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

I whistled, and Princess Kristie poked her head over from where she was Investing in silence on the other side of the Wagon. “Smithing stuff. Drag your Hag’s arse over here, Your Highness!”

“Ye smith, Highness?” the Mick asked, startled as Kris hauled her own Floating Forge over, an Investing Pattern on it with her Bracers in the center, surrounded by a small mound of Burning pyreal coins.

“Likely as well as almost anyone you’ve ever met,” Kris confirmed. “Yerself?”

“No, but I had a friend who was good with armor an’ weapons. Died with so many others in the Fall.” He winced again. “Most of our crafters had good collections of Armor an’ Weapons to be working on, or to Salvage down for use on other gear. We’ve had t’ rediscover a lot of things we used t’ know...”

“Rending and Cleaving?” I prompted him.

“Ah, that! Yes, they discovered a way t’ bind the properties o’ the Elemental Vulnerability spells o’ Life Magic inta Weapons, so that they could strike without needing t’ actually Cast the spell onto an enemy. It operated on the skill of the Wielder, an’ got as powerful as a Pyreal-tier spell. It be one of the most powerful effects we cannae seem t’ replicate anymore.” He sighed regretfully.

“So, your Sword would have a Blade and Piercing Vulnerability built right into it?” I asked archly.

“Only one or t’other. A Weapon could normally sustain only one normal Imbue,” he corrected me quickly. “’twere totally passive effects, too, they were. There were Weapons that were Imbued and had no other magic that survived the Fall, although they be not as strong as they once were.”

“Cleaving Weapons are almost legends back home on Ispar, the weapons of kings. Whole Families would cherish just one of such Weapons as treasures of the House. Mom and Dad acquired quite a few of them.” Kris’ winsome smile was artful in how it summed up the extermination of bloodlines and looting of heritage treasures. “The effect sounds similar.”

“Aye, so I was told,” the Mick ventured cautiously, understanding just what it meant to have an armory of such things back on Ispar. “The Cleaving effect from Ispar is unchanging, based on the skill of the smith who made it, an’ supposedly harder t’ make an’ sustain. A Rending Weapon grows with the wielder in its power, an’ so draws on their own strength.”

“And could get to Pyreal in power? Interesting. What of the basic Biting Strike and Crushing Blow Enhancements?” Krys asked archly. “I believe they topped out at +5 and triple effect back home.”

“The smiths said the effect of the old Runes went up at Pyreal grade to +10 an’ potentially quadruple damage, but it were extremely difficult t’ carve the Runes that strong. I were not sure quite what they meant with the math an’ all, but the new Critical Strike an’ Crippling Blow Imbues o’ Empyrean origin were far stronger than the old Runes. Weapons could only fit one as an Imbue, but like the Renders, they were based on the skill of the user. They said the chance for a crit could rise as high as fifty percent, or the impact of a crit rise to six times the normal power!”

“And you tried both, and they both worked about that well?” Kris pressed him calmly.

“Aye. Me Sword here... which I should Name, aye... has the old set, an’ done well they are, no?” He looked at Kris, who nodded once.

“Skill similar to the best of those I’ve seen at home, yes.”

“Aye, the Crit Strike ones did indeed try t’ bite deeper with ‘most every swing, as if hungering for blood. When the magic whelmed on the Crushing Blow, ‘twere like a massive hammer as a blade bit in, stronger hits than any other magic. If there were a mage about to Vuln for us, well, they were finer than the Elemental Renders, to be sure. But alone, the Renders were better t’ wield.”

If a Crit did double damage, and the Render effect topped out at Pyreal, that was probably, what, 250% damage, with EVERY blow? It wasn’t even a contest. But if a mage was Vulning, the Render wouldn’t stack, but the Critical Strike or other imbues would...

“Elemental Renders? There were non-Elemental Renders?” Kris picked up on promptly.

“Oh, aye, me apologies. The third of the Basic Imbues was Armor Rending, which worked much like the Armor Cleaving o’ back home, but stronger, an’ again, were supported by the skill of the wielder, not the smith who made them.”

I looked at Kris, who seemed thoughtful. “The Cleaving Rune works on the mystic principle of cutting through damage absorption, which Armor is presumed to have. It topped out at about forty percent reduction in damage absorption from armor. There’s several Weapons in mom’s collection with the Rune, but only one at the highest degree of power,” she explained.

There might have been a half dozen Armor Cleavers in all of Gharu’n!, Mira recalled, impressed. The Emperor and Empress’ armory rivaled that of an entire country, then!

“So, there were discovered a set of Basic Imbues beyond the two Runes we knew of, and Elemental Imbues in and above them,” Kris summarized, interested. “But the effects of such discoveries seem to have been weakened with the change in magic after the Fall? Is it because there is less magic, or because the Runes aren’t in harmony with prevailing principles of magic any more?”

The Mick hesitated a moment, thinking over his answer. “The impression were that they ‘don’t work no more’, as I took it. They said nothing about the power of magic, so I would guess the latter reason?” He spread his hands helplessly, his loss of his left ring finger standing out with the gesture.

“I’ll take a look at what they have when I get there. Do your enemies still have that kind of magic?” Kris asked.

“Not that we can tell,” he confirmed. “If they do have something, they are using the Cleaving effects, not Renders, an’ they seem less powerful. They aren’t throwing around magic quite as powerful as they used to, either, which were a blessing. There were some nasty Curses they could put out, especially the undead, what with that knowledge of the Ancients and all.”

“It’s like having thousands of years of study and lore to draw on is useful, or something,” I noted diplomatically, and Kris just grinned. That was basically what the entire Power of Ten system was, giving us a magical foundation to start our own studies and society on, without having to go through the trials, tribulations, and disasters of not knowing magic ourselves. We’d built upon it all rapidly, however, and integrating useful parts and aspects of other systems into it was all part of the process.

“They did a lot of adding those, uh, alternate spell paths into the higher grade o’ Weapons, too. That included alternate Item magic spells, as well as Creature spells, an’ occasionally even protective effects from Life magic,” the Mick continued. “The interplay o’ them were very complex, an’ sometimes hard to understand, but they were very useful, especially on the best stuff, helping push what we could do t’ ever greater heights.”

“And now you’ve lost all them, too.” Kris was unsympathetic as the Mick flushed and nodded confirmation of that. “It sounds like this was creating a very unstable magical ecosystem just waiting for a catastrophe to come along and reset things.”

“Null magic effects. What about those?” I interrupted keenly.

“Oh, chorozite effects, an’ Hollows? Those were annoying, but hampered by, well, the fact ye couldn’t use magic on them. The Gotrok lugian clans love them, hating magic as they do, but even their hollow rocks aren’t all that dangerous, in the end. The dangerous ones are the creatures who integrate them with something like the virindi method, as the mimes did with their scarecrow-like Minions, an’ the olthoi managed to evolve some species with chorozite in their pincers.” He made familiar arcing motions with pointed hands over his head, and we both nodded. “There’s olthoi out there who seem to have taken a lesson from the Minions that were unwelcome for us ta learn. An’, o’ course, you had Bonecrusher, Hell pox his balls, who took it all the way t’ the slaughter o’ Cragstone, damn the virindi.”

“They’ve popped up bound to the Summons system, so they’re more anti-magic than hollow magic,” Kris informed him helpfully, which didn’t help at all, as the Mick just shrugged. “It means the stuff here is being forcibly adapted and evolved. What, if any, other benefits did being here grant people?”

“Well, let’s see.” He held up a finger. “We healed fast. Incredibly fast. I could go from near-dead an’ dripping scarlet to hale an’ hearty in under a couple of minutes just by laying down, or from so exhausted I couldnae stand t’ bein’ ready t’ go full an’ proper twice as fast as that! And we sucked in mana all the time as if we were standing on mana fountains or something back home, according to the mages who came through.”

“Ever go-go-go pawns are easy to train if they never run out of energy,” Kris nodded, and he gazed at her as his thoughts went down another unwelcome track. “What more?”

“We could run.” He looked away and sighed. “It’s one o’ the things I miss the most. I could outrun a horse, we didn’t need to be riding any such thing here, an’ we never got tired when running. I once ran the entire distance around the island, just to prove t’ meself that I could do it, laughing an’ dodging anything that came after me. Precious few things could keep up with the fastest of us, an’ even they’d get tired of chasing after us if we kept going.

“Nowtimes, the real speed only seems to come if we stand on one o’ the Roads. Off in the grass or something, we’re on our own.

“Related to that, we could jump. I could bounce five times me height into the air, easy. Soar clear over a small house, easy as you please. Thirty, forty paces along the ground, if I was going at full speed, no problem.”

“Were you ‘light’, or was something just propelling you along?” Kris asked pointedly, and he furrowed his brow at the question.

“That’s... a strange way to put it. I would say... I were being pushed. Aye, there was something magical to it, as it certainly weren’t inside me. I can barely manage me own height, now.”

“Oh, this should be similar to Ispar then, stronger muscles and more power with magic going through them,” I nodded. “Give us a hop, if you would.”

He deftly bounced to his feet, crouched down, seemed to tense for a minute, and hopped into the air.

It was definitely muscle-based now, although there was a telekinetic side to it. His heels hit seven feet in the air as he bounced, but he crashed down heavily, exactly as if he’d fallen from seven feet, although it didn’t seem to matter to him.

“Aye, that’s standard high-level boosted Isparian athleticism,” agreed Kris, who got to her feet. “This is what true lightfoot looks like, Master McMikal,” she said, and she bounced.

His head snapped back as she hit fifteen feet in the air with scarcely no leg flexing at all, spinning into a lazy double layout before falling back to the ground... and hitting with barely a sound, not much more than taking a hard step.

He gaped at her for a moment before admitting, “Ye’ve no idea how much I want to learn that from ye,” he gasped longingly.

“And I can outrun a horse,” she admitted, waving him back to his chair as she seated herself regally. He was far more courteous in how he sat down now. “Anything else?”

He tilted his head again, thinking back over his career. “Aye. Augmentation, the Temples, and the Luminance,” he ticked off thoughtfully.

“Simplest first,” Kris said, and he nodded once.

“The Temples, then. They were... places to remake yourself, if ye wanted.” We both lifted eyebrows at him. “They could... change what ye were, what ye knew. Given time enough, they could have changed me from a swordsman and scout inta a specialized mage, sure as you please. They changed me physique, made me stronger than nature had, up t’ the limits of how strong a human could be. They could swap Stats around slowly, turning brawn to brains an’ back again, Coordination with Endurance, an’ the like. Knew plenty of folk who gave up fighting almost entirely, lost their strength and deftness of hand to build up their smarts to levels equal to those born geniuses, an’ were just as effective with magic an’ Casting as those who’d trained in them since they were kids.”