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

Welp, okay, she was going to kill me, without a doubt. She couldn’t have someone knowing the truth. A Milantean in the Imperial Academy? And wasn’t... fuck, wasn’t Xunidira the name of the daughter of Nuhmudira, the Great Infiltrator who had nearly destroyed the whole Academy twenty years ago after delving into the lore stolen from the Viamontians?

She had been forced to run, fleeing into one of the mysterious blue Portals that had taken so many people from Ispar over the last two generations. Her involvement in nearly destroying the Imperial Academy at Tirethas was shushed up publicly, but all the students there knew.

I heavily and highly doubted her Zharalim did. They were Gharu’ndim like I was, and fully aware of her mother. The woman who had taught Mira was playing at being a shore-dwelling Gharu’n by her accent, but her lineage and heritage was Milantean, who were rather infamous for the number of dark mages they birthed! They had even used the Poet himself for their Dark Rituals!

This was also an area of dimensional weakness, and the Isparians were anything but adept in dimensional magic. It was one of their big lackings in the magical department, and those random Portals were a huge reason why so many mages were interested in the things.

I could have told them the magic here was simply not strong enough or conducive to making something as powerful as Portals, but this was not the time nor place.

Blue Portals. Dimensional magic, the real stuff, not this quasi-Summoning Mira was totally unprepared for. Everything she had researched indicated the Portals were random, and although they had tapered off over the last ten years, they still popped up in odd places, mesmerizing those who looked upon them, and drawing them in.

Okay, there were a couple things I had to do. The first was Know Location and find out my dimensional coordinates.

The second was pull one of those Portals here. A distraction to give me that time would be nice.

“Xunidira, daughter of Nuhmudira, what are you doing in Tirethas?” I said in a completely wrong accent. “Do you not know that there is a deathmark on your mother? Or are you merely carrying on her work?”

The shock on her face was absolutely complete as my voice rang out, and the Zharilim escorting her looked at her sharply, unable to miss the expression on her face at her secret being revealed.

“You-!” she shouted, and then saw the expression on the faces of the two men with her under the bright moon.

Her Wand came out and up, and a second later bright lightning flashed into the chest of the first one, sending him flying in a charred mess.

Gold-level Lightning. I skipped down into the middle of the crater as a Cantrip throbbed at my head, a bunch of numbers slid across them, and I painted them into my Visual File.

“If you are a Scholar of Stealth, I’d run now, because she can’t afford to have you spreading the truth of her identity!” I sang out, and the man who’d arrived first, now charging in to help his brother Zharalim as he slashed desperately at the woman, slowed down.

Reinforced robes and magical armor took the attack easily, and the rapid slashes barely raised the slightest of gashes on her throat and arms as power gathered on her Wand. A flaring pink field flared over the man, his eyes bright as he realized he was going to die as the spell inflicted massive Vulnerability to lightning on him with the words “Cruath Quafeth!”

The third Zharalim turned and raced off into the darkness as “Zojak Quagaz!” echoed out, and the second Zharalim charred and died, the Gold-level Lightning Bolt tearing through him even more violently than it had his junior.

But the third man was off and running, and I was reaching out with the essence of a Blink spell, looking for a wandering weakness pervading the area, which had to be attracted to the stress the Veil here had just undergone.

“You!” snarled the severe woman who had been Mira’s inspiration and primary instructor... and the cause of her death. “Who are you?!” she demanded, eyes straining, roughly able to pick out the magic sparkling on my fingers.

I felt and saw the Lightning Vulnerability field settle over me as she found a target, and hissed in satisfaction. Without a counter-protection up, her Bolt was going to kill me.

Right there.

I yanked, and space opened up behind me in a flowering blue nimbus of light. “An explorer and traveler to distant places! So long!”

I stepped back into the Portal as she screamed. Violet-pink lightning sparked and flared, but the Portal to somewhere collapsed about me and was gone, historically destabilized by the first person through it in ninety-nine percent of all recorded cases.

Mira remembered something about the Viamontians making one last long enough to send armies through it, but what I’d brought in definitely wasn’t that stable, and her teacher wasn’t following me. She could find her own damn Portal!

-------

The Portal trip was topsy-turvy, which wasn’t that unusual for such things, and certainly not much worse than Teleporting. It was only worse than my trip through Astral Space because I had a physical body, and Mira was impressed at how blasé I was about such a wondrous journey and display of magic.

Then she looked at some of my memories and realized why I wasn’t impressed. It was because I was depressed I couldn’t do the same thing... yet.

Then there was the equivalent of a cough and hiccup in the magic, and I was dropped out of the Portal as it opened, disgorged me, and promptly shut itself behind me.

I let myself drop to my hands and knees to get my guts under control, vestigial magic taking care of residual kinetic energy, atmospheric pressure, all the good stuff. I took some long and deep breaths to steady myself as I looked around.

In my hand was a blue crystal of some kind, with a broken circle in the middle of it. As I looked at it, it fractured wildly, then shattered into a tiny mound of crystalline dust upon the floor.

I noted that there were more than a few mounds of that dust on the ground, and many had been disturbed with rat tracks. My sense of foreboding grew.

I was in some kind of carved stone room, with what looked to be a smashed table and chair, two fallen bookcases with their contents strewn across the room, and a long cold fireplace set in the stone wall to the side. Some sort of dried water fountain on the wall was also shattered, there was a fallen candle stand, and at least one broken masonry jar. A broken, decayed tub sat near the cold hearth, and what had probably been a stack of wood, now overgrown with mold and must, was also there.

It was also absolutely dark, and I would have been blind without my Mask of Clarity humming along.

I saw only one way out of there, the iron doors hanging askew, just remnants hanging on their hinges, the metal decayed and chopped apart savagely by something in the past.

I slowly tracked right and left, and my eyes settled on the white of human bones scattered under the wall to the right, Devilsight not inhibited by the darkness at all.

Mira was noticeably quiet as she watched all this with me, not having any better idea of what to expect here than I did.

I sat up and looked around, spotting what looked like old rotting sacks lined up on either side the shattered table, things spilling out of them and the contents scattered in all directions by rodents or something.

Those things look familiar...

I slid sideways, closed my hands around something that was festooned with more than a bit of rat turds, and lifted up the perfectly functional, if very low-quality Wand laying discarded on the floor.

Yep, it synched with my magic instantly. Cheap bronze and maple, by the feel of it, but I didn’t have anything better, and so I didn’t care.

Which didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt to have a backup.

The packs looked to have contained sacks, perhaps food of some kind, and basic weapons that were now all warped and decayed, gnawed on and worthless. The rats had been nesting in them, and the nests were somewhat sizable... but there were none present for the moment, so I pulled out a second Wand from the mess and used Prestidigitation to weave up a crude sheath for it I could hang it on the back of my belt if I needed the thing.

This night vision you have is incredible, Mira said, studying everything as I stepped over to the skeleton. What do you make of this place?

The human bones were heavily gnawed and scattered, but didn’t hide the fact some of them were fused by acid, and one skull had a definite penetration wound from something sharp hacking into it. Adult male, looked to have been wearing blue robes of some kind, now scattered and mostly faded, like the rest of his attire rat-chewed and worthless.

“If those packs had food and weapons in them, they were there to give to new arrivals, who presumably only had what they were carrying and might need them.” I moved up to the books and toed them. Most fell apart, charred, burned, or dissolving even before I touched them. “There are elemental energy residues everywhere. The rat bedding had both scorch and burn marks on it, from fire and lightning. That man was showered with enough acid to eat through his flesh to the bone, and you can see the scoring of it on these glaze marks.” I indicated pitted areas of the stone. “These are made by some sort of material hard enough to chip into stone.” I ran my fingers over the clefts in the stone. “Like a pickaxe, but narrower.”

A strange weapon, Mira mused, as I headed out the shattered door.

This room opened up into what appeared to have been a transition room, with another riven door in front of me. A large shattered plaque was on the ground, covered in dust only broken by rat trails. Halls opened into larger, silent rooms to the right and left.

To the left was a broken free-standing fountain... and what looked to be like two planted, dead trees, brittle and withered from lack of sunlight and water. I instinctively looked up, feeling for residues of natural magic which might have allowed them to grow inside.

In the other direction was a more social room, with another hearth, seats, a table, a low couch, and more jars. All were cold, shattered, and torn apart, broken by... something.

There was also a set of stairs that somehow was not destroyed, leading up.

Ryin, the magic is stronger here, Mira breathed. Our mana pool is recovering slowly.

I kept looking around as I acknowledged the fact. It was indeed recovering without using Meditation, maybe a point a minute.

Which alerted me to the fact that I was an idiot. I had a wand, and should be trying to fill my pool if I could.

“Puish Zhanil!” I said softly. Stamina to Mana II, an Iron Spell. Mana conversion should be easy on it, so I should expend far less on it than what I spent.

I started to weave the spell, and promptly felt the hollowness in it, like it couldn’t find anything to target. I grimaced as a point of Mana fizzled, and the spell collapsed.

That is not a good sign, Mira said softly.

“You got that right.” I tapped the Wand thoughtfully, and steeled myself. I still had over 60 Health, even if I didn’t feel like it. “Puish Zhafil!” I said softly, racing my thoughts along the play of iron scarab, red taper, saffron petals, amber powder, and brimstone tincture (as opposed to quicksilver) of the previous spell, finishing up with the willow talisman to form it all properly.

The spell warbled, shifted, couldn’t find a target, and fizzled out, costing two points of Mana this time.

Well, less than ten points left, which wasn’t good.

I looked at the mana pool, then at my Matrix. Back, forth.

Uh-huh.

The Core of my Matrix powered my Cantrips, minor spells I could Cast all day. Instead of pulling out the power and forming it into a spell, I instead turned around and transferred it into the mana pool as raw energy, and then flipped a little lever of my own.

Arcane Pool Theurge/1!