[A Day in the Life of Aelryinth] - 0200 Hours

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            The Heartsong ended as Meditation drew to a close. Disks flickered up here and there, and sleepy children nodded off on them as they followed their parents back home. Cecilia and Edward were still young enough to get rides, Earl and Angel proudly walked, and Emril nodded off on his Disk beside me on the way back to the house.

            We put everyone to bed, and then Diana and I both circled the House in opposite directions, calmly going over the Wards and Formations as we did every night, then separated again to tour the border of the yard for the exact same purpose.

When we were done, we met at the gazebo in the center of the back yard, sat down, and leaned into one another.

            Di’s Deep Waters, gentle Moon, and swirling Storm chi was as unique as a fingerprint, and the only thing that could relax me so easily. She wrapped me up in wind and water and moonlight, and I extended my Sevenfold Theurgy around her as we both leaned into one another and dared to relax for a couple of hours.

            Of course, relaxing was relative. In the back of our heads, we were commiserating about the day we’d had, the kids, plans for the coming day, weeks, months, and years, going over what we wanted to see happen, new thoughts that had occurred to us, new tangents that came in out of nowhere and needed to be bounced off one another, considered, wrapped into our plans, discarded, or set aside for another time.

            Today was a Horse Day, so Diana would be Mass Awakening nearly a score of Horses today, with other Rangers and Druids contributing to the effort and bringing that number to an easy hundred overall. The candidate Horses had already been picked out by Boston, her own Mount, and were waiting at the Stables near the Crystal Henge, where non-Allegiance Druids could arrive to join the Ritual to create them. They’d be seconded to cavalry all over the country when their training was complete, and were beloved of the Primos and Forsaken soldiers who were chosen to ride them.

            Yesterday had been a Dog Day, and a hundred new Hounds were now being trained by Rascar and Arloo. Some would be sent right to the military for service, and others would be sent to homes and governmental offices, helping watch over the people, guard the towns and farms, and especially keep down the population of rats and bugs. Their noses were one of the best early warning systems we had, in the end. Pretty much everyone in the Allegiance knew the simple barking language of the Hounds by heart now.

            -Anything changed on the magical front?- I /asked her idly, no words or voices allowed to disturb our quiet time. It was us, the insects, and the nightbirds, and the wind and light rain that had sprung up.

            -Another Saddle as normal,- she /answered calmly, the primary answer for most days. Not a lot of the Artificers worked in leather, so it tended to get left to those people practicing Primal magic. Diana usually made time to work on Saddles every day, masterwork things comfortable for riders and the beasts they were made for. Given that she made QL 35 as a matter of rote, her Saddles were the most desired in the whole Allegiance, and the best leathers and hides made it to her table for use.

            Riding Saddles were simple to enchant, taking only a couple hours to fully Invest or Infuse. The simple magic of making a rider almost weightless and the Saddle able to slap onto its Attuned mount with a snort and be released the same way meant that every Horse, Hound, Bull, Bison, Griffon, Hippogriff, and Pegasus that had a Rider wanted one for themselves.

            We could Awaken Horses much faster than we could make Saddles for them, so there was a major backlog for them, although the Air Cavalry got first dibs on them. The advantages of a near-weightless rider to a flying beast were greater than landbound Mounts.

            Empowering a Saddle was also an excellent use of downtime for junior Powered, just needing the goldweight to do so, which could even be taken care of by the leather of the Saddle itself if it was from a sufficiently magical creature.

            -Who are your Rings for today?- She could look at my schedule in Markspace as easily as anyone else, but things were always in flux. Thousands of names were on that list, waiting for their Oathrings with great expectations.

            -No surprises or exchanges. Two Warlocks, seven Bloodguard.- The Warlocks were Landbound to lesser Spirits, mountains in what was old Montana. We’d long ago maxed out the numbers for the Tier-5 Warlocks in the Allegiance, all of whom were organized under Sole or Lady Green. Nine Oathrings a day, every day, for eight years was a lot of Rings, and enough to supply one to almost all the Primary Warlocks active on the planet.

            Those Sworn under us, anyway.

            Unspoken for the Bloodguard was it meant that seven more Primos had made Seven and Forsaken, which had allowed them to join the Bloodguard, considered the most elite of the standing military forces of non-Powered Terrans alive.

            Joining the Bloodguard meant you were a Forsaken, probably a Null, and a Seven. No traditional armed force in planetary history had ever had Seven+’s as their core soldiers, and so the Bloodguard were frighteningly competent by any human standard you cared to name.

            The Oath to the Bloodguard was a Banner Oath, so the members retained their own Allegiance Oaths if they came from outside mine, but they served under the Banner of the Bloodguard. That ninety percent of the Bloodguard was under my Allegiance was just a fact of life, as their base was here, and it was what all the Primos soldiers under me who wanted to make a career of fighting nasty magical things aspired to.

            The Bloodguard made a lot of Monarchs green with envy, but they weren’t used to expand my writ. The Bloodguard were there to fight things so the Powered didn’t have to, to show the normal people with no magic that there was another path to strength, and if it wasn’t as bright and flashy, it was still there, and it was deadly and effective.

            They were out in Alaska, too, killing orcs with Romex and the other Powered seconded to them out there. North America had a lot of ground to secure, and there were new orcs and goblins and other invading species coming in every day through new Portals.

            They were running right into the Warlord of the Bloodguard, Sama Rantha, and her ferociously overprotective zeal and readiness to fight. While one might think it would be logical for the Amazons to be under Sama and the Bloodguard to be Briggs’ personal company, the Amazons defended their position as Briggs’ personal hammer fervently, and Sama had co-opted the Bloodguard so thoroughly nobody dared complain about it, and that included me.

            A /glance their way in the Markspace assured me the Bloodguard were currently in Meditative Healing, accelerating the healing of non-lethal damage accrued by Vigor uses, and regaining spent Soak after the Healers attached to them dealt with their physical injuries.

            There was another force of orcs twenty miles from them who were going to be swept down upon in the morning and put to the spear and Wrath of Northam’s Landbound.

            Diana smiled, always pleased to hear that more people had reached Seven. Seventy more prime years, age regression, the potential to reach Ten, time to have families and yet still pursue the long road to Eternal if they so wished.

            Also, tougher, faster, stronger! More Sevens meant more shit got done, without us having to be there to do it!

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