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

As we ran through the inner area of the burun’s territory, Invisible and camouflaged in the night, magic lighting up the sky behind it, it quickly became apparent that the burun had an iron grip on this territory.

Most of the Summons we had expected were missing, likely hauled away for the fighting. Those that remained were often right in the middle of key pathways through the waters, and there were a lot of natural fortifications, such as planted trees, thick clusters of plants, mushroom mounds, and the like scattered about, in addition to actual walls and barriers built up. The burun had busily been engaged in a natural terraforming of their territory, which seemed to involve more mushrooms of a very different intrinsic nature than those of the olthoi, so I could imagine how those species got along.

They had managed to create currents and flows where there was little simply by channeling the flows of water expertly with planted vegetation. It wasn’t much, but it kept the water in motion and cleaner than might be expected otherwise.

So, I had to give them props for taking care of their new home, because it was plain that they didn’t come from this land, what with the absolutely new ecology they were trying to introduce. Another species of barbaric nature thrown into the mix, although there was a definite druidic/natural/primal vibe about them and their magic that the other species seemed to lack, and actually was rather opposed to the arcane-based magic that was wielded most naturally here.

It was probably what had allowed them to usurp control of the Summons in their own areas, while disrupting their foes from doing something likewise. I hadn’t witnessed anywhere near this absolute control from either the undead or the mosswarts, although I certainly didn’t believe it was impossible for the former. They simply... had better things to do, and were content to keep the frogger/toadmen ‘cooped up’, such as it was, and their actual living numbers limited.

If the burun expanded, well, that was a different matter.

The undead were unleashing probing attacks all along the western perimeter of the place, Cold spells flashing through the night with dazzling chilled whiteness. Virtually all of that power was being expended on Summons, however, so basically it was all just for show.

I wasn’t sure the burun had much of anywhere to retreat to, so they were fortifying their ground and holdings. They seemed to prefer burrows and caves for their sheltering areas, instead of buildings like humans did, and I could only imagine how hellish it would be for a normal attacking force to dig them out of there.

Me? Not so much. Earth and Water Elementals would terrify the crap out of these guys if I had to do the job. But, given the natural bias to their magic, I would in effect be teaching them how to Summon Elementals, which might not be a wise thing to do.

Eh...

Princess Kristie Rantha and I zipped on through the night, the Disk-borne Wagon easily able to follow her up, over, and around obstacles, and none of the sentries alive or Summoned saw much more than a blur of motion that was gone in the night before they could really register anything was there, doubtless considering it all just a trick of the shadows.

There were some interesting sights we saw threading through the place, including a shrine left untouched by the burun and guarded by numerous Water Golums, as well as a hill in the middle of the swamp, vomited forth by the earth and water and still seared with the same kind of energies as had suffused that downed tower up by Cragstone, malevolent shadow energies the land just did not like. Nothing had grown upon it, and the burun had ringed it with stands of mushrooms that glowed under the moonlight to stave off whatever energies were inside of it.

The massive dungeon pushed into the ground, surrounded by sclavus and yet another new species, the piscine Moarsmen, with toothy fish faces, webbed limbs, and scales of bright green, gold, red, or blue, was not so expected. What’s more, the burun seemed quite hostile to them, and had ringed the whole temple area in their own Summons and living troops... and seemed to be using the Summons of the temple area for training purposes, if what I saw of the arrangements were right.

That being said, the yawning doors to the complex beyond were not being assaulted, making me wonder what was within them.

There were several other such force-rooted dungeon areas stuck into the swamp, Kris seeming to have a nose for where they might be as she zigzagged through the swampy area, following deployments of living and semi-living troops. We also ran into our first bright golden phyntos wasp, a powerful and quick specimen shooting lightning energetically at the slightest provocation, thankfully out of sight of any burun watchers. Given our need for stealth, I shot it down before Kris could engage it, and she didn’t protest too much.

She did like seeing if she could kill them without spoiling their lovely crystalline wings, but that was only something she could do with the living ones, which didn’t seem nearly as common as the Summons.

We also met our first Acid Elementals, which often gathered by the fumarole mounds venting magical energy from below. They were innately Summons, meaning the ‘real’ ones were Summons regardless of anything else, an innate part of the land and the Summoning system combined. I had to admit I’d never fought an ‘acid’ Elemental before, as it was an energy type, not an Elemental.. But it was obviously a highly weaponized form of Water Elemental when it came down to it, although here wound about a more humanoid arcane matrix instead of a natural or randomized one, so they actually walked and ran about, instead of sloshing and flowing... and their attacks were indeed corrosive, as well as disconcertingly powerful and rigid for being a liquid.

Well, the Fire and Lightning Elementals we’d seen scattered on Summon points had been tiny, but equally solid, and Air Elementals were gaseous and hit like bricks, too. All part of the wonders and terror of magic, in the end, and just how the Rules Were Different Here.

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There was a raised road cutting across the swamp from east to west, except it had been cut through by carefully dug tunnels underneath it in several locations, allowing the swampy waters to flow unimpeded beyond.

That road was also an impromptu fortification point for the major settlements of burun beyond, occupying the edge of the swamp, the fields that had been made out of the re-flooded area where the Sho had once grown rice and more paddies had been planted beyond by opportunistic omnivorous froggers and toadmen, all of it being run out of the transformed but very much standing small town of Sawato.

There were a lot of burun, living ones, engaged in the area, getting up in the dim pre-dawn light to start working at their tasks. They were making use of the remains of the foundations of several human buildings, the walls rebuilt with mud, bamboo, and reeds to be more homey. There were clouds of spores in the air from the huge amount of mushrooms growing everywhere, and the semi-musical croaking, belching, and sometimes chirping and squealing of burun coming in every direction under an interlaced canopy of trees grown and rising over everything, sending all beneath into permanent cool shadow.

I had to admit the knee-high burun babies tumbling about here and there were kind of cute without all the toothy ridges on their jaws, but the amphibians seemed to be doing just fine here... and, Kris and I noticed, the town wasn’t defended much at all from the south, the crude walls we saw in our quick tour about the place more for keeping out casual vermin than anything resembling true defensive structures.

Also, when Kris went stealing right through the heart of the town to investigate their religious structures and see just what kind of offerings they gave to their gods, she found another of the Deathstone pits, still sparking and spitting. Although the number of dead was the least we’d seen so far, the burun had cordoned the area off with plant life and left it alone, as if quietly respecting the sheer power of death concentrated in it.

She set it on vivic fire after carefully ascertaining that none of the skulls hanging from the stakes, poles, and hooks of the temple they’d built around the copper pedestal in the town were human. The Sclavus Statue that was supposed to be on that pedestal, however, was impaled by wooden poles, probably three dozen of them, in manners which suggested some deep-seated hatred of the creatures. Its impaled figure was visible from half the town, held high and there to be seen by the population.

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I had Kris hold up as we came south out of the town, her curious about what was to the south and the rising mountains we could see in the distance there, and me listening with an ear cocked as the dawn approached.

“They are singing the death of the moon,” I told her, the various croaks and calls reorganizing and changing in meaning as my Polyglot Feat gathered them and connected to the underlying sense of what they were. I’d been listening to them for well over an hour now, enough time to make sense of a simplistic language that nonetheless had surprising emotional depth built into it. “The sun is hot and unfriendly in this strange land, so the moon is always a relief. We’re seeing them winding down for the day, not gearing up for it. Vocal structures seem to indicate they are subterranean, and I’ve been listening to songs about the blessed river caverns and deep lakes they’ve left behind here. They are adapting, as there are some new elements – they love trees, for instance – but they are coming across as folk songs, although there’s a martial beat to them with the fighting to the north.”

“Interesting. The lower tonals would echo and resonate with stone chambers, and carry great distances. I imagine they did a lot of pounding on the stone, too,” Princess Kristie conjectured, her eyes still on the south and those rising hills there. Her violet eyes had that special Aluvian dance to them.

Despite having an at-birth imprinting of her Hagdom, she was still raised an Aluvian, and Aluvians loved their mountains. “Someone wants to go off-mission,” I singsonged at her, to which I got a casual middle finger in reply. “That curious, eh?”

“Ryin, look at the height of them, and tell me why they have snow on the tops.”

I started to reply, squinted that way to observe the salient details that had slipped past me, and just said, “Oh no. No distracting me with odd environmental details. You saw that snow and instantly went, ‘Cold mountain air!’ after a week of putting up with swamps and mana-spewing fumaroles and mushroom spores. I’m not dumb, Kris.”

She flashed double canines at me. “Well, can’t blame me for trying. We can always come back, but aren’t you at least a little curious about who is securing their south?”

“Very. But dawn is coming, and we need to find cover so we can work. Diversions are all nice, but in their allotted time,” I both admitted and reasoned further along than she’d bothered to. Sustained folks like us tend to lose track of hours if not kept on course.

“Fine, fine.” She started into motion again, moving south and a little west, plainly planning to investigate those heights in one way or another. “I’ll find us a little gully or something with some visual breaks so you can practice your spellcasting. What are you working with today?”

“Bard/3, going for Mass Disk, Beyond Law and Chaos, and Bardsong/1, Lingering Performance, and for the Three Feat, Beyond Good and Evil.”

She tilted her head, curious. “The Alignment-canceling Feats? Any reason why?”

“Hiveminds are a section of Axiom. We’ve already run into two Aberrant races. Undead are present running on negative energy. The place is a hot bed of sapient races who possibly had or have an immortality system in place, and there’s a co-opted ley line network in place that is completely harnessing the natural energy of this place, to the point I can only access it through Bardic Heartsong.

“There’s Alignment and ‘outside Alignment’ activity all over the place, except the one we both want to see the most.”

“Ah. Right. It always seems to fall to mortals to make their own Good in places like this,” she shook her head. “Does the universe conspire against Heaven helping out?” she asked rhetorically.

“Maybe it’s just the places that need a helping hand are the places we get sent to. Too many places are ‘what is good is what is good for us’ and ignoring higher Good in service to that measurement is what they do.”