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

“Way back when they were trying to figure out how magic worked and the associations between Elements, the tapers that burned were the only random element that varied between spellcasters.” I eyed the array of twelve as I prepared to get started. “They quickly noticed that if you found the first taper for your Irons, then the next Scarab up of spells always followed a virtuous color circle of progression, the Taper Rainbow.

“At your Coppers and Golds spells, new taper Slots came in that were always different from the set and fixed first Lead taper. So, the tapers had to react to something personal about each Caster. But once you found ‘your’ taper, the next tier up followed the virtuous progression of the Taper Rainbow.

“They worked out much of the relationships using the Item Magic spells, Impenetrability, and the seven armor Banes that went with it. Since there are twelve colors of tapers, and two sets of random combinations...”

“The Father, seven Wives, and a mess of children, or bloodlines,” she nodded understanding. “Typically poetic Roulean nonsense, I imagine?”

“There are many who argue over who called it such first, but the name has stuck,” I confirmed. “The deeper arguments are about the Bloodlines of the Children, as they call them, and what they signify about those who have them, are there any shared traits, personalities, foibles, skills, talents, destinies, dooms, and so forth.” I waved my hand in the air absently. “Naturally some are thought of as more auspicious than others, and some combinations are more common than others, significantly so.

“Impenetrability is the baseline spell used for the Bloodlines, as it is common across all cultures. The Red-Red first taper combination covers roughly four percent of the population of Casters back home who have been tested, and so is by far the most common Bloodline, called Blood Aflame. The gray-turquoise Bloodline is believed to be the rarest and most mystical, styled the Misty Deeps, while the violet-indigo Call of the Void is found mostly among Milanteans, especially those who are drawn to the Void and necromantic magic, a fact they try very hard to conceal.”

“Yourself?”

“I aim to find out. I am nominally a White. I have set up the components to optimize flow and minimize burn, while making it easy to analyze the results. The taper combinations I am not attuned to will likely burn partially or completely off immediately. If I am partially attuned, but not perfect, I should lose one or two of them. Ideally, the combination I am attuned to I will not lose a single component even if I fail the spell... and my odds of succeeding at the spell should be about ninety percent.”

The princess reached over, plucked up a red taper extra I had sitting there, and brought it up to her nose, lifting an eyebrow. “Iron oxide?” she asked, putting it back.

“The minerals mixed in with the tapers are different from the powders. The red taper is often called the Blood taper, and iron in our blood is believed to be the reason why it is the most common.”

“White?” she asked.

“Rock salt, NOT from water.”

“Interesting. I never learned the formulas for obvious reasons. Please, proceed.” Not that she couldn’t, but it was grindwork, and she wasn’t a mage, and so would never need them for herself. It was a simple task best left to civilian alchemists to make a living.

I nodded and closed my eyes, reaching out mentally to the precise rows of components I’d assembled there, waiting to build the linking bridge of magic and form the precise architecture of the Father spell for the Gold level. Once I had the Father, finding the Wives was easy, and once I had the Wives, I could calculate all the Children in the other spells. The math behind it all was really quite fascinating...

I began with red, since it was the most common, and sent the power flowing through it smoothly.

There was a flash and flare, and all three tapers involved - the mandatory blue, the derived red, and the ‘random’ second red one - flared and were gone, taking half the rest of the components with them.

“Ouch!” the princess observed.

I just waved her to quiet, and moved to the next line.

Tapers flared, talismans burned, powders were consumed, herbs turned to ash, and reagents cracked and blackened.

I completed the twelfth set and looked back at it all in disbelief.

The twelve sets were ALL over half-consumed, and all the tapers were gone and melted into lumps of discolored goo, evaporating with residual magic even as I watched.

“Forgive me for being blunt, but that was an absolutely horrible performance, right?” Kris stood up and gazed over the lines of components. “I know random numbers and chaos are a thing, but that... just looks bad, right?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a performance quite this bad,” I agreed with her softly. “Seventy percent component burn is... horrendous. Perhaps if someone had half my skill they would do something like, but most likely they would have fizzled repeatedly. A fizzle would stop most of this before it happened. This... is appalling.” I crossed my arms and stared at the results, completely mystified.

“Make another set and try again?” she asked. Laws of large numbers meant I should do better the next time, unless something was REALLY bending the results here.

“...no,” I replied, staring at the ruined sets. “This is far too appalling a result, too far outside the average to NOT mean something extraordinary. I’ve seen people do Gold tests before.” Well, Shamira had. “I just Burned six Gold scarabs in twelve combinations. In normal circumstances, doing a twelve-set like this, you might Burn one if your skill was a bit low, two if you are unlucky, and three would just plain suck. Six? Nobody Burns six, even people who can’t Cast Gold. They just fizzle.”

“So, what does it mean, alternatively?” Kris asked, interested despite herself.

“That I don’t have a Bloodline that is one of the dozen-dozen Children.”

The princess made an appreciative face of that very unlikely statement. “If it weren’t for the circumstances of how you got here, I’d call you incredibly unlucky and very arrogant. But you’re a Power of Ten Caster, you know what you are doing, and that... sounds entirely reasonable, given you’ve a Matrix no Isparian would have. Only how do you fit a unique taper or taper array into this, and what kind of taper would it be?”

I waved my hand, and the default twelve colors of taper rose up and formed a circular Rainbow array in front of me. “Note the missing color,” I pointed out to her.

“Black,” she stated instantly, not hesitating a moment. “Furthermore, didn’t that remnant taper you found have rainbow elements to it?”

It flicked over to me from the Disk it was sitting on, small and broken, yet still glittery crystalline white with dots of all the colors in them. “Ideally, something like this would sub for ALL the tapers, and all the other components, too. The Alchemy and Spellcraft theory behind them is at least twelve Ranks.” I passed it over to her, and she eyed it again, bringing it up to sniff slowly and deeply.

She actually blinked and removed it from under her nose. “Wow. That is... quite heady. There are a lot of active elements to this thing. At least threescore different additions wound into it, blended yet distinct. I am impressed.”

“It’s not Isparian.” I gave her a normal taper. “Just look at the internal consistency. There’s some masterful Alchemical skills in those Rainbow tapers, no apprentice could do them, active magical and alchemical manipulation within the mix of the wax and even the wick.”

She tapped the Rainbow Taper with a black talon of a nail, slowly and thoughtfully. “So... these things have to be made at QL 32?” She whistled softly, glancing over my ruined set again. “And it replaced ALL those components?”

“Everything but the scarabs. Essentially there’s mini-components inside every taper guiding the process, but the scarabs gather and contain the energy to send into the spell. The taper residues aren’t strong enough to do that. Forming a guideline according to the memory of the Caster? Not a problem.”

“That is an absolutely incredible level of magical technology,” she conceded.

“Similar to making microprocessors for computers,” I agreed, and her eyes shifted as she went somewhere her inherited memories didn’t usually have to go before nodding with me.

“Which confirms that this place is or was a hotbed of magical technology, and they either discovered these things themselves or were taught by those who brought them here.”

“And we know ancient magical civilizations just love leaving records of their core technologies around for barbarians to stumble across and use...” she smirked.

“Yes, more like high state secrets... and not hard to keep at QL 32, since there aren’t many people good enough to work on them. Unless you’re breeding high-level people like flies, or something.”

We both thought about all the fused dead people in those pits around the Death Crystals. If we assumed those were high-Level people, there’d been no shortage of them... and we’d only been to three of the towns to see the results ourselves.

We didn’t know what the politics were like, either, although disaster had a way of setting a lot of those things aside. Survival had a way of trumping personal ambitions that way... at least for most people.

I’d have to think how to get my Golds now. I wasn’t going to be restricted to Silver, but finding the alternative was outside my inherited knowledge, and I wasn’t an inspired researcher or inventor.

Just, blah.

Mira chuckled at me and rubbed her hands in delight, already starting mental work on how to approach this strange turn of events.

------

“Well?” Princess Kristie Rantha asked, as we watched the floating thing take off its white mime-like mask with a mechanical motion and no apparent hands, revealing an empty space inside its metal hood with faint pinkish light fluttering underneath. It either scratched or made a reflexive adjustment to the mask with a sickle it flicked out of its sleeve, then set the mask back in place as the sickle vanished as smoothly as it had come out.

It was a Summon, the area underneath it rather badly scored by some sort of reality-twisting energy that seemed to be affecting the vegetation more adversely than something just standing there. Most Summon areas had tramped plant life and dirt, but the plants actually seemed empowered by the energies involved, and were never actually completely cleared, unless the area was already stone or something.

“It’s a Virindi Servant.” It didn’t seem powerful enough to sense my careful Assay. “No, I’ve never heard of the species before. It’s a quasi-hivemind intelligence, an energy lifeform held from dissipating in this environment by its attire. Disrupt said attire, and it will lose its grip on materiality and return to the central energy structure. I’d hazard that the separate virindi we’ve seen are like sub-personalities in the overall intelligence, and the longer they remain away from the center, the more powerful they get as they accumulate individual rather than inherited experiences.

“This is one of the least powerful ones. It has high intelligence, but almost no charisma or sense of self to speak of. It’s an obedient and skilled servant that probably can’t think outside the orders given to it.

“As to its true status, I’m guessing that it operates similar to the undead and the shades. Spirits have been bound into the Summoning system and form an ersatz spy network and reusable resource for the primary population. It’s likely a passing patrol of the true virindi can take command of them for their own uses, at least in a local area.”

“Interesting,” she nodded, her violet eyes just barely not glowing as she held herself back. “Combat stats?”

“A weird mix of Construct and Aberrant. The sickles are the equivalent of fine steel blades, you’ll find its combat style precise but predictable, no real anatomy except energy, and its suit is equal to a fine set of mail. It’s not spell immune, but it has high magic resist for its power otherwise.”

“You could punch through it?” she asked calmly.