[Warpworld] Ch 3 – The Stone is the Way

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            I looked down at the Stones for a long moment, then up at the Formation that was guiding in. Then I slowly looked into the distance, and pivoted around once, taking it all in.

            “Well, damn,” I murmured, despite myself. “I thought I was impressive making Pyramids...”

            Every one of those Stones, from things barely bigger than a man-sized boulder to cubic-mile monoliths, were encoded and enruned at basically a cellular level. Absolute uniformity of structure and crystalline arrangements indicated that they were either transmuted directly into their form, or molded from absolute purest materials and Shaped with a skill and scale that most magic just couldn’t operate at.

            Even Fae’s world, where mages could move hillsides and tear down mountains with speed, couldn’t come close to the combination of power and skill needed to make things like this.

            Just looking at it was giving me all sorts of wonderful ideas on how to improve my Pyramids, which were literally like the little building blocks babies stacked up to play with in comparison to what had been done with these devices.

            They were also pretty damn old, although not as old as I might have thought. A hundred thousand years, maybe? It was hard to tell, as they both decayed slowly and auto-repaired themselves.

            What was working against them was the Tainted Mana. Even just passing it through themselves was having a subtle corrosive effect on the devices, and all it would take was just the right level and kind of surge together at the right time, and these Stones would simply break, stop functioning, and woooo, things would not go well.

            That damage had already been done. I could see it, but I didn’t know how to fix it, and I was sure even a V+4 Mending or Repair spell wasn’t up to the job. This was Eternal-class work here, done on a scale I could only fondly dream about, and my magic wasn’t going to fix a problem like this, especially on the scale it was at.

            I could, however, make it very, very hard to issue that destructive pulse.

            The Stones were unnaturally hard and auto-repaired themselves, but all I did was create dimples in their surfaces in areas where there were no runic structures, basically messing with the aesthetics a little bit.

            I then Cast Vivic Eternal Light and Chained twenty-five doubles of it into all the spots I opened, spending a point of ki to Echo the spell and repeat it in six seconds.

            Tongues of Electrum Eternal Light bounced up with a cheery glow, unwhite vivic energy dancing at the tip of them and doing literally nothing towards their primary purpose of shedding illumination.

            Vivus had its own uses and purposes, however.

            The mana streaming past, already circling and mixing as it was caught up in the Vortex’s Formation, ignited as I walked away towards the next set of dimples, the Taint catching en vivus in visible streams of what looked like glowing smoke, but were actually purifying mana.

            They also happened to take that vivus right into the heart of the Vortex.

            Distant shouts of alarm reached my ears as the riders of the dragons saw I was doing something. Probably misinterpreting everything, I decided. I had a sudden urge to let them misinterpret everything and start a fight, whereupon I could punish them, and my Hellscar almost hissed where it crossed my face, making me jerk.

            “Holy Mithar, that was subtle,” I murmured in alarm, awareness of the push driving it off. I turned my eyes to the desperately-onracing dragon riders, and battled down my prejudice and hatred of their damn mounts.

            “I am purifying the mana entering the Vortex to reduce the load on the Formation sustaining it. Kindly do not interfere, as I don’t want to have to repeat my work. This is Truth.”

            Magevoice has a range of a mile. Tongues worked with it, the translation spell carrying right along with it. Dragons and Riders alike heard my Voice, understood it, and most importantly, it rang with Truth.

            They all jerked in disbelief, the Dragons slowing right down as they processed what I had said. Even if they wanted to ignore it, if they didn’t want to trust me, or even if they were just incredibly stick-up-the-arse proud... they still knew it was the Truth!

            And if it was the Truth... what did they need to hurry so desperately to prevent?

            Also, the fact I spoke in Draconic might have had an effect. Weren’t too many random folks who spoke Draconic, and in some places the language had magical power all its own. Certainly the dragons themselves were taking it seriously.

           The Vortex wasn’t small, easily a hundred paces across down here, widening as it went further up. However, it was largely magic, and if you weren’t capable of seeing magic, it actually wasn’t visible from that far away. Normal beings probably saw a constant ghostly white light coming from this island, but didn’t see the Vortex rising into the sky.

            I strolled around the Vortex as the dragons swooped in for a landing nearby and ahead of me, the riders dismounting quickly. Blades cleared in singing steel, spears rose, Staffs glowed with magical light, and the most overly-robed of the riders pointed at me with his Staff and shouted, “Cease what you are doing immediately, in the name of the Phoenix Crown of Veltharion!”

            “No.” They actually all ground to a halt, blinking at the absoluteness of my reply, Draconic being supremely arrogant about such things, and the fact was I still wasn’t bothering to look at them. My Cloak glimmered, and the riders all looked back at an odd hissing sound.

            Their mighty dragons, great creatures of ancient lineage born for combat, had all lowered their heads in fear and retreated a step or two, their attitudes of submission and dread completely obvious.

            “If you try to stop me, I am going to flick a minor spell at you, blow you all and your dragons a hundred feet back, probably break a few of your bones, and leave you perilously close to that edge with the two-hundred-foot drop into a dark crevasse which you might find it difficult to survive the fall into. That is Truth.” The tensed riders clenched up as they realized I was once again forcing them to stare at naked truth and not be able to deny it, with all the implications thereof.

            “You are not a threat to me, you are an annoyance. Do not bother me while I am about my work.”

            All of the riders tensed, looking at one another, and then at the spellcasters who were obviously in command as I waved my hand and poof, poof, one hundred and four Vivic Eternal Lights lit up on sudden dimples on the Stone that hadn’t been there before, arranged in a simple flower-like pattern that was easy to work out at a glance.

            Importantly, it fit right into the flowing draw of the Vortex, the glowing smoke instantly beginning to trail off of them as I strolled away, intent on my task.

---

            The second eldest of the Vortex Watch reached out to trail a hand through the nearest stream of magic. It lit up around his long fingers, dancing in multiple colors up his hand and wrist, but did no damage. His hand wove a complex sign, and the magic glittered brightly and smoothly as a rainbow-hued butterfly formed out of the light and fluttered away from his grip, watched closely by all of them.

            “It is indeed pure,” the third Caster murmured upon seeing the magical Butterfly’s colors and motions, relaxing marginally. “But what is a Human doing here? How could he be powerful enough to pierce the Wards about the Vortex so easily... and to intimidate the dragons?”

            The others stirred uneasily as they watched the intruding dark-skinned Human stroll away from them, his complete lack of concern with the threat they represented radiating from him.

The worst part of it was that they believed it wasn’t an act. He truly wasn’t threatened by them at all, and they knew it was a fact, right down to their bones!

“Lower your weapons!” the eldest stated, letting the Winds of Magic drawn to his Staff fade, similar to unnocking an arrow from a bow. Although unwilling, the warriors assisting him did the same. “We will follow him, and watch... and we will ask questions as he does.” The leader glanced over at the dragons in worry. The great reptiles were very good at measuring the threat level of a foe, and still had the courage and fury to throw themselves into an unwinnable fight.

They very plainly did not want to deal with this Human at all!

---

            The fifteen of them came trotting up behind me. I was spreading out vivic flames, not trying to outrun them, and so they managed to catch me without difficulty.

            I eyed the slanted, large, and brilliant eyes showing through their helms, their long fingers, and what looked to be fairly slender, tall figures under armor made to make them look bigger. They were all taller than I was, and I wasn’t short.

            Feature had dropped down to only a hundred yards above, idly coasting through the air without flapping his spread wings at all. It was hard not to see the riders glancing nervously up at him, given how their overlong helms accentuated their head motions.

            “Why are you purifying the Winds of Magic going into the Vortex?” the rider demanded. I wasn’t familiar with the language, although the complexity and music of it further enhanced my suspicions. Permanent Tongues took care of that problem.

            “I am Aelryinth of Terra-Luna, Human, Magos, Heavenbound, and Ringlord, Monarch of The Steel and over ten million citizens who have given me their Oaths, and that is Truth.” I stated back at him, in Draconic for delightful third-person verification. I watched them all twitch as their rising skepticism, willful disbelief, and lack of trust was squashed yet again!

            It took him a second to realize I had just introduced myself, and he was being rude by not introducing himself first. “I am High Wizard Elosophin, Magi’alaihei, Elder of the Sindalphin Tower, Commander of the Watchguard of the Isle of Sorcerers by writ of the Phoenix Crown of Velsharion!” he finally responded after digesting what I had said. Pointedly, he had straightened in spite of himself at ‘Monarch’ and ‘ten million citizens’.

            “You have a question for me, High Wizard Elosophin?” I asked, continuing with my task. I was using a few Valences to do this, but mostly my Spell Pool and ki. I was alternating Paired and Echo on the spells, both costing 1 ki, each free on the succeeding round.

            “We would like to know the purpose behind why you are purifying the Winds of Magic being drawn in by the Vortex,” the only slightly unnerved elder elf repeated to me somewhat more respectfully. The translation of Magi’alaihei was ‘blessed people of the magic’, but ‘elf’ was how I understood the short version of their name.

            They were like the fifth race of ‘elves’ I’d met, and none of them had anything in common genetically with the others. It was kind of funny, really. Was there really a race of elves for every purpose possible out there, like bacteria or something?

            “Even a casual glance of the situation as I fell in here from orbit was enough to ascertain that the Mana Vortex established here is venting a large amount of uncontrolled primal magical energy from the world up into the vacuum of space above it. While a laudable goal, the deed was only a stop-gap, and follow-up measures appear not to have been taken.”

            I elected to not see his mouth open, close, and his lips form a thin line as he listened.

            “The vented mana is being drawn to the orbiting satellite composed of hyper-compressed mana particles.” I waved vaguely at the ghoulish hue of the smaller moon, which was advancing quickly across the night sky. “Eventually it will overweight the orbit of the satellite, plunging it back onto the world and unleashing a catastrophic wave of wild mana which will likely turn the entire planet into a broken-dimension Hell, little different than living in a reality-bending outer plane of madness and malevolence.

            “In addition,” I went on as they swallowed, “you are using these Stones underneath us to anchor and focus the Mana Vortex. It is they which are doing most of the work involved in this Vortex.

            “The flow of Corrupted mana through them so constantly and strongly has eroded them from within. While they can still continue on with the relatively simple duty of passing the Tainted Mana along, it will not take much to overload them all at once, and bring the entire system down forever. I doubt you have the means to repair them.”

            “The Waystones are failing?” gasped the second spellcaster in their native tongue.

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