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

The Prismatic Stones were, right now, among the most desired of all magical items anyone could possibly gain.

It wasn’t because they gave Elemental Slayer against all Elementals, although that was indeed important. It wasn’t because they gave Armor Cleaving out on top of that, although that was also pretty important.

It wasn’t even because they were fancy and attention-getting and told people that you were trusted by the Crown and the Warlords and had connections.

It was because they were only given out to people making craploads of money and incidental jewels in loot up in the Olthoi North.

Lugian and Isparian master jewelers and mages were taking the Elemental Stones recovered from what were being called the Prismatic Fields up there, cutting and fusing them together to create new Stones, which were being parceled out slowly and steadily as they were created.

Furthermore, you needed to have a Socketed Weapon to receive them. Normal Weapons made by any of the three species didn’t have them, as once they’d been the exclusive province of the Atlan Weapons and their improved successors, the Isparian Weapons. Both of those Weapons could be made by certain of the master smiths armed with Floating Forges that could melt pyreal to the desired state for forging, but nobody wanted an inferior Atlan Weapon.

They wanted Warfang Weapons, things forged as only Warlords Briggs and Kristie Rantha could teach the smiths to do. They wanted Weapons that could socket multiple Gems of Power, Weapons that made the eye shudder in awe to look upon their craftsmanship, Weapons that could be Named and grow to power!

And they wanted the Lost Light. Damn, did they want the showy spirals that synced with the Aura and magic, flowing as if alive for those who had them.

There were only three people alive (other than me) who had functioning Weapons of Lost Light: first Kristie, then Lord Mick, and finally the Lights had Awoken on Briggs’ devastating Greathammer Endure. Nobody else had figured out the trick to gaining the Light, but Kris and Briggs were more than willing to entertain the dreams and ambitions of the noble souls among them who wanted the Lost Light for more than just appearances and power.

They were looking for Knights of the Lost Light, and the next phase of their campaigns was soon underway in that direction. Kristie and Briggs began the long and grindy process of clearing the southwest of Osteth, and started the long and violently-contested clearing of the southern landbridge to the Southern Direlands of the opposite shore.

The landbridge was literally a zigzag course of flattened hills and mountains, an easy and level road from the Direlands over the top of extremely mountainous terrain, and a sign of terraforming at an incredible level. It was… long, with all the zigs and zags, but completely level, had a paved road, and was totally suitable for marching an army and all of its supplies from the lands of the Sand Kings and undead over to the eastern lands held by Empyrean forces in the past, and by us now.

In these times, the landbridge was occupied by an unholy mix of monstrous spawns, creatures tougher and stronger than almost anything found in Osteth, as well as creatures spilling out of numerous formerly lost Dungeons and hidden planar strongholds erected in the area long ago, returned to the mortal plane by the Fall.

It was a test for those who might want to be Knights of the Lost Light, be they Caster, Archer, or Melee, on how well they could work together, support one another, and collaborate towards a greater goal.

Candeth Martine was waiting for them in the Keep he’d emptied of undead, waiting for us to arrive and forge a road to his new place of power, a place right in the heart of some of the most dangerous lands in all of Dereth. There were paramounts and aspiring paramounts chaffing to get out there and operate from a secure base of operations once again, and who were assigned to clear the lower areas to the sides of the landbridge of any and all established threats and Summons points. The Tanada camps were a particular target of those nominally independent forces, not the least because they were sure to actually have loot…

None of them were trying to get up to the Prismatic Fields at this time. Too many Elementals of all kinds, and when there weren’t, there were too many damn olthoi.

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Karrag and Willow sighed in relief as the Hellfire collapsed under their dual Vuln/Ice Bolt assault. Mages could and did have a lot of problems dealing with dual-element Elementals of the various types, but the single-Element ones were generally easier to pick on.

Having a Prismatic Stone set in a Scepter also helped tons, doubling their damage with Elemental Slayer.

Against the Dual-Elementals, it was easier to just Imperil, Vuln to Slashing, and let the Melees and Archers cut them down while conserving their magic.

As for the Paradox Olthoi, they couldn’t do much against them at all, the olthoi impervious to Life Magic and massively resistant to War Magic.

It was not a pleasant thing to discover, nor that the bugs were much more clever than the stories about their swarms from the paramounts indicated.

Kopf’s Axe Lapis, using the flat hammer end, came over and down and crushed the skull of a smaller, racing white Olthoi Mutilator, its pedipalps shining with the telltale radiance of chorozite. It burst into vivus with artificial speed, indicating it was a Summon, like so many of the olthoi sent after them were.

It joined dozens of other white spots scattered around their mining spots. In the distance, olthoi flyers and Nobles stayed well away from us, keeping us in sight while not venturing forward themselves.

They did order in wave after wave of Summoned Olthoi to drive us off, however.

As a result, the operation had to be capable of dealing with the Elementals who not only randomly spawned around the many Energized stones and boulders scattered through the area, but popped up every time the Stones we were after were cut down.

Lord Mick hewed through a Tsuric with Bunita, the Cold/Lightning Elemental scattering to dissipating droplets and random sparks absorbed by the revealed Stone crawling with raw Elemental essence of those types.

“These things are far, far tougher than those I remember,” he commented with feeling. “How much Health?”

“2500 or so, ranging up to 5k from the core of the Stones,” I reported, watching the other members of the teams at work.

Mages concentrated on single-type Elementals and Healing, keeping their mana up. The Melees had to intercept any olthoi coming in, or Elementals that spawned off the Stone-cutters.

It had already been proven that transporting uncut Stones was a recipe for disaster, resulting in explosive convergences of energies and whole spawns of Elementals erupting into existence at one time. They’d spawn again at great speed, too, unless the Stones were swiftly hurled far apart.

Only transporting one Dual Stone to split apart per run was definitely not what anyone wanted to have happen. They all wanted to get rich, so that meant cutting Stones down to a more stable configuration, killing the Elementals that spawned, and dealing with the waves of olthoi being brought in to fight by their more intelligent living masters to drive us off.

Vivus had no real effect on the Elemental energies seething everywhere here. They were derived from the land, and if unnaturally concentrated, weere completely natural otherwise. Vivus would still dissipate them slowly, but just peter out once they fell below a certain level… a level which would explode randomly back to life if a surge came through or an uncut Stone flared up.

The Archers dealt with any flying olthoi that weren’t Stillflighted and brought down to meet their end, and also focus-fired down any Elementals the Melees were quick to engage and keep off of them. Prismatic-charged arrows weren’t as powerful as the Weapons so gifted, but certainly strong enough to disrupt the Elementals when plunging into the complex Matrices which allowed them to exist as animated things of raw energy.

It required a full Fellowship to execute such an operation properly, and did much better with two, covering for one another more readily and allowing the Stone-cutter to work with more peace of mind.

There was definite focus on the skill of the cutter, as their ability determined how fast everyone got rich and how much work they had to do. Flub up the carving, and a massive spawn of Elementals made things totally chaotic, AND they didn’t get a Stone to get rich on.

The two cutters here were the Masters Feld and Ochran Belmer, a lugian and Isparian respectively, both working on Stones with care and haste as they chipped off unnecessary protrusions and cleared away the disruptive stone interfering with the harmony of the crystals in contact with them. Magic protected against damage from the essences spilling out of their Stones as they worked, wincing as they peeled away the impure fractured crystals dissipating the Elemental Essence within bit by bit.

They had no confidence in doing the final cuts with any speed, and reluctantly passed them over to me to finish up.

My Pyramid-making in Xarabydun was basically flying under the eyes of the undead. Undead scouts had already examined the big hole left of the place and lost all interest after the remnant power of the thing they’d tried to Summon had been sent away.

A twenty-stepper was going up there, going to sync up with the one in Kara and then the one in Hebian-to I put into place next, turning southern Osteth into an impenetrable wall to undesired Portaling and Summoning.

Spending my off-hours scaring up a lot of goldweight and material for the highly-useful Prismatic Stones was a good use of my spare time. The effect of Armor-Cleaving was hard enough to come by normally, no need to refuse the benefit on most any Weapon. Briggs and Kristie filled their downtime with forging, abusing poor metal to work off any stress accrued during the day. I certainly had enough Artificing I could do to fill up my days for years…

“Opinions o’ anything in particular?” the Mick asked me as a fine adamantine chisel wielded with Zeks’ TK proceeded to start tapping the gem-like glowing crystal precisely and chip off unneeded portions with speed and surety. My hands were left completely free as I worked in midair.

“A good way to spend my time,” I admitted, just as the Fire/Cold Stone in my hand pulsed, swirled, and vented out a swirl of energy that gathered into a spontaneous matrix and gathered into the eight-foot form of a churning mass of Elemental Fire and Cold in a rough humanoid form.

It was a bit startled when I poked it with Crown and the Imperil went off on it. A second later, six shafts were glowing and crackling in the fields of the Theral’s Matrix, and then Bunita hacked six blows through it in something under a second. It ruptured badly as crits of Lost Light blew through it in fracturing rainbows and shattered it back into random amounts of its component energies.

“Aye. Making money an’ killing things worth the killin’ t’ do it is a good way t’ live,” the Mick agreed cheerfully, glancing at my Disk and the growing stack of Stones and minor gemstones upon it. They meant more days of goldweight to improve everyone’s gear, and Prismatic Stones to pass out to the Roaches and other Royal Scouts as needed.

There’d been some attempts to steal such things, which had been quite fruitful. I’d tracked down the Stones, the thieves, the fences, the buyers, and their organizations, and there’d been some rapid vacancies in those organizations, as well as eager volunteers for the army life on the frontier under Geas.

We just didn’t have to put up with that kind of crap anymore, and I could track every single Prismatic Stone made, since Kris or I were the final cutters on all of them. If the thieves didn’t anticipate how easy finding a magical Stone I was attuned to was, well, that was on them. I certainly didn’t explain it to them.

The stealing attempts had fallen off a cliff, however.