown free of the master mage’s control and destroyed precious magical devices, as well as ripping into some of the many Wards about the place.

She was up on the wall, crouching in shadows which should not have hidden her, a stance and position she had not moved from for hours, just part of the background here.

Constant ki rotation kept her from cramping, kept the shadows flowing over her, kept any attention from lingering her way, kept them from sensing her gaze and patient killing intent.

The Harbinger had actually come within thirty feet of her multiple times, positioning itself in the gap in the shattered southern wall to pick out its targets and rain massive explosive Meteors down on top of them. Then it had alternated between that location and by the front gate, throwing spells at things out of sight, no doubt tracking them through magical senses as it rotated constantly around the courtyard. Magic hurtled forth endlessly, up and over the walls, down into the coming Wisps, exacting incredible tolls on them, prices no mortal army would have willingly paid, but which did not matter in the slightest to the Wisps.

In the center of the courtyard, hovering in the middle of a gloriously blazing fumarole of mixed Elemental Magic, floated Gaerlan.