“There’s an Elemental Creature in here!” I stated instantly, as my Detects swept through the place, this particular one buffed by Primus. “Dispersed, yet connected… I think we’re dealing with a Hordemind! Look for insectile forms of one kind or another!” I uttered, as promptly my sphere of awareness started pinging a lot of Elemental creatures.
“Yeah, a bit hard to miss,” Kris muttered, stopping cold in ready pose.
Well, she was right about that. The far walls were crawling with the bodies, scores of them. They were roughly lobster-like, except having a weird hexagonal and trilateral symmetry, with three forward claws and nine legs, three waving atop them like weird spinal crests on level surfaces. The shiny red and black carapaces varied in size from four feet long to easily twenty feet long for the biggest one.
“Oh, wow.” Kris was actually smiling as she saw all of them. “It really is a Hordemind…”
“This was one of the fixed spawns at the major Fire Node on Coralost, wasn’t it?” I asked, as the creatures all stilled and slowly rotated their viewing organs our way.
“Yeah, although they were more like fleas there. A nice big hefty Swarm. Why don’t you open up with a Cryoclasm to introduce us?” she smirked.
“That sounds like a good idea.” And as the lobster-things of Elemental flame started scuttling our way in a devouring horde, I tapped Crown on the thousand-degree stone and the Cryoclasm went out.
The x-clasm spells were specifically made for horde creatures and swarms. They don’t do a lot of damage, but they are designed to carry Kickers and apply them over a VERY large area. The area-to-damage ratio of the spell variants of Pyroclasm were very high, designed to wipe out chaff over a very large area and clear the space of nuisances so you could focus on the bigger stuff.
Swarms and hordes, naturally composed of chaff, suffered catastrophically under the spells. I didn’t even have to use a higher Valence, as the damage of the spell stayed fixed, but the area cap went up with Valence. Given the room was impressively large, I still only had to use a III to fill it up from end-to-end.
The first thing it did is utterly lower the air temperature, not that the superheated rock and lava pool wouldn’t rapidly revert that. The second was the wave of cold, 2-12 damage base, with Piercing Cold doing full double damage to fiery creatures and laden with Kickers for additional fun, washed across the Horde coming our way and shattered the chaff instantly.
Every crab-thing smaller than a dinner table was pounded by cold, lightning, and sonic energy, as well as Holy fire and Baneflames, as well as Vivus riding the spell. They were shattered and blown apart promptly, and then the larger ones faltered and were blown apart as silvery residual damage ate away at them for another six seconds, bringing all the Kickers along with it as it did so.
The main result was that well over half the Horde’s exposed bodies died instantly, and that got up to about 75% as the residual damage tore through the rest of them, shattered them, and vivus lit off on the collapsing bodies.
Which left us standing there facing a whole lot less bodies, all of them injured, and me with a whole bunch of Greater Shards raring to go.
So, I let them go.
The Chained Shardrays went scything through all of the creatures left in the chamber, about two dozen of them, and there was no surviving them. They blew apart, shattered to frozen shells, and vivus further devoured them quickly.
“It’s the perfect individual-killing monster, and unfortunately it ran into an army-killing magos,” Kris snarked, not batting an eye at the slaughter and sight of so many shattered frozen firecrab-things.
Master Harlune was staring in shock. “This, this is Matrix Magic’s potential for slaughter?” he asked. He’d been struck by the Cryoclasm, but he was a Good soul and so the magic wouldn’t harm him, and his Cold Protection and Resist Cold would have dealt with it completely, regardless.
“Yes,” Kris responded before I could, “and our Lady Magos and my bondmage is very, very good at abusing the intricacies of it,” she stated without a shred of remorse or regret, stepping further into the room. “You may have noticed that just because she can annihilate large numbers of enemies at one time rather easily, she doesn’t push the fact nor strut around like she owns the world, too. Using magic for violence is a choice of the Caster, and Casters who abuse magic are due the same fate as warriors who abuse their strength and steel.”
“I see.” He was amazed and impressed, although reluctant to express it so. “And I’ve yet to sense any real fear of you by others who know of your capabilities…”
“I’m not one of your fellow Heiromancers, Master Harlune,” I reminded him quietly. “I Cast spells to fight when it’s time to fight, I don’t go searching out things to slaughter to impress people with my capabilities.”
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“I am impressed nonetheless. That spell was a Cryoclasm? It did not seem to be that powerful, but it did the job incredibly well…” he complimented me.
“It is specifically designed for Swarms and Hordes, designed to kill large numbers of weak creatures that think overwhelming one with numbers is enough. I will be teaching it to you as one of the alternate battle spells Matrix Magic uses. It is similar to the standard Fireball, but trades damage for greatly increased area.”
“A most interesting principle.” We both had followed Kris as she strode into the place, air currents swirling as supercooled air re-heated with incredible speed. “Are there more of the creatures?”
“Not in range of my Detects.” I walked up to the edge of the platform, these ones a bit elevated and the lava five feet below, blowing up past me with furnace-hot updrafts. “There might be one hidden below in the lava, and if there’s any Magma Elementals who want to kill the Horde creature, it has almost no bodies left and now is the time.”
There was a pause, and then molten forms of various sizes and shapes started emerging from the magma layers coating the chamber, slipped into the molten lava below us, and went hunting.
“The Hordes aren’t much liked in the Elemental Realms, even the little ones,” Kris informed the amused Harlune, stopping before the first of the last set of pillars. “Shall we?”
“Of course.”
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Our exit from the Dungeon was up through the vent I made, no reason to walk all the way out with an opening right there doing the same thing. The Pyromana in the area was messing with dimensional space, much like the Crater, so it was that we headed up a passage of stairs forming in front of us, and some three hundred steps later emerged outside, rapidly getting out of the way of the gusting heat gushing out of the passageway behind us.
Harlune was giving Kris some further education in Empyrean Runecrafting, and she was working through some alternate casting and assembly methods with him. The control pedestals for the process had been simple yet multifunctional, and with higher craftsmanship everything could definitely be improved… and duplicated!
I would probably be part of that effort, too. I also had four Minor and four Major Blackfire stones that had condensed in the ley line nexus underneath the pedestals. The four Majors seemed a reaction to the initial surge that had blown the mountain, the other four had accumulated in the months since, judging by the energies in them. Scold’s contraption wasn’t really designed to make the Majors… but what could be done by accidents with massive surges of energy could also be done with time and control, so it was a possibility.
“Excellent,” Princess Kristie nodded, snagging the Stones from me. “I’ve got to join my Skeeters at Lethe, so I’m off. See Master Harlune home, and get some plans drawn up to really improve on what Scold started, will you?” she asked me.
I tapped my foot, clicked my heels, and saluted her precisely. “Yes, Your Highness!” I said very properly. “It will be done as you command!”
“See that it is!” she laughed, and then set her hand to Quaver. Wind whiffed across the space she was in, and she was gone.
“That method is so superior to Item Magic Recalls, save some of the powerful Recall gemstones,” Master Harlune sighed.
“Which we’ve yet to rediscover, even the ones tied to the various settlements,” I reminded him, making his face long at the mention of more magical items lost.
“Even merely replicated Portal Ties,” he murmured. “The Mount Lethe Recall should satisfy some of those problems and help us discover specific Recalls, if such can be done.”
“The Mick mentioned that there were specific Recalls to Aerlinthe Island, Banana-Town on Aphus Lassel, the Olthoi Trader near the Paradox Hive, the Gear Knight Staging Area, to the Boneyard, Candeth Keep, Neftet, and even the Rynthid Invasion area, while gems were the only ways to get to the Frozen Cottages, the Society headquarters, and Vissidal Island. It took a magical Orb to access the Whispering Blade headquarters, and there was no independent way to access the Moarsman Island, Xi Ru’s Island, or Freebooter’s. It was all very strange and inconsistent.” I tilted Crown towards him, and he extended a hand to clasp it well above mine.
“Even in Isparian-level Item Magic, it should not have worked that way,” he shook his head. “Of course, gaining access to those specific-site spells was often a mark of great trust in an individual. Most had to make due with Portals to and hence…”
“The Nexus and the New Subway,” I nodded. “Completely ignoring the security implications that putting so many Portals in an unsecured location means… have you made any headway in locating them, or confirming they are destroyed?”
“None whatsoever.”
The Teleportation I used was a burning wind of arcane flames whipping past us, wiping away the world as we shifted along lived-lines, and then falling away to reveal the walls of Mayoi before us.
“Ah, your Resurrection Rituals, of course. I shall catch up with Master Ben Ten while you work.”
“Thank you for your patience, and I know the two of you enjoy catching up.”
“The lack of Portals has made the world much larger once again. Almost amusing, in its own way, given how I tried to sequester my wife and I far from any Portals for security, and we were found so quickly nonetheless.”
“I doubt you were found at all, Master Harlune,” I said as we walked into the city. The skeletons on guard in their restored and polished armor saluted both of us as soon as they caught sight of us. There was no need to say what I was here for. “They either had the exact same idea as you, and stumbled across you, or you were betrayed by someone, or a scout witnessed you heading there and guessed your destination.
“I believe it to be the first, unless you trusted someone with your destination besides Ulgrim. The bandit clans have a good idea of everything moving through the north, but everyone had long abandoned the Olthoi North by then. Of course, if some of the wild tribes saw you heading north, then that information might have found its way into the wrong hands…”
He frowned strongly. “I do not recalling telling anyone where I was going, and only indicated it to Ulgrim in broad terms. He does not remember having any visitors after I departed from him on his island… but that is not absolute, as he was, as you indicated, an NPC for all those years…”
“Horrible status to be left in,” I agreed. “He might have been visited, given out the clue, and simply not remember it.”
“It is irrelevant now. All that remains is to gain revenge and return my wife to me,” Harlune stated firmly. “This Divine magic you practice has great potential towards that end. I will improve my skills rapidly to support you when the time is right.”
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Ebook Series: The original Power of Ten: The First Day, The First Week, and finally The First Month, Vol Five and Six!
