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

It didn’t take Princess Kristie all that long to find a hillock to park the camouflaged Wagon by, and arrange enough cover so that I could spellcast without having to worry about being seen. The landscape Summons were fairly random, but I could see that to the south, the shapes started turning very regular.

Princess Kristie said she’d check it out later while I was doing Rep Counts. Neither of us were much worried about anything, as there were still flashes of fire and cold magic in the distance, indicating the fighting was still going on, so the undead, mossies, and burun were all busy.

It didn’t mean something couldn’t come down out of the mountains and intrude on us, but it wasn’t a huge risk, and we were in a place they’d go around, rather than over or through.

We greeted Aru, got in our two hours of Meditation, and set about working for the day.

As normal, the early part of the day was spent Investing, me working on Kris’ Necklace, slogging up the levels of Protection day by day, while she had actually finished making her Shield and it was now ready to start being Powered up. She started working on a set of Bracers to wear to complement it, things that would anchor a Force Armor that, while not as good as an actual suit of armor, would at least help her defensive situation against the really powerful stuff if we ran into it again.

16 of 18 days on my Mark, ready to advance to +3 (4), which would be welcome. Crown was up to 13 days of the 18 needed to open its Drei Slot, and Zeks was at 16 days of the 19 needed to open Protection +II. We still had plenty of materials to work with and Air Gold to fuel everything, the coins particularly suitable for making immaterial protective stuff, like the Protection against Elements Necklace and my general Protection Ring.

Enough to pay for everything? Probably not. I’d scanned for Precious Materials while going through the human towns, and there was a bunch of the coinage scattered in different places, but I hadn’t been willing to raise the alarm to make the situation worse. Cragstone had definitely coughed up enough for our uses for over a month combined, so there was no overriding urgency... and a month was a long way off.

All that, and I was still puzzling over how to go about getting my Gold-tier spells.

It was plain I needed a unique taper there, even if it was only once. The all-in taper I’d run across, the only intact one, I knew wouldn’t work because it was carefully stylized for the Isparian magic style, and while I had inherited part of that, clearly the next stage was departing from the standard for them.

Of course, I always had Rep Counts to take my mind off of things and get onto a single train of thought, pretty much relaxing as I attuned myself to spells and metas and mana and the magical field as a whole, learning to draw and weave and fine-tune and release ever more smoothly on both sides of the equation. It was very different working with this ley-line field versus what I remembered of both Terra-Luna and Ispar, and I was pretty sure it was an artificial effect. Who or what made the incredibly dense manafield here I naturally had no knowledge of, but someone had certainly taken advantage of it in the broadest manner possible and was exploiting the shit out of it.

I didn’t have the Sublime Chord yet, but it was plenty easy for me to sense the taut and controlled nature of the magic here, routed and re-routed through some immensely powerful ley line conduits, condensing the flow and presence of it to something way above the natural standard that allowed for the immense magical effects that I had seen.

Where all of that mana was coming from, that was a different story. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer, and I was fairly sure at least those Virindi creatures had a pretty good idea of it. They were literally agglomerations of magical and psychic power, almost magic elementals, although highly skewed towards Axiom despite their Aberrant nature. I could only imagine they would have an almost deathly attraction to a manafield as strong as this, like being surrounded by intoxicating vapors... vapors which might just have formed a cage and kept them here, even as they soaked in its bliss.

Or maybe they were the ones who originally set it up, and were caught in a trap of their own making. I didn’t know, and there was nothing and nobody for me to draw on for that knowledge to get things cleared up.

Such was life. Time and perception, or maybe finally meeting some local scholars, would get things cleared up.

I had rep counts on all my Metas up through II Valences now, on both sides of the mana divide. I had taken No Materials all the way up to IV, so I burned nothing except Scarabs on the Isparian side of things. No Sound and No Hands were both at III Valences, as was Reach Spell, as I liked my range above all else.

I was working up the other Metas slowly but surely, careful to apply the magic on both sides of the equation and make use of Mana Conversion to extend the number of times I could Cast before needing to get mana back. I was Mana Boosting with gusto and pizzaz, driving my numbers up as Mira dutifully hit those one-point improvements every day.

Any Isparian mage would have been astounded to see the improvements in my lower Valenced magic with the Metas attached to them. Higher damage, range, Casting in silence, no components consumption, Kicker effects, multi-element manifestations of energy... yes, sure would have wowed them back on the ol’ homeworld of Ispar.

Here? They might balance out for the fact I couldn’t use the stronger spells. Maybe. Something to work on. Hadn’t been here even three weeks, after all.

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“Those are the second unknown species at the death sites. They identify as Lugians. From the way they were intermixed with human remains, they were allies of ours to one extent or another, although...” I curled my lip as I regarded them. “They are set Gray-Brown. As Summons usually reflect the Caster, and all these points have obviously been taken over, that does not fill me with a lot of hope. Races that lean Chaotic have intense emotions and are likely strife-causers, not alliance builders. They tend to be artistic loners where their art is everything, excessively proud warrior peoples, or severely clannish nomads.”

Princess Kristie eyed the ogre-sized massive figures holding onto equally massive axes and hammers, gripping stones larger than their heads ready to throw, or casually burnishing the thick armor they were wearing. “I’m voting proud warrior peoples with a macho vibe I can feel from here.”

“So, you want to go fight the Summons?” I asked rhetorically, even as Quaver dropped Disk control and she went shooting forwards with a laugh and a smile towards her newest sparring partner.

The biped in the purple and blue armor bellowed loudly to see her, a horned helm lifting proudly at the sight of her. The nearest of the lugian Summons turned to see what the problem was, but did not come to reinforce their brother.

Normally that kind of honor-coding wasn’t part of a Summons, especially since intelligent Summons should reinforce one another in this kind of sentry situation, but perhaps they had orders they had received otherwise. They certainly had enough lungpower for that bellow to carry a long distance, which would mean you would only need to have a handful of actual living ones listening in every so often to be alerted when a fight started.

I also imagined individual fights were ignored far more than other kinds would be, such as a whole band, warband, company, or army marching up to proclaim trouble. If the Summons controllers were smart, these guys would be programmed to act the more of them bellowed, automatically drawing in more of their kind from near and far to reinforce an assaulted position.

Which, if done automatically, would be a good way to draw off a defending force and slip in a flanking attack force right through the defensive lines, but that was why you had living forces and officers who could truly think for themselves.

I was sure that Kris was going over the odd mechanics and tactics of using throwaway powerful Summons like this on a military basis. Me, I was just figuring the sheer amount of magic being used with Mass Summoning to this scale, especially since everything was replaced within minutes after dying.

A battle with anchored and controlled Summoning points could go on for literally forever. Such a battle would end up with the real goals being neutralizing or taking over the enemy Summoning points, if such was possible against an active defense.

Meaning, killing the enemy Casters and controllers would be a priority. Taking the ground away was only possible if you could take the Summons points away.

With vivus here able to consume and Seal the Summoning magic, we could totally do that, shutting down whole defensive lines, just as we had done up in Cragstone. A whole section of the drudge defenses up there didn’t exist any longer, a big gaping hole an invader could use to drive in on them and wreak some havoc upon the living.

That meant Kris and I were a huge nightmare to both the living and the not-living forces working here, since we could turn their military defenses and forces upside down very quickly by cutting off their reinforcements.

Given her nature as a Rantha, she would have definitely considered all those military applications, and wasn’t going to be seen doing such a thing if at all possible. We’d immediately become target #1 for all forces who used Summon points, at least until vivus was more widespread.

Vivus was such a damn good equalizer for the living, and naturally a huge threat on the other side of the equation, a game-changer of incredible proportions.

We’d have to spread the knowledge of it as fast as possible, and suddenly, fighting would come with real consequences again, and magic would probably shift from mastering Summons controls to Healing and Protection once more.

Who got to make use of it first would be important, too...

All of this was going through my mind as Kris began to dance around the lugian with the gray-purple skin, its squat body extremely powerful as it whipped around an ogre’s axe with speed and ease in a thickly three-fingered hand with opposed thumb. Regardless of its power, physics and inertia was still a thing, it had to brace itself on its two-toed rounded feet not to go flying after its axe, and, well, Kris’ Sword probably weighed as much as that axe of its did.

Axe fighting was more subtle than it appeared, involving the haft, locking, bracing, use of bulk and strength for efficiency, binding up, and so forth. This lugian didn’t appear to have knowledge of the subtler aspects of such techniques, which didn’t help when you were fighting a slender Hag with the heavyfoot of a Jotun anchoring her, and the speed of a duelist combined with the Might of a Jotun herself. The lugian might be stronger than she was, and was certainly heavier, but all that meant was it was astonished when it couldn’t beat her around like it thought it should... and its bellows of surprise when Quaver slammed into it and bit into and through its armor were completely unfeigned.

She was studying it intently as she fought, internalizing the patterns of its movements, its reach, stretch, and flexibility, as well as its power and speed. Although fairly stumpy, the lugian moved with vigor and great energy, and seemed to enjoy the fight as it swatted at her, chopped at her, hacked at her, tried to shove her, beat her, elbow her, and generally got nowhere with its fighting style.

Watching her parry and turn a hacking strike from that Axe, even without the swirling spirals of deflective force about her, was pretty impressive. She wasn’t even using her buckler, pure swordwork on display.

---

About ten minutes of that fighting later she decided to end it, sliding in past an overhand chop meant to divide her in two, right up into its broad chest as it kept fighting despite a score of bleeding cuts all over it.

It kind of grunted, blinked once, and the lights went out as Quaver slid deep into its throat and up into its brain, putting an end to its fight.

There was little to no reaction from the neighboring half-dozen lugian Summons watching all this with neutral eyes. They had their instructions, and obviously single combat wasn’t going to stir anything in them at all.

It was also enough time for a scout to arrive from the distance.