NOVEL NEXT AF Chapter 40 – Running South
It hadn’t quite reached dawn when we came upon the shattered tower in the blast crater a few miles south of town along the shore.
It wasn’t immediately discernible as a blast crater, because sections of it had washed out and flooded, creating a lagoon about the thing. But Kris confirmed that there was blast damage underfoot, it had taken out a good chunk of the beachfront and made a little inlet, showcasing an incredible explosive force.
The tower looked like a great carved ox horn or long cone, all black and red and in sections that had fallen apart when it smashed into the ground, most of it still sticking above the waves. There was visible blast damage on it, but not enough to really damage it. Most of the damage seemed to have been conduits of magical power burning out.
Kris looked at me, I looked at her, and she pointed at me. “It was flying, right?” I asked helplessly.
“Yes. Upside-down horn. There’re no foundations or anything nearby from it falling over, and it hit the ground point-first, then fell sideways.” There were fell energies radiating from the thing, things woven of darkness and blood magic. “Your expertise. The shades?” she asked calmly.
“99%. If not, something so closely allied with them, or of the same power but opposed.” I eyed the water below us she was standing on. “No muck or algae or anything in the water. Nothing wants to grow here.”
“I can believe it. Anything valuable?”
“There’s... crystals built into the structure that channel magical energy, they are pinging me. But we’d have to reduce the stone down, and that stone has massive Shadow, Earth, and Air biases of its own.”
“Vivus?” she asked, and I considered that, and so fired off a couple Darts at it.
The impacts sent Holy Banefire flames laded with vivus swirling over the side of it. A blot of whiteness crawled across the blackness of the stones for a moment, licking at it and finding stuff to enjoy, before the mists fell away and it petered out.
“If I could get inside the stone to the conduits, where the residual energies remain, I could probably grind it down with a lot of work. Can Quaver carve it?”
She drew and cut in an eyeblink. Black stone protested with a squeal that sounded more organic than lithic, a long, narrow slice appearing in the surface of the thing, vivus skirling over it and painting it white in seconds, and then the unwhite flames petered out as well.
She put her other hand on the hilt, and cut back, shimmering resonances of force around the Blade this time, and the squeal of protest was much louder and deeper this time as she completed the stroke.
“Hardness of 30,” she judged calmly, Quaver spinning and shrinking and sheathed behind her as the vivus on the newer cut lasted about a minute longer before petering out. “Breaking, Sundering, and Bane to Constructs, and that’s all I did.” She smiled winsomely at it. “Good punching bag!” She actually gave it a pat, and I was pretty sure that she intended to come back here and reduce the thing to crushed junk through sheer bull-headed determination.
I scanned the sides, and pointed silently. She glanced that way, and glided down towards the spike-like tip of the thing, towing me on my Disk after her, and with me the other Disks with our haul of Air Gold coins heaped up on them.
Something had tried clawing at the outside of the spike, hundreds of parallel claw marks crisscrossing it back and forth in narrow, frenzied cuts and slices. They didn’t appear to have done much real damage. Kris reached out to put a hand on the rounded surfaces.
“They’re fixing themselves, aren’t they?” I asked, and she nodded.
“It would be a lot faster if there was active energy pumping through the system, but it’s just leeched, passive effects here, very slow. The cuts I made won’t heal, as the vivus Burned at the residues, but these eventually will.” She stepped back to look at the thing again.
“So, with enough power, these things could actually be fixed up, reassembled, and this tower could fly again.” I eyed it with distaste.
“As good a reason as any to make sure it never does that,” she agreed.
“Nine will get you ten that if we camped it, I’d bet there’s regular pilgrimages of shades who come by it, treating it as a shrine.”
“No bets. You want to camp out inside? There are like NO tracks of drudges anywhere near this, and I bet you want to examine the internal power structures as much as I want to inspect the physical side.”
“I wouldn’t want to sleep here, but that’s fine.” The psychic residue of the blood and souls that had powered up this thing naturally still lingered in the stone. “Give me a design, and I’ll carve out a Teleport Focus for you. You can use the henge back at our entry point, but this would be a good self-empowering Focus, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, that’s a very good idea,” I agreed promptly. The lived-lining around was very necessary to expand my guaranteed Teleport range.
We weren’t that far from the city, maybe four or five miles, but there was no sign of what direction we’d left in, anyway. I heavily doubted that after losing three-quarters of their population in one night they were going to have any incentives to go out and patrol the area, opening themselves up to more Rantha shenanigans.
The Salute to Aru and a new day was coming. Let’s see if they enjoyed the taste of the blood on it.
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Karma to Zeks. Karma to Mark. Karma to Crown. Hit them Isparian buttons. Pick a Class, a Feat, a Mastery, pay for a Soak, a Health point towards maximum.
Sorcerer/4. Set Primary Class to Sorcerer! More Spell Slots! More Spells Known! Favored Class bonuses of Extra Spell Known and +1 Soak! +1 to Intellect, mirrored by Sustained Effort to +1 Dex as well! More bonus Slots and Spell Engrams for Wizard!
Chosen Feat was Legendary Artisan, -25% time needed to Infuse, down to six hours from eight, giving me more time to do rep counts. Opened up the Artificing Artisan Mastery tree.
Chosen Mastery was Elemental Mastery/1: Fire.
Something rumbled dangerously inside me... on the Isparian side of the Equation, as suddenly the ability to change any Elemental damage default spell to Fire had some impressive connotations, establishing a link between ALL my Elemental damage on all my spells.
This was important because there were plenty of per-die and fixed-effect damage boosts by both spell dice and spell level... and although it looked like fixed damage ranges, the Isparian War Magic actually had both, not just spell level.
Level 1 Isparian War Magic was 15-30... which in Matrix terms was 5-20 +10. Level 2 was 25 to 50, which was 5-30+20 or so. 3’s were 40-80, or 8-48+32. 4’s were 50-100, or 10-60+40 or so.
By simply applying the spell as accumulated blots of damage, instead of one big swingy load of it, I made the swingy damage much more predictable, AND opened it up for per-dice boosters.
By applying the Cold Descriptor to the spells, done free with Snowcasting, the magic drew on the chill, pure power of Cold and gained +2 per die from me, even if the damage type didn’t change. By applying the Good Descriptor via Sacred Spell, and Good Spell Focus thereby, Power in the Blood activated off the Spell Focus, and I gained another +1 per die.
A +15 to +30 damage boost wasn’t small, and much better than the +2 to +8 from a +Spell Level effect. The same per-die damage was also boosting all my Shards, too, of course, but unlike most Isparian magic, I could apply multiple Elements to my Shards.
I had a lot more Masteries I needed to take. Born of Two Thunders would allow me to add the Lightning and Thunder Descriptors to any spell... including Isparian spells, once I took Lightning Elemental Mastery. Then Lightning damage boosters would also apply to everything.
Stacking Metas, so much to do!... But tomorrow was going to be big, as I was going to bite the bullet and take Sorcerer/5, grab my Exemplar Surge, and start grabbing Wizardry spells of all kinds and types for emergencies.
After that, it was Mystic Theurge Levels, so I could copy Divine Spells to my Ring, pull them for emergencies, and use them in my Primary Matrix, instead of my Wisdom bonus Slots only.
And then... Archwizardry and Archsorcery, doubling up Spell Slots and Spell Engrams for fun and profit!
So, my next week was all planned out, leaving me ever further behind on potential Masteries to take.
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We both Infused and Invested in what we needed to. Kris opened up her Foot Tats, I worked on the Amulet for her, Air Gold coins Burning away as the power within them was sucked away to lock in the magic for her. Only having to do three types was good, and furthermore restricting them to the magically-powered end of things would also help. She should be able to handle the physical combat side of things, and the magic didn’t want to bind into the Amulet with purely physical sources that way. I gathered that was something for Damage Reduction and Energy Resistance to take care of.
With my new Artificing Feat, I got done before she did, and used the opportunity to do my two hours of dozing while she worked, which she swapped off with me once she finished up her Tats initializing.
I then did rep counts until she woke up, noted to her I needed almost an hour more practice before Force Reserve could come online. Then I could start on Wierding Energize down from +II to +I on my I Valences, at the same rate of speed.
Right now I had natural Mana Renewal at a point a minute. In Aurora Stance, my +21 juiced that to 3 a minute. Silver Mana Renewal working increased that to 9 a minute, +50% per Valence. Cantrip-conversion was .5 a cycle, or 1 per twelve seconds, or 5 a minute.
14 mana a minute wasn’t anywhere near as good as standing in that henge, but it did allow me to shoot 14 II’s off of pure Force Magic, replace them for 20 mana each, and then get all that mana back in twenty minutes. So, I was getting roughly 40 II’s an hour in rep counts, and I needed 200 Valences thereof to activate Force Reserve.
Force Reserve I would be my Feat for the morning. There were three Force Reserve Feats: one created an endlessly usable Force Dart, doing a d6 in damage/highest Valence of Force Magic held in memory, essentially a more powerful Cantrip with greater range. The second version of the Feat basically popped up a Force Disk for ten minutes at a time, without the full utility of the spell version, only an increasing weight limit and always staying close. It was a convenient way of bringing one up on demand and not having one hanging around all the time.
The third version was basically forming a supplemental force blade around whatever weapon I used for additional damage = 1+1 per Valence, an alternative method of changing the damage type between Bludgeon, Pierce, or Slashing if you didn't have the Feats to do the same.
None of the Metas or Kickers applied to a Reserve Force Dart, only Implement boosts or passives, like Argent Savant Mastery giving +1/die of damage to all Force effects. Even Shardcasting bonuses didn’t apply, as there was no Casting. The effect was more akin to a monster’s Spell-Like Ability than anything else.
What it was to me was a doubling of my Matrix Conversion rate, as each Force Dart was more powerful than a Cantrip, technically equal to a minimal powered Valence I in terms of efficacy. So, it should immediately jump my Conversion from .5 a cycle to 1, which meant 5/minute would become 10/minute in extra mana.
19 a minute was 0 to a full Mana Pool in only fifteen minutes. That was pretty important, given how many rep counts I had ahead of me.
I also wanted to be able to apply my Metas to the Isparian side of the equation, using the same exact principles as the Matrix side. However, the War Magic on the Isparian side was basically one spell, Elemental Bolt, which was then Sculpted into other forms or Raised to a new Valence. Basically, the only things that changed were the damage and the manifestation of the magic. Nothing was Caster Level-based at all, but I was aiming to change that.
Mira was quite excited at the possibilities of doubling the range and duration of Isparian Magic, among other things, and being able to invoke it without words, gestures, or components was a godsend. The fact that Mana Conversion should really help chew through the reps was also very encouraging... and led me to wonder if it could be applied to refilling Valences.
What about Boosting Mana?, I suddenly thought, all the lightbulbs going off. If I could give mana to others, certainly I could give it to myself, right? Even if it was only a Valence at a time!