[Warpworld] Ch 2 – A Feel for Magic

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            Faith almost sent the magic into conniption fits of responsiveness, as if begging me to Align it and wield it in harmony with a Greater Will. That Greater Will, however, was mostly absent, as what I considered to be Heavenly influences didn’t seem to be present when my relatively new Ur-priestliness touched the strands of Faith leading elsewhere to test what to tap.

            The most powerful and virile, even malevolently infectious, of those Faith strands led to Blackness, thick and heavy, that corner of the Alignments where Chaos and Evil converged and wrought all the ills on existence that sapient beings could imagine and their gathered power could make come to pass. I literally jerked my awareness away from that direction, quite certain that stealing power from there was a bad idea.

            The majority of other influences were in the Green to Blue range, naturalistic entities caught up in older, more primitive modes of thought and never evolving past them. Those of the Blue were alien in their rigidity and plainly not even native to the world, coming here to oppose the Black over there.

            Only a couple influences in the White-Yellow ranges, and they seemed to all be in the less martial interpretations of them. Healer goddesses, perhaps even different aspects of the same deity, the only ones clinging to the idea of what it meant to be Good, but gaining none of the martial air to defend those ideals and the virtues at the heart of them.

            Where Good was weak, the other Alignments thrived, especially Evil...

            The Typeless magic of Artifice seemed to be present, but was susceptible to infection from the stronger, primal magic it was derived from. It would make the creation of magical items more randomized and uncertain, perhaps even dangerous, and the making of Constructs susceptible to Corruption and Possession.

            The Binder and Pact Magic resonated instantly and with an almost terrifying depth, bending instantly towards the Black, Gray, Purple, and Red, especially the first. All of the trends of that magic veered in those directions, and I was pretty sure it would be difficult to nearly impossible to be blessed with a Pact from Law or Good at all. If I wanted to deal with extraplanars and be empowered, wow, I was going to have to deal with some nasty Entities, indeed.

            Now, if I wanted to Bind, Seal, Exorcise, Banish, Abjure, Unmake, or Unsummon such things, that was a completely separate and totally valid use of the same magicks.

            Soul Magic was – holyshitdon’tmanifestthat!

            I flicked off my Hand Tats instantly as little spots seemed to condense out of nowhere and leap for the exposed edge of my soul exemplified by the Tats. Wow, the negative psychic vibe to the local manafield was not fucking around! If I used Soul Magic here, I was going to get a fast power-up, right down into demonhood!

            -That was impressively dangerous,- Feature /observed cautiously, watching everything from his own Tat-form, basically just extraplanar storage for an Eidolon, only in another format.

            “You have that so right. Internal passives and Gear-protected Soul Magic only!” I told him. The Rules were Different here...

            Which left the Heartsong. I cleared my throat, readied my throat, and started on the scales...

            The whole world lit up with the Sublime Chord.

            All of the magic around flared into true visibility as the Heartsong washed past it, painting the world in garish hues of power, flawed purity... and an inbuilt corruption and decadence I could feel on the edge of the music, a tilt and a push towards spiritual and mental decay and degradation that most spellcasters probably could not even feel.

            I quenched the Heartsong, and even the echoes of its power, as Feature clamped his eyes shut and didn’t open them again until I assured him it was all gone.

            Displaying the magic like that, with such an insidious psychic twist to it, was effectively creating a Cognition Mirror into the real world, allowing things from the source of the magic to Look Back at those looking upon those unreal, psychedelic colors...

            “Eyes closed still,” I told him, and this time went straight to use of Valor.

            Reality blazed as the power of a Word of Creation smote that subtle infection in the Manafield, and the Sublime Chord burned bright and pure. The imperfections, the disease, the taint in the manafield fled screaming from the Word, driven away, and with them went the garishly imbalanced play of colors and the twisted view of magic’s glory. It was replaced by a cool, serene, and stalwart shining field of doughty mien and ready courage, eager to stand against the world!

            Wow, this place had no exposure to and very little resistance to Holy power. That was a very Bad Thing for everyone else, but it presaged a whole lot of asswhooping going to be taking place. Denying Good ever coming here certainly helped Evil do its thing, but when it finally did arrive, it meant you had nothing to counter it...

            I blended Hope into the Heartsong, and the Colors danced and extended, reaching forth in a glorious display of energy, seeking a transcendence they’d long been denied, thrumming with Heavenly power that shone forth, unquenchable, undeniable, able to reach anywhere and anywhen to where it was needed.

            Because it shone eternal.

            Truth entered the Heartsong, a weapon and a shield of Heaven. If the infection in the mana had fled Valor screaming, it was petrified with terror as Truth came down and smote it into oblivion.

            Lies, so many lies and illusions, so much deception, infection, taint, rotting, insidious malice, and corruption beneath and between garish displays of falsehood.

            Truth did not care, and the magic rose ready for action at my command!

            I let Mortus Dius, my Staff, take over the Heartsong, keeping the Tones and Notes rising and falling in a wordless display of power, washing the garish magic away and into the background, but leaving this dark and forbidding place perceptibly lighter, sharper, and cleaner, as if a dark film upon the world had been washed away and it could finally be seen for what it really was.

            Swirls of pure magic, blending and mixing easily, flowed past me as I moved towards that expelling Vortex, skating as much as walking on air, studying it and the magic beneath the magic as I drew closer.

            The Stones all about me were the anchors of the effect, the Formation itself was merely applying them in a clever manner, and the Stones themselves were doing the heavy lifting. I would have to examine one of them more closely, but the main thing was that the mana being expelled out was unbalanced, Tainted, and unbound. There was indeed no way it should have been allowed to exist in this natural world, and whoever had made it had done the world a great service.

            What they SHOULD have done is just purify the stuff and pour it back into the world, strengthening the planet and the Land. That would have solved so many more problems.

            A roar came from the distance, a tone and register to it that I immediately recognized. I turned my head to see three familiar and well-despised winged forms beating their way urgently in my direction.

            I couldn’t use my Mask of Clarity, but I had Eagle Eyes at VIII, and x100 forward vision is nothing to sneeze at. I shared it with Feature and our combined view leapt across a couple miles to get a closer look at them.

            Classic dragons, on the serpentine side as opposed to the lizard, despite the standard bat-like wings. They were being ridden by five figures each, clutching swords, bows, lances, and one of them a Staff, the swirls of magic coming to him. Their armor was... ornate, the politest thing I could say about it. Stupidly overdone came to mind as well, especially the helms that reached too high and were just begging to help break the necks of the wearers, or be sent flying with an easy blow. There were flutings and overdone pauldrons and ornamentation just begging to catch weapon strikes and guide them into the wearer, or concentrate the force of impacts to crush the flesh behind the metal, instead of protect, channel force away, and disperse and absorb a blow.

            The dragons were saddled, reined, and wore their own ornamental armor of sorts. The reins were telling, indicating the riders were in the dominant position. An equal or dominant dragon might have a saddle, but they definitely would not have reins. Reins were a control tool.

            I wasn’t worried about the riders. Only one rider per dragon was a spellcaster, and none of them had particularly dangerous Auras of power.

            I actually wasn’t too worried about the dragons, either. There were three of them, sure, but they were all different sizes and colors, only the largest one looking to be of a dangerous size and age... and I wasn’t seeing the Aura of a spellcaster around it?

            Dragons without magic would explain why they could be dominated by mere bipeds...

            “Feature, come out.”

            Magic swirled and flowed as he rose from his Tattoo form, surging forth from inside my clothes and around me, exploding forth into his full length and form as he activated Extended Dracoform and kindly went right to his full powered-up form.

            The dragons over there sure didn’t miss his arrival, and the roars of challenge were ringing out almost instantly, although they took a few seconds to reach us.

            I stood on his head as we zipped towards the Vortex, and if the watching riders cursed and their dragons were alarmed at the incredible speed we displayed in doing so, that was all on them.

            I Chained a Bane to Dragons over all his claws, teeth, tail, jaws, nose-spike, horns, and tail. Feature’s Nose-blade, Tail-mace, and Overclaws were adamantine and already glimmered with some potent magic, but he didn’t use armor when a Force Armor and Shield from me were much more effective and didn’t affect his speed or flexibility.

            He was also a Magical Beast and an Eidolon, not a Dragon, so the Bane wouldn’t backlash on him, even using a Dracoform.

            His airspeed while I was riding him were in excess of base 400’, also, completely leaving the rather clumsy flying dragons back there in his dust. He’d gotten used to coming out and getting to flex while I didn’t have my Matrix, and so was plenty happy to do so now.

            We swooped down onto the broad, wide Stones that secured the Vortex to the ground, me leaping off his head and him rising up into the sky to gain some altitude against those coming in behind me.

            If they tried anything hostile, they were going to immediately regret it. He hadn’t even deigned to answer their challenge cries, as if they were unworthy of it, and after seeing his speed and size, they probably had an inkling of why. They also couldn’t identify his species, since a super-sized Cobra using Dracoform becomes a fairly unique type of dragon.

            I rather ignored them closing in, my only precaution being throwing up a couple personal defensive spells, and actually bringing out my Cloak and putting it on.

            It wasn’t something I wore much, because I didn’t need to and it largely had one specific purpose. That purpose was flying towards me now, delivering more Heartscales to be added to it.

            I studied the Mana Vortex for a moment, mostly just to appreciate the Formation spun and fixed in place here. There had been some real artistry in the Spellcraft of it, if not great complexity. That was fine, the Stones were doing most of the work, but it was guiding them masterfully.

            I dropped my non-gaze to the great block underneath me. Shaping Stone was my default Dawnstopped Spell, and that hadn’t changed. I basically tied it off and renewed it automatically, didn’t even need to Cast it.

            With the ability to Shape Stone at a V+4 Valence came awareness of that stone to match, a sensitivity to stone and metal that went all the way down to the molecular level, letting me know exact composition, crystalline patterns, layers, flow patterns, alignments, and mixtures of any stone within the area I could work on (about four thousand cubic feet), anywhere within a hundred feet or so.

            I could count the hammer impacts made to forge a sword, instantly see how many times it had been folded, the exact composition of the alloy that went into it, microfractures and molecular impurities. All of that awareness also extended into the Stones below me...

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