084, 2/2

Erick sat on his couch in the sunroom, while the night sky twinkled outside, and the moons painted his dark garden in white, pink, and silver lights. He set down the small green book he had been reading; ‘The Foreigner Mage’. The book had been a farewell gift from Hocnihai, and he had read it before, but in light of recent events, the words in that small book had painted a more complete picture of Wasteland culture.

It wasn’t a kind depiction, but it had gone into detail about the dangerous people to stay away from in the Wasteland; the answer was ‘everyone in a position of authority everywhere, but especially those of the Magisterium’. There was more to it than that, but when Erick read a caveat, snuck in after all the horrors of the previous sections about blood magic and curses and the various ways there were to take down a mage, that caveat said that if you were an invited mage of the Magisterium, then all you really had to worry about was getting screwed over in a business deal. If that happened, then all the other warnings applied.

What the green book said was more or less what Erick had already heard.

Paired with Silverite’s words, Erick felt a lot better about dealing with the Wasteland, and about dealing with Zago. He smiled into a cup of coftea, glad that the people around him were basically good people in bad situations, as he thought about his wants and his goals.

Obviously, he wanted the Shades dead. That was the long term goal. If this Candlepoint business went the way everyone thought it was going to go, then the Shades would get pushed back to Ar’Kendrithyst, and that would be that.

But that wasn’t good enough for Erick.

Maybe he could get the Wasteland to work for a more permanent solution?

Silverite had been wrong about one thing: Erick was not some uneducated non-political person. He just had a point of view that was wildly different than everyone else’s, and he had yet to fully absorb all the new ideas in all the various new cultures and lands and people all around him. But he was learning!

If people expected him to be a bit of a kook, then he could work that—

Poi spoke from the side of the room. “Sir. Sorry to interrupt. Kal’Duresh is finished. Frontier wishes to host you while you work on them, next. Guildmaster Zago wants to know when you’ll be ready to go to the Magisterium.”

“I’m sorry I snapped earlier at you, Poi. I know you’re under some stress from being a Mind Mage, but I didn’t know how bad it actually was.”

Poi startled, his eyes going wide as his poise broke. He quickly found himself, and stood straight to say, “Thank you, but there is no need to apologize. We’re all under some uncommon stress, at the moment.”

“Even so: sorry.” Erick continued, “To answer the other concerns: I will not be [Withering] Frontier in person. Please inform them that too many things are happening all at once, and I… I’m busy? That’s sort of the truth.” He added, “But the truth is, is that I just found out that Frontier tried to kill Sirocco years ago, and that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not going to the Magisterium, either. Please inform Sirocco that Ophiel will journey with her, when she is ready to depart.”

Poi said, “As you wish.” After a moment, Poi said, “Zago will be ready in five minutes. She will depart from the war room.” After another moment, he said, “Frontier accepts. They have already readied their city. You may send Ophiel whenever.”

Erick briefly reached out to the Ophiel over Kal’Duresh. With a command, of the six of them on site, four blipped over to Frontier; from the white, pearly mountain, far from the Shades, to a stone castle town, south of Ar’Kendrithyst, where every building had walls thick enough to stop a vast majority of destructive magics. Erick’s [Familiar]s began dropping minor oceans of thick air on the thick town. Notifications began to rain.

He sent the other two Ophiel blipping toward the Wall. Erick conjured the remaining four Ophiel, bringing his squad up to the full 10. They hung out in the sunroom for now, whistling to each other, excited to see new sights.

When Sirroco introduced Erick to the Magisterium, through Ophiel, he would send these over.

But while he waited for her to get ready, he asked Poi, “What’s with the Puppet Masters? I’ve read about them, but never killed any. I thought the Mind Mages took care of that?”

Poi frowned. He said, “I’ve already informed my people. I can’t… I can’t really tell you much, except that the problem is being solved as we speak.”

At that, Erick had a thought. Hours ago, he had seen an image of the faux Adventurer’s Guildhouse in Candlepoint. That image, along with many others taken from different parts of the shadeling town, were all on viewing screens he had seen before, in the war room. That experience, taken with the location map of Candlepoint he had also seen in the war room, was enough for a [Scry] to accurately land where he wanted.

[Scry].

Erick’s sight landed in a large, bright room, with white stone walls, and pillars, and nice wooden furniture. It looked like the foyer of an expensive hotel. People were there, but almost all of them were shadelings; behind the sign-up counter, or manning the rad turn-in area, or standing beside the Quest Board. Erick could tell they were shadelings mainly by their dark eyes. The other people in the room were incani, and humans, and orcols, and dragonkin. No wrought, though. The people talked with the shadelings; some of those people were guarded, with hands itching to fight, some were pleasant, maybe putting on a brave face, or maybe not.

Erick had [Scry]ed into the main lobby of Candlepoint’s Adventurer’s Guildhouse.

He half-expected the shadelings to turn and stare at the [Scry] eye, but none of them did. There were lots of [Scry] eyes all around Erick, anyway, so what was one more added to the cloud of eyes hovering above everyone?

They were all looking at more or less the same thing, too. The Quest Board. More than a few people down below were staring at the board, too. It was dense with writing, listing every single monster Erick had ever encountered, and a hundred more besides, on little stone bricks that could be moved around as needed. The bricks were organized by reward cost first, and alphabetically second, with the larger rewards at the top of the board. As Erick watched, and read, a shadeling to the side of the board moved a few bricks around, and added more.

There were no shadowolves or slimes on this list. It was filled with the names of every single major monster Erick had ever killed, and many, many more besides that. Wyrms; 1 chip. Umbral Leviathans, 2 chips. Those balloon-like Blood Cloud monsters he had Withered out of the sky that one time; 1 chip per twenty. The Devil Dog that Erick had to kill for Mog while he was at Oceanside; 3 chips. Puppet Masters and Minds were worth 4 chips and 2 chips, respectively. Unicorn was there, but no Ancient Unicorn, like the one Jane had killed. There were more than a few other ‘Ancients’ on the list, though. Ancient Stone Elemental. Ancient Rivergrieve, whatever that was. 5 chips. Toxic Hydras— Oh. There was the Desert Rose that never appeared like everyone thought it would. Maybe it was active right now? And it was worth 3 darkchips?

An archmage level threat was only worth three darkchips? Eh. Erick didn’t know about these numbers…

Whatever the case, Ramizi might like to know that his Rose was out there—

There it was. Converter Angel. 10 chips. Near the top of the board, between Ancient Rivergrieve, and Ballooning Spider Horde.

Erick came back to himself, sitting in the sunroom, shivering at the thought of a ballooning spider horde. And then his thoughts turned to the angel. He glanced at the night, outside the window. Maybe the angel really was out there? Maybe it was already mutating souls into nascent angels; into soldiers for Celes, and the Celestial Host? That’s what Converter Angels did, if he recalled correctly.

Poi said, “Guildmaster Zago is ready.”

Erick nodded. He sent an Ophiel blipping to the war room.

Sirocco immediately locked eyes on Ophiel, then softened to a controlled smile. She stood near the longtable, wearing immaculate, deeply purple mage robes hemmed in silver flourishes. Blue gems adorned her horns and her hands. Most of those gems had to be for show, because they were set in silver and cut to reflect brilliance, while two plain iron and silver sphere rings adorned her hands, and Erick’s rings did not play well with other enchantments.

Erick spoke through Ophiel, “I can make you better rings than whatever you have there. You might need them, going forward.”

Sirocco softened into a real smile for a split moment, her eyes joining in the emotion, briefly. Then she switched to all business. “I accept. But not right now. We are expected.”

Poi’s voice came to him, ‘Viscount Helix is demanding your attention.’

“Apologies, Sirocco. One second.” Erick then sent to Poi, ‘Patch him in.’

As Sirocco nodded, slightly perturbed, Poi did as requested. Erick quickly felt another presence enter his thoughts.

‘Archmage Flatt! We have prepared a small get together for you. Would you reconsider your absence? Could you come in person?’

‘Apologies, Viscount.’ Erick sent, ‘We are in a minor war already, and I cannot spare the time right now. I will take you up on that offer some other day. Please let Poi know when you want Ophiel to stop his spells.’

‘…Very well. I look forward to hosting you another day.’ The Viscount’s voice felt tainted with barely-there acid, as he sent, ‘Do be careful over there in the Wasteland. They’re slavers to their own kin, you know. They’d do the same to you, if you give them half the chance.’

‘I am well aware of the dangers. Thank you for looking out for me.’ He cut the connection, and returned his attention to Sirroco, speaking through Ophiel, “I’m ready. I have a fun spell that I’ve been itching to try, too.”

“I look forward to seeing it.” Sirocco gestured to an open space on the floor of the war room. A violet disk of light sprang into being. Ophiel followed her onto the disk, Erick keeping his form to a mere two meter height, but with thin wings; he was not much larger than a person. She asked, “Ready?”

“Ready.”

The world blipped violet once, and stars filled the sky. Another blip, and the night sky was gone.

A cathedral of silver and stone soared in all directions, with carved metal pillars, surrounding hollow glass cores, holding up the dazzling mosaics above. Silver fire flickered in long ribbons of light inside those glass pillars. There were no true shadows in this place of metal and magnificence.

Three people stood in the otherwise-empty room, maybe five meters from Sirocco’s landing spot.

Two of the people looked like guards, but really expensive and competent guards. They wore robes similar to Sirocco’s, but maybe a little less ornate, and with gold flourishes on the purple cloth, instead of silver. But the guy in the center wore robes made of purple and gold, in a fifty-fifty ratio, filled with stars and serpents, fire and air, magic and more; the center guy’s robes were a work of art. He was a man of average height and maybe a bit skinny, with a drawn face and thin horns. As he saw Ophiel, whatever kindness might have been on his face, vanished.

Sirocco stepped forward, off the platform, saying, “Magister Iordex. Good of you to meet us.”

“If you would call it as such!” Iordex said, building up steam. “I should have just sent my [Familiar], too… No.” He dispelled whatever anger washed over him, composing his stance and his words, to say, “No matter. We have work to do.”

Erick spoke through Ophiel, saying, “I’m here to help. This infestation needs to get gone, so we can focus on the more important problems.”

Iordex gave a dismissive nod, saying, “I agree.” He said, “Now display for me the spell you will be using, and give me a brief overview of how it works.”

If Iordex wanted to play that sort of game, Erick could, too.

He put a bit of disappointment in his voice, and said, “You don’t know what it says? What it does?” Erick added, “That seems in poor taste. Besides: I’ll be using a great many spells to do what needs to be done. It’s almost like you don’t trust me.” Erick certainly didn’t trust Iordex right now; that’s why he was there in Ophiel, instead of in person. To hopefully illustrate that point, Erick fluffed out Ophiel’s wings a little. He continued, “But if you’re just asking for information, that will cost you.”

Iordex’s stance solidified; he totally understood what Erick meant by fluffing out Ophiel’s wings. He narrowed his eyes, as he asked, “How much?”

“Unspecified favors to be returned at a later date.” Erick added, “In addition to the balance of debt you already owe, due to my open and honest lecture on Particle Magic with Archmage Hocnihai.” He continued, “In addition to the rads of the mimics I kill tonight.”

Iordex said, “We will not take on more ‘unspecified favors’, therefore we do not require the spell knowledge; use whatever magic you deem necessary. And if you want to collect all those rads, go ahead. When we take to the field to make sure that you got all of them, then we will collect what remains for ourselves.”

“Then you can do that, and send me half.” Erick said, “That will be the payment I require for tonight’s service. Outside of this agreement, I will leave up a [Cascade Imaging] for you, in the center of the infestation, tracked onto any mimics, so that you may easily collect the ones I miss.”

Iordex seemed to wrestle with that idea for a moment, but it was entirely possible that it was all a show, and he was ecstatic that Erick had bargained for that little. There was a risk in leaving [Cascade Imaging] up in the middle of not-friendly territory, but Erick had already displayed the spell way more than that when he was imaging the whole of the Crystal Forest for hunters, and for the Hand, and for Caradogh. The Magisterium had probably already gotten a great big eyeful of that particular spell.

… But this time they would know what Erick was searching for, and they could test various [Ward]s to see what blocked it?

… Maybe he had made a mistake, but the words had already been said.

Iordex said, “Agreed.”

Let the chips fall where they may. Erick asked, “Where is the center of the infestation?”

Iordex swept a hand through the air, conjuring a map, alongside a compass rose. The map was even labeled. The Wall was a line on the west, stretching a thousand kilometers from mountains to the ocean, and dotted with settlements and cities. Aside from the Wall, the only other large structure on the map was a river, labeled on the map as ‘The Grace’, just under a thousand kilometers from the Wall. Erick had read about that river. The Grace was like the Mississippi; it was the lifeblood for the Kingdoms, a waterway that connected every city to each other, that provided a mostly-safe road through the great forests and toxic swamps and poison bogs that composed the majority of the Wasteland.

Erick briefly looked over the rest of the map, before focusing on a red rash-like structure next to the Wall. The red blemish was spread out over maybe five hundred kilometers. It had already surrounded a few settlements, too.

Oh. This was much worse than Erick thought. How had it gotten this bad?

So Erick asked, “How did it get this bad? How long has it been?”

Iordex sighed out, “Three days. Three very long days.” He said, “Mimics go crazy when they see green life. When they’ve been exposed to greenery for as long as they have been… it gets worse. Everything about them multiples. Their levels go up, sometimes double. They double in size. You get red ones every thousand mimics, instead of every ten thousand.” He gestured to the settlement deepest in the red, saying, “This town is gone. It was to be the centerpoint of a spearhead against the plague, but the mimics crashed through the walls.”

“They can do that? Get larger and break walls, I mean?”

“Not normally.”

“But surely, if it was your spearhead… then how were your powerful, hopefully flying mages, able to be killed by grounded monsters?”

Iordex frowned at the map. He remained silent.

Erick guessed, “Either you’re not sure, which is bad, or you do know, and you can’t say for fear of… something?”

Iordex asked, “Do you need assistance to get to the center of the infestation?”

He wasn’t going to answer that question, was he? No matter; Erick wasn’t on-site, anyway.

“No. I guess not.” Erick said, “One more question: How about putting up another wall; some small thing that would stop the mimics for now? Maybe twenty meters high? A double-sized mimic is still only fifteen meters tall, at the most, right? Does that not work, either?”

Iordex frowned. “I cannot answer that question, because I don’t know. That was the original tactic. It failed. Somehow.” He added, “We’re still trying to understand how it failed.” He continued, “We have records of this sort of mimic infestation occurring before, during the Fracturing Wars, but those records have not prepared us for the current crisis. Suffice it to say, that they were not able to stop them back then, but the Grace is twenty kilometers wide at its thinnest; that was enough to halt their advance. Hopefully, we don’t have to rely on that final fallback; it would mean a million homeless, if they could even get away before the mimics came.”

“I’ll head over there now.” Erick added, “But you need to make sure that there are no people in those lands. I’m going to be using a semi-sentient wave of [Withering] in addition to the Domain, and that one will travel erratically until it runs out of duration. If any people in the area of effect have intestinal rads, then they will be targeted by the spell.”

“We will not hold you responsible for such an event.”

“It’s not about being responsible!” Erick suddenly felt a chill. “I don’t want it to happen!”

“Your concern is admirable, but misplaced.” Iordex said, “These monsters have already killed thousands and will kill even more. Now please, dispense with these words and help.”

“… Okay.”

Iordex said nothing more, and Sirocco hadn’t said a single word during the whole exchange, so Erick blipped away; to work.

Somewhere in all of that, Erick wondered when he had started to mentally refer to Zago by her first name of ‘Sirocco’.

… It was before that meeting, after speaking to Silverite, somewhere in reading ‘The Foreigner Mage’. Sirocco had split loyalties, and that was fine. She was who she had to be in order to survive.

Erick would act the same.

And right now, the needs of everyone in this room were in accordance. Erick needed the Wasteland Kingdom to not have this great tragedy tear them apart. They needed to be whole, not only for their own sake, but for the good of the world. The Kingdoms would likely play a great part in the coming conflict with Ar’Kendrithyst and Candlepoint.

Erick briefly came back to himself, back in Spur, in the sunroom. The four-pointed Silver Star of Koyabez, pinned to his shirt, had felt weird. He looked down at his now. It was flickering tiny fragments of divine fire into the air. For the briefest of moments, Erick was worried, but then he relaxed. The pin felt good, somehow, like a warmth that was not a warmth, but more a feeling of contentment made into an etheric manifestation. He wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but it seemed good.

 

– – – –

 

The Longshadow bog, according to Iordex’s map, was supposed to be right under Ophiel. It was supposed to be a place of tall trees and heavy moss and deceptively deep waters, where only the foolish sought to tread, and a wrong step would send you plummeting down into waiting schools of sharptooth, or to drown as the land closed up above you.

What it was right now, under the light of the moons and a few wide-angle spotlights Erick had trained on particularly active looking sections of land, and as far as he could see in every moonlit direction, was a land of mimics that were methodically, and crazily, ripping apart every tree, pulling up all the green moss that made the water look solid to walk upon, and devouring everything in sight. Fish went into crystal gullets. Branches went into crystal gullets. Particularly mossy rocks went into crystal gullets. Tree trunks and entire root systems, yanked from the ground in cooperative efforts, got devoured by schools of swarming, glittering crystal mimics.

As Erick watched, two fifteen meter tall ruby mimics crunched into the throng below, to attack a thirty meter tall, five-meter wide cypress-looking tree that the rest were unable to crunch. The reds, with crystalline spike arms, began gouging huge rents in the dense wood. It sounded like metal striking metal. It took the reds thirty seconds to tear down the tree. When they were done, they ate little of their kill; they moved on to the next major target and left the tree to their smaller brethren. Those smaller brethren gnawed on the dense wood like lions trying to eat an elephant.

… I hope Domain actually works against the larger ones.

This was the leading edge of the swarm. It stretched out all around the entire infestation, as a 20 kilometer thick band of way too many mimics. Further west, the bog was still intact, and animals were running and swimming away, trying to outpace the horde. To the east, where the mimics had been, there were still some stragglers, cleaning up the smaller bits of greenery that the frontline had forgotten. Erick had hoped that he would only need to really worry about killing the front line, but those stragglers were still such in number that they were five times as dense as the mimics surrounding Spur. Maybe more.

But what was most disturbing, was that every single mimic seemed to have an active part to play in ensuring the success of their attack. Blue and grey goo seeped from between their crystalline spike arms, forming smaller copies of themselves, that then went on to eat the green right alongside their parents.

This was an ecological disaster unlike any Erick had ever really understood. This was a never ending tide. This was the true form of the Crystal Plague.

… Time to work.

Five more Ophiel blipped in. Soon, all six Ophiel on scene were each riding their own [Teleporting Platform] imbued with a mostly full-strength [Prismatic Ward]. While Frontier was still taking their time clearing out their problems, Erick began organizing the Ophiel here in the Wasteland.

He had already done the math. Each Ophiel’s version of [Domain of the Withering Slime] only covered a single cubic kilometer of space, but flying over the land at twenty five meter height, and the fact that the spell only filled a 10 meter layer of land with itself, meant that a single cubic kilometer covered just under 100 square kilometers of land, and with no shaping, it wouldn’t move much past a circle centered on the casting Ophiel.

100 square kilometers might have sounded like a lot, but that distance would get taken up rather quickly by dips and hills and caves and monsters taller than ten meters and a whole slew of nuances in the lay of the land. Spur was roughly 12 kilometers in diameter, which was an area of about 120 square kilometers, but that didn’t take into account the heights and depths involved. If Erick were the one supplying multiple Domains to this land, his own modifiers would make math unnecessary, but this was Ophiel casting the spell, and therefore a plan was needed.

The roughly 500 kilometer by 400 kilometer space currently overrun by mimics translated into over 200,000 square kilometers of land, with great attention given to the leading edge, but no less than normal efforts necessary for the rest of the infestation. The leading edge was roughly 20 kilometers wide…

Erick put the math away for now. He knew what he had to do. He set his Ophiel five kilometers away from each other, well within the tolerances for the overlap of the spell, and 25 meters off of the ground, or close enough to there to not make much of a difference. He then stretched two lines of three Ophiel perpendicular to the leading edge, setting the one over the leading edge, in front of the leading edge. That would ensure that any mimics running ahead of the horde couldn’t get far.

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After each Ophiel regenerated a little bit of mana, in the Restful air of their [Prismatic Ward]s, it was time.

At once, while the moons lit the sky and mimics ripped the land apart, each Ophiel became a tiny Saturn. Thick, killing air, spilled out into the night.

Mimics dried and died. Some instantly. Some taking longer than normal. Smaller red ones screamed and ran, while everyone died around them, but there was nowhere to run. They died, screaming, chittering, calling out into the night. It was a horrible sound, accented by the woosh of [Cleanse]s bursting out of the horde, disturbing the tsunami air that wrapped around them all.

The larger red ones just tanked the spell.

Erick had no idea how they did it. They just stood very still, and did nothing, while thick air tore at them, ripping out red water from their crystalline hides. But they didn’t seem to die. Or maybe it just took a while? Erick waited, not moving the Ophiel.

A minute passed. Too long. There were too many of these monsters, too much land to cover, to wait this long. Erick briefly lowered the nearest Ophiel into range of the nearest target, and cast, himself.

[Electrolysis Bomb].

As that Ophiel quickly retreated back to the sky, the large red mimic screamed out horrors as blood turned to protected air, and electricity flashed across fake crystal. After forty seconds, the second part of that spell triggered.

Hydrogen combined with oxygen in a conflagration that ignited the night briefly into day, and seemed to fill the world with noise. The nearest Ophiel’s [Prismatic Ward] cracked, and so did the [Teleporting Platform] under him, but neither broke; he was a hundred meters away by the time the spell triggered.

There was no smoke from the explosion. As soon as the fire passed, the area that had held the red monster was visible. The monster would have been visible, too, if it had survived. It did not survive. Red, tree-sized limbs, were broken and bleeding and scattered in every direction. The horde of bodies around the large red mimic was gone. A crater a meter deep quickly began to fill in with water from every side.

Erick briefly came back to himself to see the notification. He found it amid the rest, fast enough.

 

 

“What level was that!” Erick checked his Status. “I almost leveled from one kill.”