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

“Well done, Lord Mick!” Briggs congratulated him, standing on his Disk with his back to the hill as well.

“Gor, we were only a mile away from the dig when that whatever-that-is decided t’ make a fuss,” the Mick admitted, digging his little finger into his ear. “Figured legging it an’ not looking back was the wisest move, ‘specially when I heard the Violet Alert.”

I had moved the globe of Darkness off the rear Disk and flattened it into a general wall and barrier behind us, allowing the riders there to see again. Nobody got off their Disks, and the Mick was standing just above the ground, his Waveskating Step keeping him an inch above it on constant streams of ki coming from his heels.

“We are stopping why?” Kris finally asked, perfectly content to leave the horror from beyond the aether behind to stew and get farted back out to its own dimension on its own time.

“We need to witness it going away, and then we have to go back there to make sure it didn’t leave something really bad behind,” Briggs ground out. Kris chucked herself on the side of the head.

“Right. Responsibilities of command and all that,” she nodded, glancing over the men. “Lord Mick is to get these Gear Knights out of here, however, and he should take most of the team with him.

“Leave me my squad, and escort Lord Mick and his prizes outta here. Ryin and I should be able to determine if it left something behind, get rid of it, and make sure it doesn’t come through again. Kara’s Pyramid can wait a day.”

I inclined my head and decided that agreeing was a good idea. I could pop up a basic ten-stepper pretty easily to cover this area, and the crater over there basically went down to stone, so raw material shouldn’t be an issue.

If its primary purpose was forever blocking this particular access point some dickless corpse had shoved through the Veil, ten steps was more than enough to do so.

“Give us a Sound Bubble and let us know when it is gone and Markspace is safe,” Briggs nodded once, bending down to give Kris a smooch on the forehead. “Let’s go, Lord Mick.”

----

I popped the Sound Bubble on them as the Mick trotted away, rapidly picking up speed as his Waveskating Step hurtled him along at four times the speed of a jogging man without apparent effort.

Kris’s team of Royal Scouts wasn’t quite at the level of the Roaches, but they were all swordsmen and idolized her unabashedly. While they could and would use ranged attacks, they were basically being trained up as Swordmages, giving themselves versatility on the spur of the moment that would take far too much time and passive abilities investment to acquire on an ongoing basis. Tremblesense, for instance, was exceedingly difficult for most people to learn and acquire, especially at the level hers was at.

Learn the right spell, boost it a little, and not an issue, however. Detects might even do the job better.

Thus, more focus on stealth, infiltration, and swift kills among her team, although she hadn’t worked up to Death Attacks with them yet. The cheesy way to kill was also dangerous and led Down all too easily. Strong moral codes were as necessary to become one of her little Skeeters as an inclination for a blade.

“Any rough ideas on how long?” Kris asked, giving a careful look at the wall of blackness still in the way.

Mira happily flexed some math and gradients, blah blah numbers curves hyperdimensional geometry blah blah. “Half hour minimum, based on current resistance it is putting up. If it gets stubborn and my estimates of its strength are on, forty-three minutes until it gets squeegeed back home. If it takes longer, it might lose whatever it has extruded here to dimensional pressure.”

“So, we chill, get mana back.” At the not-quite order, all her Skeeters promptly pulled in their legs, got into a sitting Aurora Stance, and started pulling in mana likely quite depleted after the fighting in Xarabydun. “You expecting anything?” she asked in a low voice, while the Sublime Chord rose up and promptly doubled the Renewal rate of her team as magic began to harmonize around me.

Speaking didn’t interrupt my Singing, Subvocalization being one of those necessary Feats if you want to get into raising everyone’s magical ability around yourself while still Casting. “It was Elemental Earthen, but clearly Aberrant. The latter is the important part. If it can cleanse its Aberrant nature from something, it could leave it behind.”

She looked that way again, her eyes narrowing. “So, anything up to an Elemental Monolith, given the size of the thing.”

“It would have limits to it, as free Elementals don’t coalesce easily on the Prime. Probably tied to whatever pre-opened Portal’s remnants are still in place. It might even be able to recreate that Summoning Circle, given enough time.”

“Wonderful. What are we looking at to use?”

“Won’t know until we see it and verify everything. Can’t give you Infusion recommends until then. If it is an Earth Elemental, Enmity to Elementals and Acidphasing, in addition to Bane/Elementals. If it’s something else, wing it until I get the Assay off, or an Assess Creature lands. If it isn’t Aberrant, I shouldn’t have any problem landing Divs on it.”

“Good enough.” Quaver hummed along behind her to the Sublime Chord, but couldn’t truly sync to it, not being an Implement. Crown nevertheless joined in, probably a little bit competitive in that regard. Quaver was a far more dangerous Weapon, with the Lost Light, Blackfire Stones, and now a softly glowing green Elemental Stone adding to the fact that he could innately swap around his own Enhancements from his storehouses of Arsenal and Slaughter, things that could not exist on Weapons not Bound to a Forsaken.

Also, a full Zehn-rank Weapon, matched only by Endure in Briggs’ hands. While Slaughter and Arsenal weren’t exactly as versatile as having access to ALL Weapon Enhancements with the right Infusion… Infusions only lasted so long, and had to get re-applied, taking both time and mana. In the middle of a fight, Quaver just shifted his nature to whatever was needed against a particular foe, Kris not needing to do a damn thing.

The fact that we could actually make intelligent Weapons with their own will still amazed and shocked some people, as no other Isparian had yet managed to do the same task. There were whispers from our rivals that we had trapped souls into our Weapons to do it, naturally enough, but one declaration of Truth had put that slander to rest.

Item Familiars were great things, and this place had far too much necromancy and messing with souls around. I wasn’t going to show people how to put souls into items, even if they were willing. Soon enough there’d be soul-shackled Constructs running around, just like unwilling undead…

Kris had the least to do here, and we weren’t going to be doing telepathic stuff around an Aberrant.

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Just about forty minutes later, there was a shuddering in the air, snapping through the Veil as it rebuilt itself back to impermeability. The shrieking that had been rising and falling the whole time was abruptly gone, and an invisible tension in the air vanished, sensed only by its sudden absence as everyone looked up and around simultaneously.

I popped the Sound Bubble, letting the sounds of the afternoon and desert come gusting in softly. “Let’s go see what surprises it left behind.”

Ten minutes of an easy jog later, everyone slid off their Disks and looked at the deep crater where the town of Xarabydun, above and below ground used to be. It was at least a hundred feet deep, and nearly a quarter-mile across, a whole lot bigger than it should have been.

“Looks like it took some matter with it when it left?” Kris offered, turning her head over to where the fissures it had split into the land had once been, having slammed themselves back shut after it had left.

“Opportunistic or thinking it could be used as an anchor on the far side to come back.” My eyes were glowing softly, scanning the ethersphere of the Veil around me. “There it is, the anchor Formation. Pretty damn small, almost no Veil distortion around it. If you didn’t suspect it was there, you’d likely miss it entirely.” Crown tapped the ground slightly, feeling the Earth-attuned mana in the area, not something Isparians normally could sense for. “Oh, yeah, there’s a locus of Earth mana underneath that. It doesn’t appear to be moving around as yet.”

“Any random other traps?” Kris asked calmly.

I scanned right and left. “Buried nodes of magical power.” I brought up a Holo of a screen up in front of me, and indicated the points and positions on the sloping sands of the crater in front of us. “Those are at least at V. Earth-bias… possibly suck-you-down spells, or erupting spikes. Not Summons or conjurations.”

“The big thing?” Kris indicated.

“Pure earth power, if… twisted. Gritty, almost fluid. A form of extremely fine Sand Elemental would be my guess.”

“Masks down.” Hands slapped to faces with alchemical breathers on them, while Masks of Clarity with investments into them descended over the faces of everyone, a medley of custom beasts and artistic forms, each individual to the one using them, although the colors shaded towards the dark.

They were also hardened to keep the breathers in place, and thus would keep everything from infiltrating the orifices of the head.

Kris’ Mask took its key from her Whiskers of the Wild, black and catlike with white whiskers on her cheeks, which her Cursemark flared a proud and angry purple against the left side of it in contrast.

My own Mask had evolved into something more reminiscent of a veined jet and silver butterfly pattern over my face, the celeste blackness filled with stars and two floating strands of my hair playing at antennae.

“This is a lightfoot test,” Kris informed her squad, who nodded quickly. Basically this was a fluid surface, not much different from mud… but the main power of the Waveskating Step was ignoring difficult terrain like this. “You’ll all be popping one of these traps. They are magic, so you can cut them with vivus on your Blade, so let’s see how good your spellcraft is today.”

They all glanced at me, and I just shrugged. There was no doubt I could pop all of them with very little trouble, but that wouldn’t give them a chance to show off in front of their impossible-to-impress instructor.

---

Their Detects didn’t rival mine, but that didn’t surprise anyone. Still, knowing the area, they were able to sense the traps once we got close enough, and then one by one, Kris had them slide on up to see if they could disarm them, and how they could do it.

Magical trap disarming was generally of three kinds: cut key parts of the woven spell and make it collapse on itself; overwhelm it with an infusion of hostile energy and disrupt it; or slice into it and bleed the energies off until it dissipated entirely. Figuring out what to cut, what kind of energies to infuse, or how to drain it dry was basically a process of experimentation and skill, related to how good you were at magic.

A Dispel Magic could use any of the methods, but doing it by hand and passive magic was subtler and nowhere as flashy and loud, magically speaking.