[Be Gone] Ch 27 – Fear Beckons

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“What have you been doing all day up here, Ael?” Korbald asked, taking the Scroll handed to him and looking it over.

            Iron was the IV Valence Tempering spell. It actually didn’t see much use on normal Weapons or Armor, because its main effect was to make stuff as hard and strong as base steel.

            There were four common variants: Ironwood, Ironbone, Ironstone, and Glassteel, along with Ironalloy, the last intended for lesser metals. Irongem was sometimes used to reinforce crystals and gemstones, too, and there were variants for ceramics and pottery, and supposedly plastics somewhere, and even for leathers, grass/twine, bamboo, and leaves, of all things.

            If you wanted to make something as hard as steel, magic had you covered. Making it permanent cost some Karma or goldweight, just like Enchanting an item, but otherwise it lasted for a day a CL. Most of the time it was Cast on something intended to be Permanent.

            “Disturbing anyone?” Aelryinth asked, flexing his fingers once and getting ready for five more hours of not so much fun scribing Adamant for them. +1 Hardness per two Caster Levels was freaking awesome for anything it applied to.

            “No, but there’s like a hundred Casters down at the foot of the hill behind a Sound Bubble Casting spells down there to take advantage of your Singing.” Korbald pulled out a book of his own from his Masspack, and cast a Write himself, making a copy of the spell for his own use. The dark elven acolyte, Shinsai, was given the main Scroll and hurriedly ran off to get it copied by other eager Casters.

            Books had been very, very rare in the Jade Empire before humans arrived, used only by some of the Horse clanners. The elves were hung up on tradition and employed scrolls, regardless of how unwieldy they were, although Cantrips helped make using them much easier.

            “+4 Caster Level bonus from Sublime Chord Heartsong,” Aelryinth waved it off, his thrumming Staff Mortus Dius keeping the wordless Song going with him. “The local Spirits like it, too. Oh, news for you. If you have Elemental Command, you should be able to harmonize with the Spirits enough that you can become a Shugenja primary to that Element.”

            Ael held out his free hand, and gleaming golden crystals gathered above it. They began to swirl about, then lightning sparked between them as misty clouds gathered, and ice formed, alternating with raindrops as a burning point of silver-golden fire ignited in the middle of them.

            Korbald stared at him and the casual use of magic for a long moment, then sat down with a sigh. “You’re disgusting, Ael,” he complained without force.

            Shugenja Magic didn’t require a Matrix, so even without one, Aelryinth could use the native magic he and the other humans were unable to!

            “Imagine how unlucky you would have been if I wasn’t the Ringlord,” Ael replied, letting the display fade with a flicker of his fingers and the laughter of dancing Spirits.

            “Bea can probably take Craft Ring,” Korbald murmured, considering the possibilities. “I imagine she will be even more interested in doing so now!”

            “Saves a lot of money if you leave off the supplemental magical effects. But I’m given to understand that if you want to be a Ringlord, you should make a complete Ring of whatever type your first one is, and Elemental Command is not something for a first Ring,” Ael told him in a serious voice, not to be taken lightly.

            “Sustained, then?” Korbald considered that. “Useful, that?”

            “I’ve participated in the making of over fifteen thousand Rings of Sustenance... although I quickly upgraded them to Oathrings that people could fill with Loyalty Karma. Happily, there are others in the Allegiance who can do that now, and I don’t have to keep bumming off others to get my own Gear made.” Korbald sighed again at those numbers, picturing fifteen thousand Sustained troops, or Powered. Gods in Heaven, what a tireless, grinding hammer to hit something with. “What’s the situation with the demons?”

            “Their scouts and fliers are already gathering across the river. The main forces are marching steadily towards us, about thirty miles out. They’ll be here by morning,” he informed the new arrival.

            “I heard that they are being commanded by an Onisu of Fear or Terror or something, right?” Ael asked in a voice that wasn’t really a question.

            Korbald nodded. “That’s been confirmed. The thing is the equal of a demon lord, incredibly powerful,” he admitted.

            Ael just laughed softly. “Does it actually feed on fear?” he asked pointedly.

            “Yes...” Korbald said softly, watching him. “That Fear Aura is no joke, Ael. I’ve always considered myself pretty brave, but even braced with magic, its Fear Aura is huge and powerful. It can rout armies all by itself.” He’d seen it do just that, driving men mad with terror, ready to kill anything in their way as they fled from the presence of the Onisu.

            “So, you won’t care if I use it to trash its own forces and kill it, right?”

            Korbald stared when he heard the flat declaration, and then rolled his eyes. “Ael, you’re fucking killing me here...”

            “You know Mithar’s Litany of Fear, right?” Ael asked him, still not stopping the artful calligraphy of his spell-scripting. It was very distracting and hard not to watch him at work, just like watching a master artist paint something... only here, there was just that faint trace of magic bound up in the lines and ink, letting you know there was sublime and profound meaning behind every little dot and curve and arc and rune.

            “Well, sure...” It was a classic Mitharn teaching.

            “Those last two lines are pretty damn powerful,” Ael noted pointedly for him.

            Korbald opened his mouth, and closed it as he recited the Litany mentally.

            When death is nigh and the end is near,

            Where terrors walk and the dread appear,

            I wield your doom! Shed a golden tear,

            Feel my power, know the dark of fear!

            A thousand horrors, a million screams,

            Master your fears, and CLAIM... YOUR... DREAMS!

            The last part was the one that was always emphasized, for it shot down the whole of what came before it, rendering it nothing but a test of will and courage.

            Fear... was nothing but empty words!

            Korbald found himself smiling ferociously as he considered that. “Okay,” he breathed out. “You’re saying that the Onisu of Fear is actually the dumbest thing the demons could have sent out...”

            “They should have used Pride or Greed or Wrath or something. Fear, now...” Ael just laughed softly, as if at a private joke. “Fear is very, very dangerous if you don’t have courage.”

            And demons aren’t known for their courage, Korbald thought, stunned by the thought. “What... what do you want us to do?” he gasped, feeling his excitement rising once again.

            What the fuck had Earth, no, Terra-Luna gone through these past fifty... no, merely one decade, to make this kind of a monster?!

            Why was he even asking? He’d devoured those books Ael had made, basically a biography and record of his life and the things he’d done since the Fall. It had all been written so basically and strongly, it was like he had missed something in the reading, as if it was all just some overgrown power fiction.

            “I want you to be ready to pursue a fleeing army, and to butcher them all.”

            Korbald’s hands creaked as he closed them in fists. Aelryinth could have been talking about the weather. This went beyond absolute confidence, like it was already done and the oni couldn’t do a damn thing about it...

            “When you read my books, did you happen to have Bibliophage up?” Aelryinth asked him, still at work, still Humming subvocally, undistracted by the conversation.

            The Sage of Focus...

            “You know we don’t have the spell,” he replied, an odd feeling in his gut.

            Ael nodded slowly. “And if you did, it would only be the Cantrip version, which is only good for normal books.

            “I’ll get a copy of it written up before tomorrow. You might want to re-read my books with the spell up afterwards.”

            Bibliophage let you ‘read’ a normal book just by handling it, basically tapping into everyone else who had read it and their internal visualizations to let you know what was in there. It didn’t give you precise words, but the characters might come to a sort of communal life, written words would be spoken and visualized...

            Wait, this was a magical book written by a Magos, not a copy. The images I’d get would be the author’s own...

            Those would be memories taken directly from those times and moments. Ael had just said that a Cantrip version wouldn’t do the job.

            How much would the story change if words and story truly combined into experienced history? It could be just like being there...

            “The river is changing color,” he said quietly.

            Ael nodded slowly. “Permanency is also on tomorrow’s list.”

            Korbald also nodded at that. The spell was another Downtime spell. You didn’t prepare it for combat, which was why nobody had had it in memory at the Fall. It was expensive, but faster than making magic items, and had some incredible uses if you were prepped for them.

            Ael had Cast a Wall of Fire through his Elemental Command Ring, and used his 1/day Recall to grab a Permanency and apply it, burning through a 5k goldweight masterwork statue of jade he’d Energized to Water to empower it. Everyone had watched the masterpiece fall to sparkling dust, and then that Wall of Fire spring up.

            Sudden Widened, it had been damn near a thousand feet long. Instead of fire, it was basically empowered Holy Water, shining and shimmering with vivic mistflame, Banefire, Holy power, fire, lightning, and even Force energies from Ael’s Staff.

            A team had ridden ten miles upriver, and planted it down in the middle of the River Corpus.

            That whole section of the river had begun to bubble and boil and turn crystalline pure and deadly white. Dark things had burned and fled beyond the reach of it, the inexorable flow pushing the advancing vivus going upstream back as it tried to advance, not getting beyond fifty paces from the Wall itself, which was now buried down there in the river’s depths.

            But the clear water had headed downstream, burning and spreading at the edges, just barely outpacing the flow as the vivus within went looking for Taint to Burn, and found it everywhere, seeped deep into the stones and bed and shore and mud and muck, along with the creatures dwelling within them.

            Ten miles downflow, the blackened water being fed by streams and creeks and smaller rivers was lightening up, and the creatures within the river were fleeing downstream, chased by the burning purity of the waters.

            “Will they clear up the waters in front of the battlefield?” he had to ask. He still wondered why the Wall had not been planted in front of the keep, although the demons would have made great efforts to get rid of it.

            “Not quite, although they’ll help a little.” A Holo came up, a map of the keep and the lands about, and the black line of the river was clear on it, with a bright golden line a half-klik down from the fortress. “But when you put another one down here, the vivus will happily ignite and reach all the way back to the first one.”

            Killing everything in between, was the unwritten addendum.

            “It’ll be even more fun, because the next one is going to be Ice.”

            Korbald considered the image of a great underwater Wall of Icefire, freezing the water solid, the resulting vivic ice being pushed along and to the surface by the flow, while the vivic fire itself would still advance along the diluted lines forward.

            But downstream, for hundreds of miles, purified vivic ice was going to be floating and melting, spreading havoc in the River Corpus as it did so...

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