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

She smirked when she realized I’d been thinking ahead, and hadn’t gone for Energize III today, but had instead taken Shape Wood. We could start making things out of this trunk without having to haul it around and chop it apart, creating a trail back to where we were staying.

Instead, Shape Wood easily and cleanly divided up the trunk, cleared off the bark, and put it in sections Kris could easily heft onto the Disks I brought up after she quickly hewed off the branches... and we could use the branches to make dowels and stuff, so they ended up stacked on Disks of their own after I remade them into dowels, planks, and boards of various sizes.

Actually, given how efficiently I could make use of the wood, she quickly revised her plans and set about making a wagon for us. In place of metal nails, we used wooden nails, dowel points, and wedges I could shape crudely and she could slice down to perfection, working with great speed and ease.

Shape Wood out of a II Valence allowed for only simple, basic builds. Out of a III Valence it could get more complex and possibly add some surface detail and basic design work, but it wasn’t whittling, treating, or molding. At IV it could be shaped as well as clay, but that was still a way off.

But, you know, when you only want to make smooth boards, posts, dowels, and the like, it really is all you need, and crude doesn’t mean imprecise. I could dry the boards out quickly, treat them with a sealant whipped up out of giant honeytrap juice, sundew fronds, and newly-made turpentine, seal them together, and Kris knew some fascinating rod and catch designs that took no nails to hold things together. We soon made use of them, working down in the basement on a section high enough above the water with stacked rubble so as not to get wet.

Kris could also hand-fish better than a crane, and the local fish could be distilled down into glue without all that much work.

Given we had the time and the swamp gave us the resources, I broke from my intended path to take an Alchemist Level here, given the need for me to make components, especially tapers, and basic chemical and alchemical needs we both could work with.

Emergency Healing Potions were a necessary reserve, after all.

With all the shattered glass from the vials in the water, it was easy to melt it all down and set up my own ersatz laboratory I would be able to fold out from the wagon. I illustrated the design for Kris, who clapped her hands in delight on seeing it. She was fully conversant in Rune Chemistry, and there was little difference between the two disciplines, save how magic entered what we were working on.

------

The socketed Sword slowly Burned away, the pyreal and force magicks that made it up consumed as Quaver ate it slowly and thoroughly, the gems set indelibly into it dropping off and plucked up smoothly by Kris as they fell away from the disintegrating Blade.

“It wants to lighten Quaver up,” she smirked as the last of the Sword was being eaten away by the Investing Pattern. Quaver’s blue-black adamantine steel now had a full runnel of crystalline silver-white, with four socketed holes in it that looked very out of place to any serious smith, something eye-catching that actually reduced the integrity of the blade. “I’m hazarding tungsten must be pretty rare here if they resorted to using this stuff.”

Naturally she didn’t want her Blade to be any lighter. It weighed four or five times what a normal human would consider wielding, which, since she was as strong as a Jotun and had the heavyfoot to brace it and ki to make it act like it was a tenth that heavy, was just one more example of the things you did when you were an obsessive weapons expert.

She could fence with it like a rapier. Me, I could use it to do curls.

“Well, at least it looks like a Sword, and not some mage’s approximation of one.” The crystal-holding force structure had been an eye-roller, for certain, the equivalent of putting a boob-window on a sword. Just, why?

“True. And the best part is, I don’t need the Elemental Stones the other Sword had, since Quaver already has the basic four Phasing enchantments in Arsenal.” The primary effects of those Stones had been to change the weapon from physical damage to elemental, after all. “So, I can just go after the congealed Prismatic Stone... as soon as I find out where it is.”

“Which someone with Divination magic just might be able to do for you,” I agreed, and she gave me her standard shit-eating ‘I love to have a Powered I can order around’ smile. “What do the black Diamonds do for her?” I asked calmly.

She slid the smallest one into the end slot, the one nearest the point, and it sparked and set, fusing to the blue-black adamantine and nearly invisible. The Sword seemed to perk right up in her hand, and I could see Force magic ripple about and through it. She flicked the long and slender Blade out, much heavier than it looked like, and little jetsilver ripples intermixed with Gold followed it around, spreading out in a swirling helix up her arm and around her from the inherited particle effects of the Lost Light. “Interesting...” she said, watching it at work.

“That’s a deflection effect,” I noted professionally. I flicked a Dart up and sent it her way. She twitched the Sword across its path, and the Dart hit the swathe of ripples and veered off and past her harmlessly. “That is VERY strong,” I noted to her, impressed.

“I think it is equal to the Enhancement bonus, which I think right now is equal to +VI,” she nodded slowly, her violet eyes a-gleam. “It’s a lot of waving around, but yes, this is... nice,” she had to admit. And given just how fast she could wave that thing around, she could be surrounded in Gold-and-jetsilver force ripples continuously, the Helix of protection impossible to miss.

Quite eagerly, she dropped the second black Diamond in, and the hiss and pop and crack was even louder as it fused into place. Both black Diamonds glowed with tiny white-hot lights in their centers now.

The force ripples were even more pronounced, waves shimmering out from it even when she held it absolutely motionless, pulsing and ready to act.

“Try Humanbane?” I asked shortly, staring at the display in fascination. It was one of the strongest deflection effects I could remember.

She arched an eyebrow, and invoked the Bane.

Scarlet flames the exact hue of fresh human blood lit up over the length of Quaver, hungry for human blood and life, making my hairs stand instinctively on end to see them. The Force ripples flushed with scarlet, growing stronger, thicker, yet sharper and more complex, dazzling and dangerous, They were just oozing a dangerous threat and malevolent protection, the spiral of force covering nearly half her body as it swirled about her.

“Another +II, and it looks like a +d6 of pure force damage,” she said slowly, looking at the devastatingly dangerous Weapon in her hand fondly. “Stacks with the Bane, too.”

“A +X Weapon, effectively,” I nodded. “Enmity?” I asked.

“Hah!” A harsh and judgmental silver Light joined the display of so many deadly energies, and Quaver looked to be a good six inches across now, what with the layers of Enhancement bonuses magnifying the acuity and force of her edge.

Oddly enough, the Bane lost all threat to me, as the Enmity aligned it against Evil, and I didn’t qualify. “Nice, consolidating the two together,” I approved. Only dangerous to Evil Humans, as it were.

“It was a nice way to stop any potential Curse feedback,” she nodded, waving the Sword around as if it were a willow wand, leaving behind a basically solid swathe of Radiance and Force ripples.

The Lost Light!

A +XII deflection effect attached to a Weapon! “Potential Mastery effect. See if the bonus damage from the Kickers can infuse the deflection effect and ablate incoming damage, instead of adding to your own.”

“Oh, a solid defensive technique, that would be!” she agreed immediately. “I’ll work on it! It’s not something in my memories.”

“Came to me when I saw the deflection effect. That is totally new to me, too.” Aelryinth’s Staff was effectively pseudo-Eternal by similar mechanics. “The slotted Stone effects would be totally great if they could be added to other Weapons, too...”

“I see no reason why they shouldn’t be, especially to something as flexible as a Staff,” she agreed with me. “Of course, we have to acquire the Stones or their production means.”

She abruptly bounced to her feet. “Surround me with a Holo of the map, centered on our current location.”

I obliged immediately, a large blown-up flat Hologram extending about her, our current location south of Rithwic centered on her. Our lived-line trace had basically started in the town of Holtburg, going past the road and bridge to Arwic down the River Prosper, ended up in the fallen capital city of Cragstone where the drudges now lived, extended down the shoreline of Lake Blessed, wound up in the town of Rithwic which was cleared by the floating Aberrants, and then extended down the shoreline as the Prosper continued, forming the Blackmire Swamp which the manse we were in was right on the edge of, near to the town of Yanshi off to our south-west.

The rest of the map sprawled out, only the settlements and major geography named. The scattered smaller islands around this one, the inland sea, and the fact so much different geography was crammed into one place was all telling of magical influences.

The big round black spot in the southwest was pretty ominous, too.

Princess Kristie closed her eyes, visualizing something, and Quaver hummed sadly once, spinning and pointing.

I extended a line in that direction from our current location, noting it stabbed north and east, intercepting one of the islands out there and the round circle upon it.

“Volcano there is the source of the black Diamonds,” Kris said, pointing at Aerlinthe Island. I nodded and froze the line, able to picture what was there, and I should easily be able to Scry there as soon as I took the spell. She spun and pointed several times more with her eyes closed, and I obligingly drew the lines to match the angles she was pointing at.

“Volcanoes here... and here,” she pointed out, her blind aim spot-on to the circles on the map. “The Elemental Fire Infusions that went into the sword came from those additional places.” Small script named them Crater Lake and Mount Lethe. Now, the Fire Stone came from here, as well. The line was almost, but not quite parallel to her second one, clearly the volcano there being important. “The Lightning Stone should be around here, Acid here, and Cold down here.” Her sense of distance wasn’t exact, so she just circled the approximate area she vaguely felt. “The last Infusion of hidden Radiance gathered up there.” She indicated the narrow, dark island up to the northeast, near Aerlinthe, simply named The Dark Isle.

Clearly, the mapmakers weren’t going for poetic names. But then, Sawato to the south of us on the swamp literally meant ‘swamp town’ in Sho, so what were we expecting? “And this one?” I indicated the line off towards the southwest, clipping through that round black area named not-grimly as the Obsidian Plains.

She circled a blank area, west and north of a settlement called Candeth Keep there. “That is where the last of the Order of the Lost Light fell, where that Sword came from, and where their Hall is located.”

I could picture glimpses of the landscape, but that battle had been so long ago, it was doubtful anything matched with the amount of geomancy these people undertook.

“Well, it’s nice to have things to work towards,” I nodded as I surveyed the places. “I’ll fill the terrain in as I get Scrying and Cloudsight working for a satellite view of things, and we’ll see what we can see.

“In your estimation, where would be the likeliest spot for us to find living humans?”