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

“How bad is the journey there? To this Mayoi place?” Kris pointed at the former settlement closest to the islands, located along another bay due south of us.

The Mick’s dark eyes shifted. “Bad,” he stated simply. “Lugians guarding the roads and valleys, all of them hostile. Mayoi is held by, like me uncle, Ben-Ten’s Moon Legion, and so no intruders can travel along the shores. With the mad shadows of Tou-Tou there in the hills, they can’t travel through there, either, although it’s a dance making our way through, if we dare.”

“Ben-Ten?” Kris asked, noting the catch in his voice at the name.

He mutely turned and pointed to the verdigris-bound Statue in the center of the town, depicting a simply clad swordsman in Sho garb, bearing one of their iconic curved blades. “The most famous swordsman of Dereth, an almost painfully good man. Joji adherent, philosopher, wanderer, an’ absolutely loathed by the Hea, who he’s killed a damn lot of. They spent a lot of blood before finally managing to kill the old man... an’ then he came right back from his own grave, gathered up the other folk who died, marched to Mayoi, an’ has held it against them ever since.”

“Sanctimonious hard-ass is what he is,” MacNaill muttered, but it had no force to it.

“An’ that is the truth,” the Mick agreed without batting an eye. “Although... he’s a mite more bloody-handed after becoming dead, as the reds and the grays have found out,” he added carefully. “There’s quite the heady philosopher about him, an’ he’s trying to reckon how the teachings of Joji work with being one of the undead, it’s said.” He still had a lot of cautious respect in his voice, even admiration.

“This contested area? This... Nanto? Lin? What kind of ground?” Kris went on.

“Rolling hills and forests between the peaks. Lugians in all the proper hills and mountains, but some forests that weren’t all that deadly, save for wandering nooga tribes and stalking banders, but they didn’t much bother humans that didn’t bother them, for the most part. Lots of random, eh, Summons, as you call ‘em.

“They’re all ready to be fighting, now that the humans fled. Lugians, tumeroks, banders, an’ noogas fighting all the time when you stumble onto ‘em. Occasionally some crazed shadows come wandering into the area an’ kill everything they see before everything gangs up and puts ‘em down.”

“Oh, that sounds like my kind of place,” the princess smiled, and the Mick shivered to see it, a flicker of eight devouring canines ready to bite and rip. “But all in due time. So, we take a long detour up and around the peninsula, seeing the sights, and then come all the way back down to get close enough to this island of Kryst to make the run across.”

I watched her and the way she moved. “Ah, hell. You’re going to sample these mad shadows coming out of Tou-Tou, aren’t you,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

“That had certainly arrived on the edge of my thoughts as a fine possibility of adventurous behavior,” she grinned without the slightest remorse, absolutely ignoring the way the Mick’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Yer, Yer Highness! Those are not creatures to be treating lightly! Even back then they were considered some of the nastiest buggers ye could take on, an’ that were with full Gear an’ Buffs an’ everything!” The Mick spluttered quickly.

The Princess was supremely unconcerned. “If they are infused with Shadow energy, they qualify as undead OR as Fiends. You have absolutely no idea how dangerous our lovely young magos here is against both of those. I don’t mean that as a threat, MacNaill, I mean it as absolute truth. She could probably wipe out your entire garrison by herself within about ten minutes, and that includes all the surviving undead Summons you bring to a fight.”

“Aye?” The undead chief blinked at me, and I just inclined my head slightly, thought it over, and nodded once. “Well, when ‘tis time, I hope it t’ be quick, as it were.”

“When it comes time, you will walk into it knowingly and gently, and you will finally fall to sleep into the rest you’ve earned, and have no doubts on that. The screaming, writhing spirits that wail as they go to their doom is for those who’ve embraced undeath in terror and fear of dying, and you, Noble Fool, are not one of those.”

He puffed up helplessly at my words. “Aye, proper Fool that I am. Death, death is something waiting for me, an end t’ this cursed state I be in. Let them be terrified of it. I’ll be waiting when ye bring it fer me, Magos.”

“A promise then, Noble Fool.” I drifted over and offered my hand, and he looked at it for a moment before taking it. “We need you still, but I’ll bring them up, I’ll train them proper, and when the bells come, they will come for all of you.”

He rattled a deep breath. “I’ll hold ye to it, lass.” He gave me a firm shake, I inclined my head, and we were done.

------

“What are ye doing here, lass?” the Mick asked after taking a short nap, nabbing one of the floating Disks nearby, convenient things that they were, to sit on.

He was staring at the Infusing Pattern I had Kris’ Necklace on, a heap of Air Gold, eh, pyreal, sitting in the center of it and Burning away to fuel the magic.

“There are other methods to making magic, which aren’t reliant on mana capacitors and recharging. Those are mere extras to the more passive, yet powerful effects. They have their own limitations, it’s true, but they are deadly enough in your own way.

“They are more akin to the Biting Strike and Crushing Blow you’ve on your Blade there, rather than subbing for the Blood Drinker and other basic Enhancements which are paid for out of capacitors, and which seem to have led to disaster. I note you’ve no such magic inherent on your Blade.”

His eyes dropped at haunted memories. “Those Weapons were all destroyed during the Fall, an’ many o’ them took their owners with them. Cottages and Villas were torn apart by Weapons hung on the walls or in storage there, shops shredded, smiths slain. That which were our most prized belongings became our doom...” He shuddered as he trailed off.

I nodded once. “Yet the lack of powerful Weapons means increased difficulty in harming the enemy, and such Weapons have always been a strength of our people. We have to bring them back, but in a different way.

“I can see you’ve familiarity with both Creature and Item Magic, but it’s been hampered by the change in magic. It’s a fine time to be changing how you treat both magic and your Weapon.”

“Aye? I could use a good dollop of the magic I once used so easily an’ widely.” He was definitely interested in reclaiming something of the edge he’d given up. “What needs I do?”

“Well, the first thing is that you must Name your Weapon, Bind it to you, and with it, claim your victories and earn Glory together. From there, we’re going to re-train you to a new paradigm of Item and Creature magic that vastly condenses the two.” I held up two fingers. “All the spells of the Creature Magic you knew can basically be condensed down into two spells that scale by level, Master McMikal.”

His eyes almost popped. “Ye’re pulling me leg!” he gasped.

I slowly shook my head. “Wieldskill and Animal Affinity. Boost Skill of choice and boost Stat of choice, respectively.”

He just stared at me, then threw up his hands extravagantly. “Do ye know how many brain cells I wasted learning every single damn reagent for all them spells?!” he cried out in frustration.

I just pointed at my own head. “Yes.”

“And this? How does this work?” He pointed at the Infusing Pattern.

“Well, there’s not going to be any random Conjured stuff made out of nowhere by the ley line magic here, but you can make your own magic items to your own standards. You do it by sacrificing things carrying natural magic to them and Infusing them to life over time. I’m making this Necklace for the princess. Protection against Cold, Acid, and Force magic. It’s going to take a few months to scale up higher, but it’s exactly what she wants and needs.”

“Make yer own custom magic, instead of waiting fer random things to drop that ye have to mix and match t’ effect?” His eyes lit up dreamily at the thought. “Gods, lass, the sheer amount of dross that we went through trying to sift the gilt from the gold!”

“Well, the key thing to remember is the time needed,” I warned him. “Something that drops out of nowhere off a dead thing as a reward for whatever force of magic is active here is instant gratification. True magic takes time and lasts nigh forever once made, and can only be made just so quickly. If you were used to wearing a Midwinter Tree worth of bling, this will do that, eventually, but it will take you a lot of time.”

He frowned and thought about that, looking away as he considered things. “The magic here, it were, maybe still is, more powerful than it were at home, aye?”

“Oh, it definitely still is,” I assured him quietly. “The amount of energy to run the Shorewards and power all those Summon points? You couldn’t get enough power to feed such thing with a city’s-worth of Gold-tier mages, McMikal.”

“Aye, ye’d know more of that. I had precious little truck with magic back home, I were barely cutting a beard when I came here. Magic were something for the big cities an’ the Healers they sent out from there, not for a clansman from the foothills of Urgathgun.”

“Northwest Aluvia?” I asked after a moment’s thought. “I’m sure the princess knows the area, considering you’re cousins. Got a bit of a reputation for banditry and cattle-raiding, as I recall, but that’s hearsay.”

“Oh, ‘tis a finely-deserved reputation,” he assured me without a lick of shame. “Long an’ honorable tradition of waylaying folk an’ filching some hoofers to pad the larder out there, most enthusiastically! Lots of mouths to feed, an’ not enough good soil to feed them all, so we went a-taking what was needed.”

“No mining or stone-working endeavors?” I had to ask him, undeterred by his family larceny. My knowledge of Aluvia was limited by al-Shamira’s disinterest in the place.

“We’d none o’ the craft nor magic to pursue such things, an’ precious few veins of ore to encourage developing either, as I recall of things.” He shrugged without rancor. It was the way of the world.

“So, it was either leave and go to the lowlands, or raid the lowlands. Understood. There’s always better ways, but I remember there being a lot of clan rivalry over such things among your people, so it was difficult, no doubt.”

“Aye, another way to keep the numbers down was t’ kill one another, with many a blood feud to keep things spirited an’ encourage the spilling of guts down the mountainsides.”

“I can’t imagine why you’d like to leave all that behind to spill guts down other mountainsides, but at least they aren’t distant kin, aye?”

He grinned very whitely in his ruddy face with the thick black beard. “Ye’ve completely the right of it! And more, even, when we kin kill horrid monsters what need the killing, an’ earn a fine living an’ not even die! I had so much practice for me sword over the years, an’ found me a fine woman an’ more...” His voice trailed off as his eyes dimmed in reflected pain. “Well, there’ll be young ones t’ teach not t’ make war on their fellows an’ allies, I reckon, an’ not bringing the ills of the old world here t’ find a new an’ bloody home, as so many did.”

He heaved a dark sigh and shrugged it off. “Ye know of the limits on Gold back home. But here, we went to Pyreal, and Platinum, and even Incantor tier, using what were called Mana Scarabs... afore almost all of those we had blew apart during the Fall,” he added on afterthought. “There were also a large number of spells similar to, but outside the various Schools, which were dubbed Cantrips.”

I held up a hand to him. “Cantrips are, in the magos philosophy, minor spells that can be Cast endlessly, without spending Mana. I think you are referring to spells with slightly different principles, that stack on top of the primary four Schools?”

“Aye, like minor Strength spells, that stacked on top of the Strength spells of Creature magic,” he nodded after a moment of thought. “There were varied levels of those spells, too, although ye could only find them in items, not Cast them yerself... although there were ways to Imbue the minor forms of them, which dinnae seem to work now, much like the easy and artful Rending and Cleaving magicks they discovered here, a step beyond what the smiths knew in Ispar.”