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

“And for that reason, I don’t call myself special. I am very good at staying Focused, and I’ve a natural hand at manipulating mana, but those are not all that uncommon gifts, so no, I am definitely not in the league of a Rantha as far as my path goes.

“I am very, very good at it, but I’ve a long way to go, such as it is,” I told Master McMikal.

“Aye, I saw the… Shards, is it? That ye let off. And ye said that yer Healing magic is potent, above and beyond the strength of Isparian Magic...”

“The primary Divine Domains I work with as a Priest of the Heavenly gods are Healing, Silver Magic, and Good.” He considered that, not knowing precisely what it meant. “To put it in simpler terms, who do you think is stronger: a mage Casting a Good spell, or a Priest Casting a Good spell with the help of a god, in service to their goals?”

He grunted. “Aye, that makes some sense. The Priest, of course. Who knows why the mage is weaving the magic and calling on the power. Might not even be for a Good purpose, right?”

“Correct. The gods do gift those who follow them with Eminence in their own Domain. Good and Silver are two of the Domains of Sylune, Healing comes from Amana the Mother and Aru alike. Before you ask… Mitharns also have no temples, and Mithar Himself has no priests. His priests are his Paladins, rare as they are, and like the Champions of Valus, they serve all the Gods of Heaven. They do, however, tend to work out of areas, build them up, and defend them as pillars of the community, not go wandering about and murderhoboing everything.”

“Murderhoboing!” the Mick repeated, his eyes dancing at the word. “Now isn’t that a fine description for the likes of what we do, wandering around just killing random Summons and the like. Murderhoboing...”

“Said tongue-in-cheek, although from the view of those we are hunting and fighting… yes, adventurers are extremely violent, borderline murderous serial killers of the human species who slaughter anything that might be perceived as a threat to them in pursuit of wealth, Karma, and glory... and we are relentless about it, too.”

“Ho, isnae that the truth? The way we ran some of those quests offered us, time after time, butchering those same undead again and again, never really getting tired of it, even if we were killed in return…

“Really, I be a bit surprised that the undead and the shades didnae do the same back to us, at least until the Fall, when they led their armies of Summoned up on us an’ slaughtered all they could while they stayed safe behind them…” he pondered.

“I would guess that there is something of a greater cost for them to pay than there was for you if they were killed, and especially after the change in magic, they didn’t want to pay that cost. It might be that if they were killed, they were slaved to the ley lines, or something similar, becoming trapped Summons themselves bereft of free will.

“When you start messing with souls without the benefit of Divine insight to help you, all sorts of things can go wrong. We know there were no gods involved here, so where do you think the shades and undead learned their own unkillable tricks from?”

“Something… less than gods.” His smile was grim. “Serves the bastards right, even if it does mean we really can’t kill them. Slave ‘em to a Summons an’ let them rot in some dry corner forever, unable to move unless commanded, an’ returning there the instant they are out of command...” He laughed coldly at the thought, his dark eyes gleaming. “I would love ta condemn that bastard Rytheran an’ his bitch of a Lady Aerefalle to that fate, as they command most of the remaining undead hereabouts, with their mysterious Prince Geraine supposedly about in the shadows making trouble...”

“I will note all those names and say… in due time. With vivus, even Summons can die forever, and the undead and shades are definitely not immune to them. If we can release the unwillingly cursed undead of your uncle and his fellows, we can definitely do it to undead raised on negative energy and the like.”

“Oh, aye, I meant to ask ye. Do ye know of Void Magic?” His expression said the questions was not casual.

Alarm bells rang in my head. “There were allusions to it in the book Nuhmudira’s daughter left for me to read. The explanations were flowery and overblown, and I did not get the chance to test anything out. It was… more like an alternate energy than anything else, as I recall.”

He nodded once. “And it always manifested in black energy chased with purple, and were often helped along by screaming spirits and skulls in the blasts of energy,” he kindly informed me.

My lips turned down rather quickly. “I don’t think you need much to consider what my opinion of wielding such energies is, Master McMikal. Why would people employ them?”

“The Void Magic ignores Elemental resistances entirely. While there were no Rends or Vulnerabilities to use with them, nor were there any protection from man or monster alike. So, while it had no great power over anything, nothing was resistant to it, no matter how obdurate they might be normally. It were very simple t’ use an’ employ.

“The mages who used it ignored all the screaming an’ skulls an’ blackness as mere flavor an’ fluff, an’ didn’t let it bother them. They were happy enough not t’ have t’ deal with seven different flavors of War Magic an’ memorizing a bewildering array of what to use an’ not use, nor having t’ carry around a dozen Wands as needed to wield in a fight.”

I just groaned and put my hand to my forehead. “Everything immoral is excusable in the name of efficiency, just so long as you don’t look too close or get called out on it. I am very familiar with the mindset, Elder.”

“Elder. Makin’ me feel old, lass.” He stroked the silver in his beard.

“You didn’t notice yet?” I was amused. “Well, it’ll probably be more visible tomorrow at Renewal.”

“Notice?” he had to ask.

“It won’t change the silver, but if you look at your wrinkles and skin, you look a few years younger than yesterday.” I helpfully flicked up a Holo of his own face for him to look at.

He naturally leaned forward to peer at it more closely, the image reflecting his own movements. He touched the corners of his eyes and turned slightly to examine his neck. “Well, damn. Ye were telling the truth about the longer years...”

“Which have three ceilings,” I reminded him, flicking up three fingers. “The Natural Ceiling at Six, where you stop being a normal human. The Second Ceiling at Ten, where you go from post-human to superhuman. And the Eternal Ceilings at Twenty, where you step beyond being mortal to become something more.”

“Immortal?” he asked instantly.

“No,” I denied him. “Immortality is something that comes with Divinity or similar levels of power. Eternals cease to age and being subject to standard mortal forms of death. I’ve been told you get some sense of timelessness so the years don’t weigh on you like they do on us, and you settle into a trope or road that carries you into the future. The Great Explorer. Shield of the World. Staff of the Prime. Chevalier of Souls.

“It’s possible to make the jump to godhood from Eternal yourself. Before then, you need the direct sponsorship of a god, or to be born a demigod. Eternal is mostly about gaining those levels of power under your own merits.”

“Huh. And the Isparian system… won’t get me there? But the full system of the Ancients, that Asheron and his ilk use, would...” he murmured thoughtfully again, seeing how the System was being used to restrain them.

“Through one method or another, although given the nature of this place, I have a feeling it was subverted and done through unclean methods. They didn’t have an overarching morality to measure themselves against, after all.”

He thought about that, then nodded slowly. “I heard whispers from some of the mages, that the long lives of the Empyreans were done by the sacrifice of another, taking their deaths upon themselves and locking them away. It were not always done willingly, but there were no age limits. An old woman sacrificing herself to gain endless years for her son, for instance...”

“Or buy the life of an old loyal soldier with benefits to his heirs, or something.” I was able to figure the angle on that really quickly. “All the while mumbling platitudes about who the magic actually worked for, as you couldn’t have the common people get ahold of the secret of long years, now, could you?...”

“There’s talk that a selfless sacrifice gave you long years, while something forced or bought turned ye into one of the undead… not that the undead much care,” he added, not disagreeing with me. “And the undead seem to grow in power very slowly, if at all.”

“Growth is an aspect of living. Decay and stagnation is an aspect of death. The undead typically only grow in power by ripping it out of others and devouring it for their own, or treating their corpse of a shell like a magic item and infusing it with external energy. All things the living can do much more easily,” I pointed out for him.

“But if they grow old and die, it takes a very, very long time. Long years an’ knowledge, combined with lore others don’t know, keep them in power, an’ eventually they want to exert power over the living, t’ replace the vitality they once had. Aye, I know that tale. It is what brought down the Gelidites, in the end, an’ the collapse of their Empires. The greed of the dead wanting power over the living, an’ the living not having much use for it.”

His satisfaction wasn’t hard for me to read. “As it should be. Undeath is a blight upon the living world, and very rarely does anything Good ever truly come of it. Even something as mundane as using mindless skeletons or something to farm with inevitably backfires in the long run. Negative energy lifeforms are not good for any living ecology.”

He blinked. “That be true? I’ve heard more than a few mages whine loudly about the possible uses of undead, as opposed to Golems or Elementals or the like.”

“Yes. Fields tended by undead tend to go barren with unnatural speed… unless, of course, they are fertilized with the essence of the living. Blood, ground up meat, and the like, and you might be able to imagine how that changes the tenor of what grows readily there...”

He made a face. “I imagine ye’d burn the fields en vivus with the skels an’ have ta leave it t’ recover...”

“Pretty much. And it’s funny how the people who’ll use undead as menial labor have little problem taking the next few steps in making their method viable for themselves, regardless of the cost to those around them.”

“The gods feel the same way?” he asked, steering the conversation back to the original topic.

“Well...” I trailed off. “Are you familiar with the idea of a pantheon?”

“A family of gods?” There were such families in Isparian myth, although they had no teeth to them.

“Often a family, or a clan, or just a bunch of gods used to working together. You get all kinds in reality, but they often have blood relations amongst themselves, are descended from a common source, or arose from common sources.

“They also often have a given set of rivals, and both sides pay attention to what the other does. So, if the gods of the Heavenly Pantheon Kris and I are aware of get involved here, soon enough their underworld counterparts are going to come sniffing around seeking to sabotage what they are doing.

“Thus, the Alignment Wars play out, even among the gods. The gods are just more players in them, using bigger boards.”