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

From there, it was mostly about positioning.

I picked the three spots I’d shoot from, approximately where I should be hitting them, and the Mick and Princess Kristie got into position as I squared off from almost a hundred yards away.

Picking out the two of the three real Shadow Zefirs actually meant I was aiming with Detect Evil and my Vatic Gaze, as the chaos of all the Summons flitting about made it impossible to visually pick out anything.

The Emerald Shards winked up, were noticed very quickly as they spun about my hand in crystalline green, and I let them fly, locking onto the two screeching Zefirs coming my way and screaming for their Summons to do the same.

Fun thing with spells like that is you don’t have to be looking at them to look at them, too. I was turning and flying away, willing Invisibility into effect, even as the two Shards slammed into their targets.

The Shards did a small amount of damage, something like a base d6, +1 per Caster Level. That did have a whole lot of Kickers on them, sure enough, but nothing to really threaten the little bastards.

Which didn’t stop them from instantly locking up as paralytic green energy spread through them, and their screeches stopped as they tumbled through the air and hit the ground out of control.

The raging flock buzzing like a zillion demented hornets after me didn’t slow down in the slightest. The Summons were programmed to go after hostiles in normal circumstances, and losing their controller didn’t change that default. Plus, it had told them to chase me regardless, so off they raged after me as I faded from sight.

They went right over the prone Kristie, not looking back, and she only had like twenty feet to go to reach the first one, Quaver hissing out and plunging down to impale the helpless thing and stop its desperate attempts to shriek and move and evade.

She didn’t even stop as she moved past it to the other one about sixty feet away, a flowing shadow in the darkness, and Quaver dropped silently to end that one as it tried to shake off my magic.

Just not tough enough.

Staying low enough to the ground to make anyone wonder if she was moving on all fours, Kris skated along the ground on the Wave-Skating Step, endless ki streaming from her heels as her legs were wide and splayed, her torso less then two feet off the ground and staying that way without effort as she moved after the crazed flock which was zipping around and trying to find me after I went Invisible and vanished from sight.

They were spread off all over the place, widening their search path, but I was only interested in the two that weren’t Summons. They were even more wildly frantic than the Summons, but I didn’t much care. As long as I had a mental aiming lock on them, well, I was sitting at a comfortable +16 to-hit, unmodified by range, and their concealment tactics in the fluttering swarm didn’t mean anything.

As before, I sent off the two Emerald Shards as I began to move, booking for more distance and going invisible as I did so.

The Shadow Zefir’s frantic flitting actually dodged one of the Shards, which shot off into the distance and dissipated. The other punched into it and sent it tumbling in a green arc towards the ground, while the raging swarm buzzed on without it.

The Shadow Flyer in charge didn’t seem to realize its underlings were going missing, nor did it realize that being faster then the Summons it rapidly outdistanced those around it and was leading the attack on me in seconds, while literally dozens of spellbolts filled the area behind me as I moved straight up after vanishing.

No, I wasn’t taking a chance on being hit by any of them. I shifted off to my final shooting area as mad hell-pixies buzzed around everywhere below me.

They were looking for the green glow, and were instantly coming after me when it materialized, with dozens of spells leading the way.

Unfortunately, they were using Isparian-style magic, which wasn’t all that fast, and was easily thrown off by juking… or by just dropping to the ground. My Emerald Shards hissed out, the Shadow Flyer ran right into them… and it didn’t get to squeak in alarm as it tumbled sideways and fell out of the sky, limned in green.

The unseen Mick was crouched in the lee of a stand of weeds not ten feet away when it hit the ground.

The raging Summons didn’t much notice, the only thing on their minds getting in an attack on me, or releasing a spell at me… but that one volley had basically cleared them all out of any remaining mana that they had, so they could only chase me in a rage-buzzing swarm.

They all swept past the Mick, and after they did so, he spun smoothly, took a step, went up and down with Bunita, and the paralyzed Shadow Flyer was chopped right in two with grim finality.

All the control effects on the Summons evaporated instantly. The distance to their Summon point yawned in their programmed minds, and as their infuriated charges against nothing fell short of the mark, they came to a halt, stilled as warring impulses duked it out, and then their default commands banished the orders of the dead Shadow Flyer.

Slowly and in unison, they turned around and headed back for their spawn points, while the Mick kept his head down in the dark and waited patiently for the dozens of wicked little hell-sprites to zip on back to where they’d come from.

A couple of minutes later, I flew on back up to them, Kris already having reached the Mick. The Shadow Flyer was a bright little vivic torch on the ground, staining the charred ground white, but the Summons had just ignored it.

“Well, weren’t that an experience,” the Mick murmured to nobody, as Kris hauled him to his feet. He brushed himself off flagrantly, and then looked back at the ruined little settlement. “The things I be doing just to scrape a bit more gold out of the bottom of the pan, aye?”

“Unless you’ve a better way?” Kris just grinned. “You might have seen that we’re going through quite a bit of the green stuff a day.”

“Aye, and weren’t anything much to be made taking the long way around.” He did pause thoughtfully. “There IS another of those settlements further up the road, however.”

“I volunteer Ryin to fly over there Invisibly, let us know the horrifically overpowered stuff that is traipsing around it, and come on back,” Kris said serenely.

“You going to be able to take on those things?” I asked her. It wasn’t really a question.

“They’re almost out of magic. The faster we get to killing them the better, so let’s do it all now. Emerald them down, we’ll chop, as fast as you can pick them off.”

I nodded, blue-white fires swirling on my hands as I Mana Boosted my way back to full Valences and Pool, while the Mick watched with great interest.

“What are ye doing?” he finally asked, having enough feel for the magic to identify most of what I was doing. “That’s Isparian Life Magic, I can tell, but ye’re not saying anything, or gesturing, really… and it looks like Healing magic...”

“Isparian Life Magic Heals three things, but most people only ever knew of two of them, because they grew far too used to using the Transfer spells to quickly regain mana. It will Heal and restore Health, it will Revitalize and restore Stamina, and it will Boost and restore Mana.”

He just blinked at me, and then he swore a bloody green streak of invectives in four different languages. “Ye’re bloody serious…!” he gasped. “The Life mages are going to be kicking themselves sideways for days fer missing that!”

“You have to have good mana conversion to make it work well, as you spend mana to make mana, but it works, and that’s really all that is important.” I smiled slightly. “Most importantly to me, it’s considered a Healing effect, and the boosts I get to Healing magic from Augmented Healing and the Healing Domain both apply.”

“Can you use this on others?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course.”

He looked at Kris, trying to hold back some bubbling enthusiasm. “Ye might have just turned the whole magical thing around for our survivors by discovering that!”

“Re-discovering it,” I corrected him calmly. “The fact it works at all is a tad crazy, but that’s not my discovery. Given how the magic seems to be evolving away from Isparian standard, I’m not sure it’s a long-term fix, and wouldn’t be surprised if it gets less and less effective over time. Proper amplification of passive mana gain is a much surer road to develop, given what happened last time. I’ve a feeling magic doesn’t want us infinite cycling it anymore.”

He hesitated, thought that over, and grunted. “Aye, that were one of the big things about the mages, never running out o’ firepower,” he finally agreed. “Do this Mana Boost trick work back on Ispar?” he had to ask.

“I honestly do not know, Master McMikal, but I’d never seen anyone Cast it there. My gut impression would be it might, but the fact it’s not used says there might be such restrictions that nobody bothered to, and so it fell completely out of use.”

“My guess would be mana converting doesn’t work on the spell, and so the gain would be slim to nothing until you got to the higher Scarabs,” Princess Kristie offered. “And since everything starts with the lower Scarabs...”

“Nobody ever bothered to research the higher ones, or got so frustrated with net losses when Casting they just gave up?” I considered that point. “Aye, that’s possible. Just looking at it in Silver, a standard spell would lose you mana every time at Lead, ninety percent of the time at Iron, sixty percent at Copper, and over fifty percent at Silver. If you want mana back fast, that is a thoroughly useless way of going about it.”

“Now, stop talking spells, and lets get back to wiping this place and sweeping it.” Kris clapped her hands softly. “You full, Ryin?”

“Yes, Highness,” I replied promptly.

“Swords out, Master Mick! We chop as we go!”

He’d never resheathed Bunita, so he was happy to hear that. “Let’s go see the layout and how they are clustered. The little shits usually are in groups of one ta three. The faster we kill them, the less we have ta worry about their spells, although I’m not much worried about those,” he admitted.

I just rolled my eyes. “Someone here doesn’t have great magic resistance...” I reminded them in singsong. “And that someone is who they are going to follow the Emerald Shards back to!”

“Oh, sprightly little fuckers that they are. Shouldn’t be a problem with duos, right, lass? If there’s a trio, we send up the Princess to play cutthroat and murder one out of Invisibility first.”

“Back-alley bravo, cheap at twice the price!” I noted with a straight face, and Kris just grinned.