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

“They grow things big down in the deep,” Princess Kristie muttered as we all looked at the Holo. “The seas in worlds of magic are damn nasty places.”

“The shit in the sea is a total pain to deal with,” I agreed with a sigh. Everyone in the Power of Ten knew it. The coast of anywhere was dangerous, not safe! “The worst thing back on Ispar were the sea serpents and the leviathans, and the latter were generally only a problem if you were a whale hunter, no?”

The Mick nodded at that. “Aye, plenty of stories of whaler ships being taken out by a leviathan. Sea serpents, now, those were seen as more of a challenge, since they had to encircle and crush the ship. Ye could hack ‘em t’ death before they could do that, if ye had a good crew with strong arms, and didn’t mind losing a man or two to its jaws. Fishing for sea serpents was a rite of passage among the pirate crews, or so me uncle said. Some of the southern islanders knew some great sauces for basting the things, too, and they made for some of the finest feasts he ever had.”

“That sounds like a properly Aluvian way to think of the pests,” Princess Kristie grinned. “Now you’re making me hungry to test that out, Master Mick. I don’t believe I’ve ever had sea serpent fixed other than the Roulean style, and they’re all with the dainty herbs and soups and whatnot.”

“Cannae help ye there, lass. I’ve not seen a sea serpent in the waters here, nor heard any tales of them. If they exist, the shelled floaters and the remorans drive ‘em off, I reckon.”

“Pity. How do the remorans and their masters taste?”

It was his turn to grin. “The flying rays taste like salted jerky, the few living ones we caught and killed. Ye have to boil it and dilute it something fierce to make it tender, but its not bad once ye do, just takes a good spot of work. The best soups take a week or more to cook proper.

“Hide makes excellent rawhide strips and leather for sea work if ye treat it and keep it around salty air, otherwise it rots like nobody’s business and smells to high heaven when it do. The tail stingers make for good fishing spears, too. We tried to put ‘em on fighting spears, but they become too brittle to be used that way, gotta store ‘em in water and keep ‘em doused,” he informed us.

“Good that you found a way to make use of the things, as they doubtless found the same use for you,” Kristie said approvingly.

“They use Force magic through their tails. The stinger would probably serve as a carved Wand and Implement!” I noted, huffing along behind the two of them as we started running again, the sightseeing over. The Run spell at III gave me good speed and duration, allowing me to keep up with them, and I really needed to get used to being in shape, instead of just rote magic energy doing it for me.

“Aye, that’s a good idea!” the Mick called back. “Although a Remoran Spear is a point of pride for the fisher folk, and they’d like consider it wasted as a Caster’s toy.”

“The tentacled species?” the Princess asked. Running like this, speech soon slipped into Markspeech more readily than words, another thing the Mick found happily useful. It really made the time and miles fly by.

So did the drive-by contests of killing Summons to earn Naming Karma. Once he was told how important the Naming Karma was for improving his gear, it was plain that almost nothing was going to get in the way of the Mick earning his share for the day. It was a mindset he was very familiar and comfortable with.

“There’s lots of acid in the meat, and it takes a lot of time and brine to leech it out. Like, a month or more, and it smells like rancid shit even when it’s gone. If ye kin take the smell, they cut it up and make it into a mixed stew, and it were not unlike some real tender calamari if it were done right.

“The alchemists swear the acid, once distilled, is some o’ the most dangerous flesh-eating stuff around. It makes the absolute best wood treatment for removing an’ keeping off barnacles and the like from rafts and wharfs, and likely boats, too, not that we’ve many o’ such. Ye just have to be careful not to get it on ye, or yer off to the healers quick, or ye’ll have a permanent hole in yer skin.”

“Barnacle treatment.” Kris’ eyes crinkled. “I love it!”

“Now, their shells, those can be made into shields, strong and light. Some of the old Tinkering tricks don’t work as they used to, and having a nice shield to fall back on is appreciated, especially if it doesn’t need magic to power it.

“Some also drop a pearl that can be made into an Orb that can be used by mages, which, since the orb and wand makers were among those most killed in the Fall, is appreciated, even if it be rare.” He was waxing enthusiastically on his own area of knowledge, getting his own weirdness in back on us.

“The lack of loot appearing out of nowhere really turned the economy on its ear, aye?” Kris asked shortly.

“Aye, it totally did, and sad it were when it happened, on top of all the other stuff. From loads of metal and crystal and magical things flooding through the hands of everyone and their mothers, to only those things made by true craftsmen and weren’t filled by mana stones, with none coming in save that which we made ourselves… it were a very different world.” His /voice drifted in grim amusement. “I used to have backpacks full of trade notes stowed away, hundreds of millions of pyreal coin in value. They weren’t worth the paper they were printed on after the Fall. So much of the coin itself just burned and evaporated into nothing, and all the things I might have wished to buy weren’t being exchanged for no promises on paper.” He sighed heavily. “It’s taken a long time to move past the barter stage once again, and threatening violence for what some others demand for their goods. Seller’s market, as it were. Couldn’t buy a decent sword for a stack of bills once worth over fifty million pyreal!” He laughed at himself in mockery.

“It’s a harsh lesson to learn. Once there’s that reliance on magic, it’s really hard to overcome it, or prepare for it not being there,” Princess Kristie nodded shortly. “The up-front cost on magical stuff is pretty horrid, but once you have it and it’s working, it’s dirt cheap and nobody cares what was already invested, or wants to work on alternatives.”

“Yes, unless it complements the magic, science often takes a back seat, especially if everyone is potentially able to use magic. However,” my eyes glittered, “there remains the fact that once you are over-reliant on magic, taking it away from being usable is an incredible military tactic and strategy. As was found out here.”

“Wait!” The Mick almost missed a step. “Are ye saying this whole Fall was planned by something?”

I was silent, so Princess Kristie spoke up after a moment, “Well, duh.” She looked straight ahead as his face hardened. “We already told you how much magic is involved in this place, the sheer scale, the power, the quantity of it, and just how resilient the ley line network was.

“I don’t care how powerful that Viamontian Ritual back home that my parents disrupted was, there was no way it was going to shake this network here. It shouldn’t have had much more effect than throwing a barrel of water into a creek. Instead, it started a flash flood.”

The Mick was silent as we trotted along faster than a normal human could sprint. “These… whatever they were, pulling the strings of us and ours, treating our lives like a theater play...”

“Well, obviously they got bored with something. I imagine there was a period during which there were no new ‘events’, as you called them. Wild and crazy shit without real explanations prompting you all to break your habits, get up and do something a bit new...” she hinted strongly.

He thought about that hard, frowning, and finally nodded slowly. “There were nearly three years after the Rynthid invasion where nothing much happened, save the usual holiday odd-stuff recurring. And then...” he trailed off meaningfully. “Is there a way to put those bastards to the sword, whoever they are?”

“Well, they treated your Lord Asheron like just another tool to be manipulated, and no doubt played all the great and horrible threats as such the same way, plus completely control the ley lines to administer Wish and Eternal-Level effects...” Kris trailed off darkly.

“Not without breaking the cap and becoming Eternals yourselves, at the very least. Probably need a lot of Nulls or Sources, and what I wouldn’t give for a Void Brother to track all the bastards down, as I hugely doubt this level of magic is good for the Land...” I added in.

“Void Brothers, now? Is that something new to take?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” Princess Kristie said shortly, cutting off his thoughts. “A Void is something you are born as, not something you earn. They are one of the Forsaken paths, the rarest of them, Favored of the Land, hunters of impurities, smart and deadly. I doubt this ley line network would even exist if Void Brothers were present on this planet.”

“Oh, most assuredly not,” I agreed heartily. “I don’t want to think how much this island must be warping the planet’s manafield. A Void Brother would have torn it all out by its key nexus points, taken the heads of the makers, and returned everything back to the natural flows. I imagine the planet wouldn’t be all that different from Ispar without the network.”

“Someone was obviously not satisfied with Gold-level magic,” Princess Kristie smirked. “Maybe getting the aid of whoever made this place what it is was all part of a deal to access more powerful magic. You know world-walkers, never limiting themselves to anything like common sense.”

“Truth,” I admitted.

“Ah, we’re coming up on the Tou-Tou Mansion,” the Mick broke in, obviously trying to steer away from the gloomy, very personal subject. He pointed up at the top of a sloping hill nearby. “We run up and around that slope, and it be right on the top. Was praised for its view, and a prize of the Allegiance what owned it, back in the day.”

“Oh, another of the big buildings?” Princess Kristie grinned. “We got a lot of raw materials out of those! That’s a decent place to stop, even if it’s early in the night!”

“Aye, thought that might interest ye. And I get a share, right?” he grinned shamelessly.

“You do, indeed! Making magic is not cheap anymore, and you’re going to need a lot of capital if you want a lot of gear!” Kris confirmed for him, as we veered towards the indicated slope, rising hundreds of feet towards the looming sea-carved cliffs above us.

“Well, then, I’ve some other news for ye. There were dozens of villages o’ magical homes, some large, some small, scattered across Osteth here. They were all destroyed in function during the Fall, but I’ve no doubts that a lot of the things that were stored there are still present...”

Kris sent him a knowing glance. “Sly dog,” she smiled at him, and he just grinned back. “I bet we ran by a whole bunch of them on the way south here, too...”

“Ye did,” he affirmed as we hoofed it upwards, the Wagon floating serenely along behind me on its Disks. “I never much dug about in them, just confirmed they were destroyed and weren’t nothing much to recover. But the way ye pulled the stuff out of the other Mansions and have it stored, well, it got me ta thinking...”

We were nearing the top as both of us laughed softly, but then his expression hardened. “I’ve a sight for ye as we reach the top.” He pointed in a specific direction. “Ye can’t see it all, but ye can see enough.”

We reached the top of the place, the devastated Mansion clearly in view. Like the others, it had clearly been lifted up off its foundation by a mass of displaced stone and earth, rupturing into place with enough force to send cracks running through the stone all about it. On top of that, the place looked to have been assaulted with combat magic, ripped, torn, shorn, melted, fused, and blasted with obvious Bolts of War magic, and in some quantity.

Our heads turned to follow his pointed hand, and his silent request to see out our eyes narrowed it down further.

It was several miles away, but impossible to miss. Vortexes of shadows spinning like tormented black tornadoes, whipping about and writhing like living things, spewing dark streams up into the sky and the world which seemed to dissipate… and maybe they did, but it still meant they were here, had been spewing that stuff into the world for years, and what was being done to counteract them?

“That’s Tou-Tou, the source of the reason why the converted shadows, shades, whatever, all went mad, and the ones that remain behind are murderous dicks to just about everybody.”

Kris looked it over in a couple spectra, as I was doing in magic. “That looks like a freaking vivic inferno waiting to happen, Ryin,” she commented coolly to me.

“That it does,” I agreed with her. “Although it might be strong enough to swamp a casual effort.”