His arguably most impressive achievement to date was the synthesis of an almost pure crystal of solid unaspected mana, a white magic crystal that was resonant to any manaform. Unlike other species of gemstone that carried certain affinities for only a single manaform, such as ruby for Incendere, sapphire for Aquae, emeralds for Germen, or onyx for Iskios, to name a few, Ulric had managed to create what was known as a philosopher's stone. Once created, the stable white magic gem would utilize and then amplify any mana sent into it, boosting the output of the mage significantly. There was one small problem with Ulric's achievement. His wonderful little [Arcanite Diamonds] did not leak mana, traces of imperfect casting built up inside them and, eventually, they would reach a supercritical point at which the philosopher's stone would, spontaneously, transmute into a sinister black crystal that consumed magic with incredible violence.
Create a large [Arcanite Diamond], saturate it with mana, and it would convert itself into a sort of antimagic crystal that, for some reason, was inherently unstable. Perhaps because Varda itself was saturated with magic, a thought to follow up on later. Anyway, the antimagic crystal, the [Deathstone] always exploded and, when it did, it released an incredibly potent blast of antimagic. The pulse tore apart active mage workings, disrupted core manipulation, and, diminished or neutralized entirely the mana within nearby objects, rendering them magically inert for a time. Ulric was pretty sure a large [Deathstone] pulse would eradicate or disrupt the Bane core's unique mana signature, possibly destroying it altogether. That should render the corrupt core harmless.
Should being the operative word. It had to be tested to be sure. If it worked on the core that would produce the final product it would also work on that product as well, the mana signature to corrupt Aes'r mana and flesh was a profoundly specific one. And, some part of him insisted, unnatural.
Those reservations didn't matter. Best to focus on the problem at hand, which was another town full of psychopaths breathing his air. And their victims. Gods, another group of Elves to take care of.
"Can't be helped, you must do what you can do while moving forwards." Ulric mumbled to himself.
"Are you chewing on yourself again?" Checked his Shadow.
Ulric rubbed his hands over his face, before admitting, "A little. But no more. What are your thoughts on how to handle this?"
Taipan regarded the walled facility far down below with no little contempt for a long minute while she turned it over for herself. Eventually she seemed ready to give him her assessment.
"Kill them all?" She asked, sarcastically.
Sighing, Ulric flicked her forehead, drawing a slight yelp from the troublesome Elf.
"Be more specific lass, I know we kill them all. We already agreed that we kill them all. What I am asking is how we do that and prevent them from turning on the captives, as happened while I was hunting down the last survivors of Port Edunshire, after I'd finished the overseer mage and broken the collar's hold." Ulric specified.
Rubbing her forehead, she glared at him a moment before she answered succinctly, "We prioritize stealth and silence. I will take the guards from their posts, almost certainly without raising alarm. I could open the gate for you to enter, the wall is too high to jump, but you should easily climb it. Once inside, we split up to maximize speed."
His partner raised the point that had occurred to Ulric already, ever since she'd reported what they were dealing with.
"There will likely be another of Prosper's combat mages in command." She informed him without outward concern.
Ulric mulled it over for just a few seconds before he told her "Then that one is yours. You should be able to find him easily enough, they like to wear these big black pedophile coats. End them before they know anything is amiss and we'll have an easy enough time of things. I'll focus on cutting through the mooks."
Siccing Taipan on the mage was the most likely way to keep him from causing trouble.
"And no playing with your food." He told her, which earned him a scowl.
"Says the one who is repairing my godfather's armor because he let his prey bite back." She returned.
Touche! She got him there.
"Yeah, well, I'm still learning," He defended himself, "You're an ancient murderess steeped in the ways of hunting men like beasts."
She snorted, before responding teasingly "Who are you calling ancient? Look at mine features, so youthful, my skin satin smooth, and my breasts that do not know the touch of Varda's pull to its floor. You wrinkle as a dried apple before my eyes, Glade Chief."
"Brightest stars burn quickest Taipan, my glory brightens all the world more greatly for its short duration. I cannot help it that you smolder so fitfully for the long centuries." He returned.
"Ass." She retorted.
"Strumpet." He countered.
"Not if you go on like that, I won't be." She threatened.
Damn, she had him there. He greatly enjoyed her lascivious tendencies when she had the mood to share them.
"Fine, so I enjoy your harlot ways." Conceded Ulric, before addressing the technicalities, "Then I amend my insult with the consideration that it is permissible and encouraged but only in circumstances when I am directly involved and move to refer to you, formally, as a situational Jezebel." He lawyered.
She giggled then, as she always did when he turned their snipping into contract law.
"Acceptable, my Jarltyn Valin." She chimed.
Jarltyn, the Elvish word for salty. It was one of her favorite bits of idiom from his old Earth.
Her smiled faded then, and Ulric knew she was thinking again about the site down there and what was happening within.
"It was bad in there, wasn't it?" He prompted.
Sometimes talking about it made it slightly better. Very slightly.
She signed, "Very." without speaking. Fair enough, he wouldn't push her.
After a minute of picking at the sparse grass beneath his feet absently, he told his Shadow slowly "We'll take them tonight, and set the Orlethrem free. Hopefully the ones we've already liberated can help take care of them. I begin to worry about supplies." Ulric confided.
His wife showed the wisdom of her years, "Worry about tomorrow when it has come. For now, think only on what we may do for those under your wings."
Sound advice.
They were silent a few more minutes, each leaving the other to their thoughts.
"You-"
"I-"
They both began at the same time and paused before he waved her on, deferring.
"Did you really destroy the ports of Ignos, Faraway, Ruis, and Hhrondur with a single spell?" His Shadow inquired, slightly skeptical.
Ulric gave her the Iriel'en hand sign, two fingers tapping each eye before squeezing a fist for "It is so." in a very strongly affirmative. In spoken words the gesture meant literally "On my eyes and heart".
She tossed her silken mane of short hair before regarding him with those intense metallic bronze flecked green eyes.
"You have come far, Glade Chief. Farther than I would have thought possible in such short span. It seems Lumyt'seit's instincts about you were right, you are slipping whatever bonds held back your strength. I wonder if Gother Cenur'it knew entirely what he was unleashing when he taught you to wield your power as a weapon." His Shadow mused.
Ulric shrugged. Power was a tool. So were weapons. So long as you respected them there was nothing to be afraid of. Unless you didn't know the full extent of those weapons. Magic was a strange thing. Unintended consequences dogged its use. All things are connected, to touch the web in one place had effects elsewhere. He was only just now starting to appreciate that fact. Ceraun, the great Prime elemental would be proud that he was learning this lesson.
"There is in you, I think, an impulse to destroy that is nothing to do with the Lord Instinct." Taipan continued, and his eyes widened a bit at her assessment but he didn't interrupt her as she spoke.
He couldn't, really, she wasn't wrong. All it took was losing one old Beastkin friend he'd had for one day and he spent half a week making high explosive shaped charges to destroy a couple of city blocks worth of infrastructure and butchered a Baron and his guards. Nobody was that easy to tip over the edge, it had to be there to start with, to some extent. Just buried nice and deep like.
"This is good. Ones like you are not allowed to be weak. I will stay by your side and guide you, Ulric, so what I want for you to do is to stop holding back. Measure your blows, as Idra'se taught you, use your strength as you would in the Dance. But use it fully, without restraint. Your enemies must know fear when they move against you. They must know that they play games against a dragon." The Huntress told him grimly.
Oh. That wasn't where he thought she was going with that. He'd been sure she was going to warn him about excess, not tell him to just push the throttle forward and forget about the brakes.
Curious he couldn't help but wonder aloud at her, "You are not afraid that I will become something monstrous?"
Taipan grinned towards him and checked him with the observation, "Whose daughter do you think I am, Ulric?"
Right. Taipan was the daughter of Iriel's Blood Moon. Bald'rt Iriel, when his son was murdered by Prosper's agents, went out and leveled the city, killed every living person in the place. That same jesting, prodding, teasing Elf was an implacable force of nature when roused to it. He supposed that he was being too black and white in his mindset. Sometimes decent people had to do awful things. The alternative was to do nothing. Ulric knew what came of doing nothing. History was rife with examples of what allowing those who should be stopped to continue would bring.
"If you try to do something beyond the pale, I will stop you Glade Chief, that is my duty as your Shadow and your wife. But I do not think you will. You have an impulse to destroy, but it always seems to be aimed towards something that needed to be destroyed in the first place." his partner declared with confidence.
That was nice, that kind of trust. It helped, given that he wasn't always sure if he was exactly trust worthy. Oh he tried, certainly. But he had to try and that was the part that concerned him. Don't over think it, Einar, he warned himself. Taipan's a good judge, if she thinks you've got it under control then have a little faith.
He ruffled her hair, ignoring her indignant squawk and batting hands, saying "My gratitude Taipan, I'll leave my back to you then and concentrate on everything in the front."
Self-imposed burdens are the hard ones. They weigh down on you, but in a way that makes them hard to see yourself. Eventually you forget they're there and start adding new ones. Then, one day, you wake up and find the pressure is crushing you. Glad indeed he was he had someone to point out when he was doing it to himself. He would do the same for her. They could make life lighter for each other, in spite of all its challenges. Was this what he had been missing all those years in the Before? Probably a big part of it. But, then, it was unlikely that anyone in that world would have been willing to accept the latent, for lack of a better word, predator in him. All that time he'd just thought he was sick in the head. Which, of course, he was. Just not in the way that he'd suspected.
A warrior born in times of peace was doomed to find dissatisfaction.
They subsided then and awaited the fall of night so that they could descend on Prosper's suffering factory like the old Christ cult's angel of death Uriel. Nobody had ever thought to tell these sinners about the lamb’s blood on the doorway.
The time arrived.
Down from their hiding place they went, Taipan leading, Ulric behind. Moonlight from from the largest of the moons being full and the other two at a waxing gibbous bathed the hillside in ghostly light. Ulric stepped carefully along his Shadow's trail, balancing on his toes and feeling the terrain beneath his boots before resting his weight, to avoid moving loose till or slipping on a smooth piece of granite substrate.
Slowly, methodically, he made his way, avoiding mistakes in the silver light. Through it all his heart beat in his ears, and he felt like a drawn bowstring. A mistake would set the entire encampment to alert and there was no telling what would happen to the prisoners inside. Not to mention, if they roused the mage inside, they would be subjected to their powers, which were unknown.
As he came closer, he began to hear, once again, the sorrow song of tortured victims. It was no less heart rending now than it had been before and a small bit of him was gladdened that he had not inured himself to the suffering. It would cost him a good bit of his remaining humanity to not feel anything in the presence of this.
This time, however, he had a secret weapon: Taipan. Quick and quiet as her namesake she slipped up and over the wall. A moment later, the figure of one of the watchmen, faces indistinguishable in the dark, jerked and stilled. He couldn't decipher the form of the Elf that had to have been responsible from the shifting torch lights on the tower's frontage. A handful of breaths later, another of the vigilant forms became still. And on and on until the entire perimeter lay exposed. Taipan had cleared twelve sentries inside of three minutes, circling the entire town. She must have been sprinting to do it but made not a single whisper of sound.
Watcher's tits, that lady is spooky sometimes, Ulric remarked to himself as he came to the base of the wall.
Carefully he found handholds, more like finger holds, really, and pulled himself up the mortared stone. Slowly, very slowly, so as not to accidently click some piece of bone armor against the wall, Ulric climbed. It took a couple of minutes, all the while being inundated with the cries of the prisoners.
Night was no repast from their punishment, and it spurred him on.
At last, he made the top of the wall and pulled himself over, dropping down to the damp ground below. Or so he'd been expecting. Instead, he felt the distinctly elastic hardness of wood beneath his feet when he alighted. Godsblood this place was built to float on top of the marsh, not merely to rest on stone piles. What did that say of the soundness of the soil that it could not be built upon without relying on buoyant force?
Drawing a slow, steady breath in through his nose the rich, dank smell of the swamp around assailed him, along with the distinct metallic bitterness of blood. Lots of blood. That's why you're here, Ulric. Now get your ass in there and put a stop to it.
[Ceraunoperception]
Instantly he surveyed the interior of the longhouse and regretted it immediately. Exactly as bad as Port Edunshire.
Xef'tocht came free of its sheath and Ulric went to the door. He'd thought carefully on his previous experience. No professional infiltrator was he, he'd relied on Xef'tocht's incredible sharpness to cut open the door. It did it well but a man still needed a good full swing to make it work and there was still some slight sound, even for so clean a cut as his blade could make. He had a better plan and it came from inspiration from something he'd done long, long ago while bringing Brighteyes home. He'd chopped up some incredibly tough fire wood by using [Absolute Zero] to make workable rounds. He could create far, far more fine workings now. A thin disk of zero temperature would cause that lock and latch to come apart at a molecular level, he would be able to simply pull the door open. First though, a gentle tug to test if it was locked in the first place.
The door gave to his slight pull. Unlocked. Unlatched. The utter arrogance of these people. They'd spoiled themselves on slaves unable to resist them in any way. A mistake. Varda punishes mistakes.
Ulric pulled the door open and slipped inside, pulling it closed behind him silently. Each of the torturers was having his, or her Ulric noted, way with a prisoner, completely unaware. Three lamps hung from a central support beam to light the interior, poorly. The matte finish on his armor rendered him nearly invisible from inside the shadow of the entryway. He knew how he was going to handle this. Fast.
[Surge]
Ceraun condensed into his flesh and he became more than simply human, lightning magic heightening his muscles' speed, nerve precision, and reaction time. Around the corner he went, graceful death. One stroke to decapitate, another three muffled steps and a thrust through heart avoiding the victim being abused, five steps and a downward slice to open a throat to the vertebrae, another step and he lunged to sweep the vorpal blade through the skulls of two attacking a single woman, and on to the last at the end of the hall, his sword's point stuffed into the back of the head to avoid the prisoners on either side, hanging from chained manacles attached to the ceiling rafters.
Done. He let the enhanced physicality fade and surveyed his work. Six men and women who had long since abandoned humanity to become Prosper's tools of murder. Elves looked at him and, to their credit, not a one had raised a single sound. He didn't even have to raise a finger to his lips. Whether they knew their liberation was at hand or they had simply stopped caring about anything that happened he didn't know. Soon enough, they would know that their ordeal was at its end.
He exited the long house and went into the next, stepping passed the unlocked door. There were only three in this one and he made his way through them without [Surge]. Only a single one managed to raise a sound, a gurgle as his lungs filled with blood, the major arteries in his chest severed by Xef'tocht's hidden reverse edge.
And on to the next.
This one would be harder. Inside he felt eight forms moving freely without collars. By the sensation of [Ceraunoperception] this lot had gotten creative: They were forcing some of the prisoners to torture their fellows and watching. That meant they would be more likely to spot him, even if he was moving with enhanced speed. He needed to take them all more or less at the same time. He considered it for a moment before deciding that this was what his [Wind Blade] was designed for.
Ulric reverted a portion of his lightning magic back towards unaspected mana and then tuned Caelum. Eight almost transparent crescents of cyan, hardened air, hovered above his head. Ulric readied threads of wind magic, the vacuum channels that would guide the knives of wind magic along their flights, and pushed the door open.
[Wind Blade]
In a fraction of a second, he attached the "guide wires" to their targets and launched the attack. Eight crescents whistled through the long house around the victims being forced to victimize their kin and hit their targets within a half a second of each other.
Varda got better by another eight disgusting souls leaving her.
Magic was cheating. He'd long since embraced that fundamental unfairness. Each of these slaughtered men and women had cores, could utilize their Akashic connections to manifest abilities beyond the normal. But only if they had the chance to do so. Well, if they weren't expending their attention on these grotesque burlesque shows they'd have a little left for their own survival. Not his fault if they were incompetent, in addition to evil.
From the opposite side of the "village" a metallic screech rose up and a desperate cry. A red-orange glow flared casting that area in a flickering panoply, like a bonfire had been lit. The voice was male and not at all happy. In fact, if Ulric wasn't mistaken, they sounded pants shitting terrified. More metallic clangs. More flashes of light and a splash of fire bathed the side of one of the long houses, smoldering against the damp night air as it dissipated.
A flicker betrayed his mate, who was blinking backwards before flashing an arrow to her bow. The thirty centimeter long blade that consisted of the arrowhead, more aptly a small spearhead, disappeared when she loosed, the rippling shadow that had coated, along with the dense blue infusion of mana in its shaft, told Ulric that his Taipan was using more weapons than just her bow. That black film that flickered like fire across the arrowhead was her [Twilight Flame], corroding mana and flesh, almost like a piranha solution. The blue glow was her Infused arrow, which magnified the piercing capability of the projectile.
Flame billowed upwards, intercepting the arrow's trajectory. Or, at least, he supposed, that had been the idea. Ulric heard the soft *chuck* of flesh being struck by the arrow and a keening yell rose up. Taipan's form vanished in burst of shadow. A moment later there were several more similar sounds and the yell cut off, choking before silencing abruptly. Ulric had a feeling the mage, which is likely what was causing the fire, was now inert.
He was unable to pay the goings on more attention because the door he was standing beside opened and a man with a crossbow came out of the entrance.
Ulric palmed the side of his head and loosed a fine flow of Ceraun.
[Voltaic Riot]
The violet arc ripped a sizable hole through the temple beneath his palm and out the other side and the corpse dropped, the grey matter in its skull flash boiled.
A figure pushed past the falling body and Ulric took in the form of a woman with a battle axe, her muscles corded along arms and shoulders. She reacted quickly enough to Ulric's sweep of Xef'tocht, catching the blade with the flat of the axe head. Sparks rained down as Ulric sheared off half the metal blade, her parry having cost her most of her weapon's lethality and he stepped into a kick with all his strength behind it that caught her just beneath her sternum, blasting breath out of her and launching her back through the door into a man coming out. Both of them went down and Ulric ran his sword through the woman's chest and through the man beneath her, impaling both. He ripped the blade free and drove it again, to be sure. Creatures were tougher here than on old Earth, and he wanted to be sure.
More of Prosper's thugs came out from the long houses into the night. They died within seconds, mostly. Taipan was on a nearby roof shooting down into them from behind as they exited. Ulric was sweeping through the ones that got to cover. Using his sword, mostly, and some tactical applications of [Surge] to finish them before they could put up any organized resistance.
Within seven minutes of Ulric's feet hitting the floor boards, all the guards were dead.
Ulric climbed the wall, leaving Taipan to begin rounding up the survivors, and went to retrieve the Celestin still hiding on the hillside. It took him almost fifteen minutes to get back up the hill and to bring the Elves down, by which time the square of the "village" was full of Elves, these of no particular clan, but an assortment of all of them, with the exception of there being only a bare three Iriel'en.
Into the opened gate they walked and Ulric was hearted to see the former Celestin slaves go to their cousins immediately and begin consoling and aiding them. It was the same story as Port Edunshire, all of the captured Aes'r were injured, most would carry scars the rest of their lives, and some, would not be able to survive the toll of what had been done to them.
Ulric took his Taipan's hand and squeezed it as they watched the Orlethrem come together to comfort and treat one another. She returned his squeeze with her own and they stayed out of the way as the food stores were broken into and an impromptu meal assembled for the wretches clinging bravely to life through unspeakable horror. Their role was to keep watch and make sure nothing else came to add to the suffering.
In total, when the Twins rose once more over this corner of Varda there were One hundred forty eight Orlethrem freed from their captivity. Twenty-seven had left in the night to find their ending. More lives added to Prosper's tab.
From up close, Ulric could see that a road of sorts had been made through the swamps and bogs around them, using the stone pylon and wood decking style of the Bane town, floating it above the surface of the soft, eternally soggy ground.
It was a huge investment, that road. It also meant that this location, unlike the one in Port Edunshire, was not new. Where Port Edunshire was once a rocky hamlet of little matter, only really important for being a place to signal ships that they were on course towards Prosper, and retrofitted for the purpose of turning people into an arcane weapon, this place had been built long ago and kept hidden by being off any map. Only that one small road, through an almost impassible swamp, was a clue of its location.
Probably, the hilltop village's refurbishment was done, in part, to allow greater ease of delivering Elf slaves to the place, along with supplies.
And what supplies! Where the tiny cliffside horrorshow was merely adequately stocked, able to receive regular shipments by boat, the nameless fort was lavish. Grains, dried meats, dried fruits, processed flour, sugar, salt, and more were in the store houses along the back side of the place, adjacent to the gate that led down the floating road.
Every man, woman, and, yes, sadly, child, of the Orlethrem freed slaves carried whatever they could. Three more days were they stalled in caring for the wounds that could be treated and giving Taipan's cousins time to begin healing the other wounds, before they traveled. Ulric spent most of that time worrying and packing the half dozen wagons that had been left behind. Not enough wagons to actually transport all the wounded and crippled, so, not being a wainwright, he settled for making sleds. These were piled high and rope harnesses tied so that teams of a score of Elves could pull each sled easily, even in their weakened condition. It was necessary, else many would starve by the time that they arrived at Kistalfer.
Judging by the distance they were able to travel with the smaller group, which would be lessened by this increase in number as the horror-town had contained many who had been captive longer, Taipan reckoned that they had at least a week of coastal travel to reach the City State that would provide them with boats. Hopefully.
Before they left, there was just one more thing that Ulric needed to tend to: the Bane core.
All of the refugees were evacuated and moved a not so small distance uphill. Uphill was also upwind. With the coastal air masses pushing Northeast to Southwest along the Vatyn, they should be safe in case his experiment generated magical fallout. Now to get to it.
The concept was relatively simple, Ulric was just going to make a big [Arcanite Diamond], one the size of a basketball. Then he was going to hit it with lighting until the crystalline matrix saturated with Ceraun. When that happened, it should catalyze the [Deathstone] transformation and destroy itself, emitting its antimagic burst. That burst would tear apart whatever sensitive magical arrangements it touched, and that ought to include the Bane core. Simplicity itself. Also, hilariously dangerous and Ulric didn't think anything with a core would survive being in close proximity to the detonation. Which was why he was going to be way, way far away when he did it.
All of the Orlethrem on the hill, and Taipan with them, were watching as Ulric searched the town for the remnants of a ruined Aes'r soul. He found it, inside a building that looked like some sort of command post. There were correspondences inside and he cursed again his inability to read. It wasn't worth the risk to take anything out of this place, not and maybe contaminate one of the Elves with the Bane core. It was a wild thing, now, in its unprocessed form, and would lash out randomly at anything that mirrored itself. Ulric, as a Valin, was completely safe. So, when he opened a locked chest and found three of the cores, he was glad no one was around to see him vomit.
Fuck. Three. How many lives? Doesn't matter, Einar, done is done. Destroy this fucking place and let's get the hell out of here.
Steadily, Ulric set about concentrating on building the crystal lattice for his [Arcanite Diamond]. Slowly he envisioned the matrix linking to new layers, the repeating system of units locking into place. The task was demanding, mentally. This kind of finesse required total focus and absolute precision. As he had demonstrated earlier, a flaw in the process made the result unstable. He wouldn't necessarily mind that since it meant he didn't have to convert the crystal himself and tap his own strength any more than was required to make the thing. Problem was, if it wasn't perfect, it would probably go critical while he stood next to it.
Therefore, Ulric took his time and built the solid white magic diamond correctly. Eventually, the process of adding units and layers of lattice became sort of zen, his mind emptied of everything except this one single task, over and over and over.
Aaaand, finally! He looked down at the radiant white orb with facets shimmering. No flares of prismatic fire, no odd pulses of magic. Nothing. It was a marvel of magic coupled to science. This gem should remain stable, functionally, indefinitely. Until enough mana passed through it to saturate it, which, by his estimates of the ambient mana density, would take a couple of million years.
Now it was time to turn this wonderful piece of philosopher's stone into a mana rending bomb.
Ulric reached out through his core, taking hold of the electromagnetic force and building a negative charge on the [Arcanite Diamond], forcing the two halves of Ceraun into separation and thus a motive force arose to try to restore balance. Ulric was holding that motive force still with his will, maintaining the isolation. He was holding a throwing knife from his leg bandoleer, a sacrifice to the cause, as he wasn't going to be coming back for this and didn't want to be anywhere nearby and driving the electrons off of it to feed to the white gem and thus was the link made between them. Now, wherever the knife went, the mana on the diamond would seek it out, and vice versa.
Carefully, Ulric established a loop, and let Ceraun run it, chasing its own tail to find completion. A violet arc coalesced between the alabaster sphere which he had placed into the chest containing the cores and the knife, which he drove into the wall. With an effort, Ulric amplified the cycle and poured more mana into the loop working, causing the arc to thicken and its buzzing to intensify. Then he ran. Hard.
Out from the walls of Horrorville, Ulric Einar beat feet up the slope, maintaining his concentration on the Ceraun feed. It wasn't as hard as he'd thought it would be, keeping his hold on a spell so far from himself. In a way that made sense. The electromagnetic force was infinite, expansive. His core, refashioned to collect and wield that force with particular ease, was more or less, made to do this. Ulric realized then, as he climbed the hill as fast as his legs could carry him, that there were implications for doing more with Ceraun than he had done so far. There was very little reason why he could not simply reach out into the clouds and tap the electrical potential held between them, or between the clouds and the ground.
The trouble with these philosopher's stones is that nobody knew how long they lasted, precisely. They were so rare that nobody had done the destructive testing required to engineer such a spell. Mostly, the things ended up used as a spell anchor for something very minimalistic but that required a stable catalyst. You couldn't have them just exploding all willy nilly. So it was that Ulric wasn't sure how much time he had to ru-
*Whoomp*
A black hole pulled the magic from his core in an instant, triggering mana exhaustion. He felt pressure inside as the wave passed over and through him and then fantastically tired, like he'd donated blood and gone running. The wave front hit the gathered Orlethrem and most of them fell down, instantly drained as well.
Staggering forwards, Ulric was then hit by the physical shockwave, which sent him ass over elbow up the hill a good six meters. What few Elves had remained standing were similarly knocked flat, even though they weren't tossed like leaves in the wind as he was.
Lying there, bruised from being thrown against several large rocks, he recovered the breath that had been knocked out of him and turned grey eyes on the origin of the blast.
Horrorville is fucking gone man, He thought.
No smoke, no fire, no debris or chunks of wood, nothing. Just a great big godsdamned hole with its geometric center where that chest had been sitting. Water was pouring from the surrounding swamp, slowly filling it. Even as it did though, weird shit like pale ghost lights rose up from the edges of the hole. A few times, jagged sparks of almost shimmering black lightning jumped out at random. Anything that lightning hit burst into the negative image of flame and that included rocks, water, dust, and the air itself. Those more obvious ripples of badness faded over the next minute or so. Yikes.
Ulric put making another one of those on his "Never again" list. Holy fuck. At least the Bane cores were gone, deleted from reality along with the place of their making.
Getting up was a multistep process. The depletion effect was insane, it reached into your whole body. He was completely mundane for the first time since his reforging. That wouldn't last of course, his core was already beginning to pull latent mana and refine it into lightning. But it would take time and leave him weak while it did. Same for everybody else gathered above. Taipan was glaring at him.
What? He'd told her it was just a hypothesis.
His arguably most impressive achievement to date was the synthesis of an almost pure crystal of solid unaspected mana, a white magic crystal that was resonant to any manaform. Unlike other species of gemstone that carried certain affinities for only a single manaform, such as ruby for Incendere, sapphire for Aquae, emeralds for Germen, or onyx for Iskios, to name a few, Ulric had managed to create what was known as a philosopher's stone. Once created, the stable white magic gem would utilize and then amplify any mana sent into it, boosting the output of the mage significantly. There was one small problem with Ulric's achievement. His wonderful little [Arcanite Diamonds] did not leak mana, traces of imperfect casting built up inside them and, eventually, they would reach a supercritical point at which the philosopher's stone would, spontaneously, transmute into a sinister black crystal that consumed magic with incredible violence.
Create a large [Arcanite Diamond], saturate it with mana, and it would convert itself into a sort of antimagic crystal that, for some reason, was inherently unstable. Perhaps because Varda itself was saturated with magic, a thought to follow up on later. Anyway, the antimagic crystal, the [Deathstone] always exploded and, when it did, it released an incredibly potent blast of antimagic. The pulse tore apart active mage workings, disrupted core manipulation, and, diminished or neutralized entirely the mana within nearby objects, rendering them magically inert for a time. Ulric was pretty sure a large [Deathstone] pulse would eradicate or disrupt the Bane core's unique mana signature, possibly destroying it altogether. That should render the corrupt core harmless.
Should being the operative word. It had to be tested to be sure. If it worked on the core that would produce the final product it would also work on that product as well, the mana signature to corrupt Aes'r mana and flesh was a profoundly specific one. And, some part of him insisted, unnatural.
Those reservations didn't matter. Best to focus on the problem at hand, which was another town full of psychopaths breathing his air. And their victims. Gods, another group of Elves to take care of.
"Can't be helped, you must do what you can do while moving forwards." Ulric mumbled to himself.
"Are you chewing on yourself again?" Checked his Shadow.
Ulric rubbed his hands over his face, before admitting, "A little. But no more. What are your thoughts on how to handle this?"
Taipan regarded the walled facility far down below with no little contempt for a long minute while she turned it over for herself. Eventually she seemed ready to give him her assessment.
"Kill them all?" She asked, sarcastically.
Sighing, Ulric flicked her forehead, drawing a slight yelp from the troublesome Elf.
"Be more specific lass, I know we kill them all. We already agreed that we kill them all. What I am asking is how we do that and prevent them from turning on the captives, as happened while I was hunting down the last survivors of Port Edunshire, after I'd finished the overseer mage and broken the collar's hold." Ulric specified.
Rubbing her forehead, she glared at him a moment before she answered succinctly, "We prioritize stealth and silence. I will take the guards from their posts, almost certainly without raising alarm. I could open the gate for you to enter, the wall is too high to jump, but you should easily climb it. Once inside, we split up to maximize speed."
His partner raised the point that had occurred to Ulric already, ever since she'd reported what they were dealing with.
"There will likely be another of Prosper's combat mages in command." She informed him without outward concern.
Ulric mulled it over for just a few seconds before he told her "Then that one is yours. You should be able to find him easily enough, they like to wear these big black pedophile coats. End them before they know anything is amiss and we'll have an easy enough time of things. I'll focus on cutting through the mooks."
Siccing Taipan on the mage was the most likely way to keep him from causing trouble.
"And no playing with your food." He told her, which earned him a scowl.
"Says the one who is repairing my godfather's armor because he let his prey bite back." She returned.
Touche! She got him there.
"Yeah, well, I'm still learning," He defended himself, "You're an ancient murderess steeped in the ways of hunting men like beasts."
She snorted, before responding teasingly "Who are you calling ancient? Look at mine features, so youthful, my skin satin smooth, and my breasts that do not know the touch of Varda's pull to its floor. You wrinkle as a dried apple before my eyes, Glade Chief."
"Brightest stars burn quickest Taipan, my glory brightens all the world more greatly for its short duration. I cannot help it that you smolder so fitfully for the long centuries." He returned.
"Ass." She retorted.
"Strumpet." He countered.
"Not if you go on like that, I won't be." She threatened.
Damn, she had him there. He greatly enjoyed her lascivious tendencies when she had the mood to share them.
"Fine, so I enjoy your harlot ways." Conceded Ulric, before addressing the technicalities, "Then I amend my insult with the consideration that it is permissible and encouraged but only in circumstances when I am directly involved and move to refer to you, formally, as a situational Jezebel." He lawyered.
She giggled then, as she always did when he turned their snipping into contract law.
"Acceptable, my Jarltyn Valin." She chimed.
Jarltyn, the Elvish word for salty. It was one of her favorite bits of idiom from his old Earth.
Her smiled faded then, and Ulric knew she was thinking again about the site down there and what was happening within.
"It was bad in there, wasn't it?" He prompted.
Sometimes talking about it made it slightly better. Very slightly.
She signed, "Very." without speaking. Fair enough, he wouldn't push her.
After a minute of picking at the sparse grass beneath his feet absently, he told his Shadow slowly "We'll take them tonight, and set the Orlethrem free. Hopefully the ones we've already liberated can help take care of them. I begin to worry about supplies." Ulric confided.
His wife showed the wisdom of her years, "Worry about tomorrow when it has come. For now, think only on what we may do for those under your wings."
Sound advice.
They were silent a few more minutes, each leaving the other to their thoughts.
"You-"
"I-"
They both began at the same time and paused before he waved her on, deferring.
"Did you really destroy the ports of Ignos, Faraway, Ruis, and Hhrondur with a single spell?" His Shadow inquired, slightly skeptical.
Ulric gave her the Iriel'en hand sign, two fingers tapping each eye before squeezing a fist for "It is so." in a very strongly affirmative. In spoken words the gesture meant literally "On my eyes and heart".
She tossed her silken mane of short hair before regarding him with those intense metallic bronze flecked green eyes.
"You have come far, Glade Chief. Farther than I would have thought possible in such short span. It seems Lumyt'seit's instincts about you were right, you are slipping whatever bonds held back your strength. I wonder if Gother Cenur'it knew entirely what he was unleashing when he taught you to wield your power as a weapon." His Shadow mused.
Ulric shrugged. Power was a tool. So were weapons. So long as you respected them there was nothing to be afraid of. Unless you didn't know the full extent of those weapons. Magic was a strange thing. Unintended consequences dogged its use. All things are connected, to touch the web in one place had effects elsewhere. He was only just now starting to appreciate that fact. Ceraun, the great Prime elemental would be proud that he was learning this lesson.
"There is in you, I think, an impulse to destroy that is nothing to do with the Lord Instinct." Taipan continued, and his eyes widened a bit at her assessment but he didn't interrupt her as she spoke.
He couldn't, really, she wasn't wrong. All it took was losing one old Beastkin friend he'd had for one day and he spent half a week making high explosive shaped charges to destroy a couple of city blocks worth of infrastructure and butchered a Baron and his guards. Nobody was that easy to tip over the edge, it had to be there to start with, to some extent. Just buried nice and deep like.
"This is good. Ones like you are not allowed to be weak. I will stay by your side and guide you, Ulric, so what I want for you to do is to stop holding back. Measure your blows, as Idra'se taught you, use your strength as you would in the Dance. But use it fully, without restraint. Your enemies must know fear when they move against you. They must know that they play games against a dragon." The Huntress told him grimly.
Oh. That wasn't where he thought she was going with that. He'd been sure she was going to warn him about excess, not tell him to just push the throttle forward and forget about the brakes.
Curious he couldn't help but wonder aloud at her, "You are not afraid that I will become something monstrous?"
Taipan grinned towards him and checked him with the observation, "Whose daughter do you think I am, Ulric?"
Right. Taipan was the daughter of Iriel's Blood Moon. Bald'rt Iriel, when his son was murdered by Prosper's agents, went out and leveled the city, killed every living person in the place. That same jesting, prodding, teasing Elf was an implacable force of nature when roused to it. He supposed that he was being too black and white in his mindset. Sometimes decent people had to do awful things. The alternative was to do nothing. Ulric knew what came of doing nothing. History was rife with examples of what allowing those who should be stopped to continue would bring.
"If you try to do something beyond the pale, I will stop you Glade Chief, that is my duty as your Shadow and your wife. But I do not think you will. You have an impulse to destroy, but it always seems to be aimed towards something that needed to be destroyed in the first place." his partner declared with confidence.
That was nice, that kind of trust. It helped, given that he wasn't always sure if he was exactly trust worthy. Oh he tried, certainly. But he had to try and that was the part that concerned him. Don't over think it, Einar, he warned himself. Taipan's a good judge, if she thinks you've got it under control then have a little faith.
He ruffled her hair, ignoring her indignant squawk and batting hands, saying "My gratitude Taipan, I'll leave my back to you then and concentrate on everything in the front."
Self-imposed burdens are the hard ones. They weigh down on you, but in a way that makes them hard to see yourself. Eventually you forget they're there and start adding new ones. Then, one day, you wake up and find the pressure is crushing you. Glad indeed he was he had someone to point out when he was doing it to himself. He would do the same for her. They could make life lighter for each other, in spite of all its challenges. Was this what he had been missing all those years in the Before? Probably a big part of it. But, then, it was unlikely that anyone in that world would have been willing to accept the latent, for lack of a better word, predator in him. All that time he'd just thought he was sick in the head. Which, of course, he was. Just not in the way that he'd suspected.
A warrior born in times of peace was doomed to find dissatisfaction.
They subsided then and awaited the fall of night so that they could descend on Prosper's suffering factory like the old Christ cult's angel of death Uriel. Nobody had ever thought to tell these sinners about the lamb’s blood on the doorway.
The time arrived.
Down from their hiding place they went, Taipan leading, Ulric behind. Moonlight from from the largest of the moons being full and the other two at a waxing gibbous bathed the hillside in ghostly light. Ulric stepped carefully along his Shadow's trail, balancing on his toes and feeling the terrain beneath his boots before resting his weight, to avoid moving loose till or slipping on a smooth piece of granite substrate.
Slowly, methodically, he made his way, avoiding mistakes in the silver light. Through it all his heart beat in his ears, and he felt like a drawn bowstring. A mistake would set the entire encampment to alert and there was no telling what would happen to the prisoners inside. Not to mention, if they roused the mage inside, they would be subjected to their powers, which were unknown.
As he came closer, he began to hear, once again, the sorrow song of tortured victims. It was no less heart rending now than it had been before and a small bit of him was gladdened that he had not inured himself to the suffering. It would cost him a good bit of his remaining humanity to not feel anything in the presence of this.
This time, however, he had a secret weapon: Taipan. Quick and quiet as her namesake she slipped up and over the wall. A moment later, the figure of one of the watchmen, faces indistinguishable in the dark, jerked and stilled. He couldn't decipher the form of the Elf that had to have been responsible from the shifting torch lights on the tower's frontage. A handful of breaths later, another of the vigilant forms became still. And on and on until the entire perimeter lay exposed. Taipan had cleared twelve sentries inside of three minutes, circling the entire town. She must have been sprinting to do it but made not a single whisper of sound.
Watcher's tits, that lady is spooky sometimes, Ulric remarked to himself as he came to the base of the wall.
Carefully he found handholds, more like finger holds, really, and pulled himself up the mortared stone. Slowly, very slowly, so as not to accidently click some piece of bone armor against the wall, Ulric climbed. It took a couple of minutes, all the while being inundated with the cries of the prisoners.
Night was no repast from their punishment, and it spurred him on.
At last, he made the top of the wall and pulled himself over, dropping down to the damp ground below. Or so he'd been expecting. Instead, he felt the distinctly elastic hardness of wood beneath his feet when he alighted. Godsblood this place was built to float on top of the marsh, not merely to rest on stone piles. What did that say of the soundness of the soil that it could not be built upon without relying on buoyant force?
Drawing a slow, steady breath in through his nose the rich, dank smell of the swamp around assailed him, along with the distinct metallic bitterness of blood. Lots of blood. That's why you're here, Ulric. Now get your ass in there and put a stop to it.
[Ceraunoperception]
Instantly he surveyed the interior of the longhouse and regretted it immediately. Exactly as bad as Port Edunshire.
Xef'tocht came free of its sheath and Ulric went to the door. He'd thought carefully on his previous experience. No professional infiltrator was he, he'd relied on Xef'tocht's incredible sharpness to cut open the door. It did it well but a man still needed a good full swing to make it work and there was still some slight sound, even for so clean a cut as his blade could make. He had a better plan and it came from inspiration from something he'd done long, long ago while bringing Brighteyes home. He'd chopped up some incredibly tough fire wood by using [Absolute Zero] to make workable rounds. He could create far, far more fine workings now. A thin disk of zero temperature would cause that lock and latch to come apart at a molecular level, he would be able to simply pull the door open. First though, a gentle tug to test if it was locked in the first place.
The door gave to his slight pull. Unlocked. Unlatched. The utter arrogance of these people. They'd spoiled themselves on slaves unable to resist them in any way. A mistake. Varda punishes mistakes.
Ulric pulled the door open and slipped inside, pulling it closed behind him silently. Each of the torturers was having his, or her Ulric noted, way with a prisoner, completely unaware. Three lamps hung from a central support beam to light the interior, poorly. The matte finish on his armor rendered him nearly invisible from inside the shadow of the entryway. He knew how he was going to handle this. Fast.
[Surge]
Ceraun condensed into his flesh and he became more than simply human, lightning magic heightening his muscles' speed, nerve precision, and reaction time. Around the corner he went, graceful death. One stroke to decapitate, another three muffled steps and a thrust through heart avoiding the victim being abused, five steps and a downward slice to open a throat to the vertebrae, another step and he lunged to sweep the vorpal blade through the skulls of two attacking a single woman, and on to the last at the end of the hall, his sword's point stuffed into the back of the head to avoid the prisoners on either side, hanging from chained manacles attached to the ceiling rafters.
Done. He let the enhanced physicality fade and surveyed his work. Six men and women who had long since abandoned humanity to become Prosper's tools of murder. Elves looked at him and, to their credit, not a one had raised a single sound. He didn't even have to raise a finger to his lips. Whether they knew their liberation was at hand or they had simply stopped caring about anything that happened he didn't know. Soon enough, they would know that their ordeal was at its end.
He exited the long house and went into the next, stepping passed the unlocked door. There were only three in this one and he made his way through them without [Surge]. Only a single one managed to raise a sound, a gurgle as his lungs filled with blood, the major arteries in his chest severed by Xef'tocht's hidden reverse edge.
And on to the next.
This one would be harder. Inside he felt eight forms moving freely without collars. By the sensation of [Ceraunoperception] this lot had gotten creative: They were forcing some of the prisoners to torture their fellows and watching. That meant they would be more likely to spot him, even if he was moving with enhanced speed. He needed to take them all more or less at the same time. He considered it for a moment before deciding that this was what his [Wind Blade] was designed for.
Ulric reverted a portion of his lightning magic back towards unaspected mana and then tuned Caelum. Eight almost transparent crescents of cyan, hardened air, hovered above his head. Ulric readied threads of wind magic, the vacuum channels that would guide the knives of wind magic along their flights, and pushed the door open.
[Wind Blade]
In a fraction of a second, he attached the "guide wires" to their targets and launched the attack. Eight crescents whistled through the long house around the victims being forced to victimize their kin and hit their targets within a half a second of each other.
Varda got better by another eight disgusting souls leaving her.
Magic was cheating. He'd long since embraced that fundamental unfairness. Each of these slaughtered men and women had cores, could utilize their Akashic connections to manifest abilities beyond the normal. But only if they had the chance to do so. Well, if they weren't expending their attention on these grotesque burlesque shows they'd have a little left for their own survival. Not his fault if they were incompetent, in addition to evil.
From the opposite side of the "village" a metallic screech rose up and a desperate cry. A red-orange glow flared casting that area in a flickering panoply, like a bonfire had been lit. The voice was male and not at all happy. In fact, if Ulric wasn't mistaken, they sounded pants shitting terrified. More metallic clangs. More flashes of light and a splash of fire bathed the side of one of the long houses, smoldering against the damp night air as it dissipated.
A flicker betrayed his mate, who was blinking backwards before flashing an arrow to her bow. The thirty centimeter long blade that consisted of the arrowhead, more aptly a small spearhead, disappeared when she loosed, the rippling shadow that had coated, along with the dense blue infusion of mana in its shaft, told Ulric that his Taipan was using more weapons than just her bow. That black film that flickered like fire across the arrowhead was her [Twilight Flame], corroding mana and flesh, almost like a piranha solution. The blue glow was her Infused arrow, which magnified the piercing capability of the projectile.
Flame billowed upwards, intercepting the arrow's trajectory. Or, at least, he supposed, that had been the idea. Ulric heard the soft *chuck* of flesh being struck by the arrow and a keening yell rose up. Taipan's form vanished in burst of shadow. A moment later there were several more similar sounds and the yell cut off, choking before silencing abruptly. Ulric had a feeling the mage, which is likely what was causing the fire, was now inert.
He was unable to pay the goings on more attention because the door he was standing beside opened and a man with a crossbow came out of the entrance.
Ulric palmed the side of his head and loosed a fine flow of Ceraun.
[Voltaic Riot]
The violet arc ripped a sizable hole through the temple beneath his palm and out the other side and the corpse dropped, the grey matter in its skull flash boiled.
A figure pushed past the falling body and Ulric took in the form of a woman with a battle axe, her muscles corded along arms and shoulders. She reacted quickly enough to Ulric's sweep of Xef'tocht, catching the blade with the flat of the axe head. Sparks rained down as Ulric sheared off half the metal blade, her parry having cost her most of her weapon's lethality and he stepped into a kick with all his strength behind it that caught her just beneath her sternum, blasting breath out of her and launching her back through the door into a man coming out. Both of them went down and Ulric ran his sword through the woman's chest and through the man beneath her, impaling both. He ripped the blade free and drove it again, to be sure. Creatures were tougher here than on old Earth, and he wanted to be sure.
More of Prosper's thugs came out from the long houses into the night. They died within seconds, mostly. Taipan was on a nearby roof shooting down into them from behind as they exited. Ulric was sweeping through the ones that got to cover. Using his sword, mostly, and some tactical applications of [Surge] to finish them before they could put up any organized resistance.
Within seven minutes of Ulric's feet hitting the floor boards, all the guards were dead.
Ulric climbed the wall, leaving Taipan to begin rounding up the survivors, and went to retrieve the Celestin still hiding on the hillside. It took him almost fifteen minutes to get back up the hill and to bring the Elves down, by which time the square of the "village" was full of Elves, these of no particular clan, but an assortment of all of them, with the exception of there being only a bare three Iriel'en.
Into the opened gate they walked and Ulric was hearted to see the former Celestin slaves go to their cousins immediately and begin consoling and aiding them. It was the same story as Port Edunshire, all of the captured Aes'r were injured, most would carry scars the rest of their lives, and some, would not be able to survive the toll of what had been done to them.
Ulric took his Taipan's hand and squeezed it as they watched the Orlethrem come together to comfort and treat one another. She returned his squeeze with her own and they stayed out of the way as the food stores were broken into and an impromptu meal assembled for the wretches clinging bravely to life through unspeakable horror. Their role was to keep watch and make sure nothing else came to add to the suffering.
In total, when the Twins rose once more over this corner of Varda there were One hundred forty eight Orlethrem freed from their captivity. Twenty-seven had left in the night to find their ending. More lives added to Prosper's tab.
From up close, Ulric could see that a road of sorts had been made through the swamps and bogs around them, using the stone pylon and wood decking style of the Bane town, floating it above the surface of the soft, eternally soggy ground.
It was a huge investment, that road. It also meant that this location, unlike the one in Port Edunshire, was not new. Where Port Edunshire was once a rocky hamlet of little matter, only really important for being a place to signal ships that they were on course towards Prosper, and retrofitted for the purpose of turning people into an arcane weapon, this place had been built long ago and kept hidden by being off any map. Only that one small road, through an almost impassible swamp, was a clue of its location.
Probably, the hilltop village's refurbishment was done, in part, to allow greater ease of delivering Elf slaves to the place, along with supplies.
And what supplies! Where the tiny cliffside horrorshow was merely adequately stocked, able to receive regular shipments by boat, the nameless fort was lavish. Grains, dried meats, dried fruits, processed flour, sugar, salt, and more were in the store houses along the back side of the place, adjacent to the gate that led down the floating road.
Every man, woman, and, yes, sadly, child, of the Orlethrem freed slaves carried whatever they could. Three more days were they stalled in caring for the wounds that could be treated and giving Taipan's cousins time to begin healing the other wounds, before they traveled. Ulric spent most of that time worrying and packing the half dozen wagons that had been left behind. Not enough wagons to actually transport all the wounded and crippled, so, not being a wainwright, he settled for making sleds. These were piled high and rope harnesses tied so that teams of a score of Elves could pull each sled easily, even in their weakened condition. It was necessary, else many would starve by the time that they arrived at Kistalfer.
Judging by the distance they were able to travel with the smaller group, which would be lessened by this increase in number as the horror-town had contained many who had been captive longer, Taipan reckoned that they had at least a week of coastal travel to reach the City State that would provide them with boats. Hopefully.
Before they left, there was just one more thing that Ulric needed to tend to: the Bane core.
All of the refugees were evacuated and moved a not so small distance uphill. Uphill was also upwind. With the coastal air masses pushing Northeast to Southwest along the Vatyn, they should be safe in case his experiment generated magical fallout. Now to get to it.
The concept was relatively simple, Ulric was just going to make a big [Arcanite Diamond], one the size of a basketball. Then he was going to hit it with lighting until the crystalline matrix saturated with Ceraun. When that happened, it should catalyze the [Deathstone] transformation and destroy itself, emitting its antimagic burst. That burst would tear apart whatever sensitive magical arrangements it touched, and that ought to include the Bane core. Simplicity itself. Also, hilariously dangerous and Ulric didn't think anything with a core would survive being in close proximity to the detonation. Which was why he was going to be way, way far away when he did it.
All of the Orlethrem on the hill, and Taipan with them, were watching as Ulric searched the town for the remnants of a ruined Aes'r soul. He found it, inside a building that looked like some sort of command post. There were correspondences inside and he cursed again his inability to read. It wasn't worth the risk to take anything out of this place, not and maybe contaminate one of the Elves with the Bane core. It was a wild thing, now, in its unprocessed form, and would lash out randomly at anything that mirrored itself. Ulric, as a Valin, was completely safe. So, when he opened a locked chest and found three of the cores, he was glad no one was around to see him vomit.
Fuck. Three. How many lives? Doesn't matter, Einar, done is done. Destroy this fucking place and let's get the hell out of here.
Steadily, Ulric set about concentrating on building the crystal lattice for his [Arcanite Diamond]. Slowly he envisioned the matrix linking to new layers, the repeating system of units locking into place. The task was demanding, mentally. This kind of finesse required total focus and absolute precision. As he had demonstrated earlier, a flaw in the process made the result unstable. He wouldn't necessarily mind that since it meant he didn't have to convert the crystal himself and tap his own strength any more than was required to make the thing. Problem was, if it wasn't perfect, it would probably go critical while he stood next to it.
Therefore, Ulric took his time and built the solid white magic diamond correctly. Eventually, the process of adding units and layers of lattice became sort of zen, his mind emptied of everything except this one single task, over and over and over.
Aaaand, finally! He looked down at the radiant white orb with facets shimmering. No flares of prismatic fire, no odd pulses of magic. Nothing. It was a marvel of magic coupled to science. This gem should remain stable, functionally, indefinitely. Until enough mana passed through it to saturate it, which, by his estimates of the ambient mana density, would take a couple of million years.
Now it was time to turn this wonderful piece of philosopher's stone into a mana rending bomb.
Ulric reached out through his core, taking hold of the electromagnetic force and building a negative charge on the [Arcanite Diamond], forcing the two halves of Ceraun into separation and thus a motive force arose to try to restore balance. Ulric was holding that motive force still with his will, maintaining the isolation. He was holding a throwing knife from his leg bandoleer, a sacrifice to the cause, as he wasn't going to be coming back for this and didn't want to be anywhere nearby and driving the electrons off of it to feed to the white gem and thus was the link made between them. Now, wherever the knife went, the mana on the diamond would seek it out, and vice versa.
Carefully, Ulric established a loop, and let Ceraun run it, chasing its own tail to find completion. A violet arc coalesced between the alabaster sphere which he had placed into the chest containing the cores and the knife, which he drove into the wall. With an effort, Ulric amplified the cycle and poured more mana into the loop working, causing the arc to thicken and its buzzing to intensify. Then he ran. Hard.
Out from the walls of Horrorville, Ulric Einar beat feet up the slope, maintaining his concentration on the Ceraun feed. It wasn't as hard as he'd thought it would be, keeping his hold on a spell so far from himself. In a way that made sense. The electromagnetic force was infinite, expansive. His core, refashioned to collect and wield that force with particular ease, was more or less, made to do this. Ulric realized then, as he climbed the hill as fast as his legs could carry him, that there were implications for doing more with Ceraun than he had done so far. There was very little reason why he could not simply reach out into the clouds and tap the electrical potential held between them, or between the clouds and the ground.
The trouble with these philosopher's stones is that nobody knew how long they lasted, precisely. They were so rare that nobody had done the destructive testing required to engineer such a spell. Mostly, the things ended up used as a spell anchor for something very minimalistic but that required a stable catalyst. You couldn't have them just exploding all willy nilly. So it was that Ulric wasn't sure how much time he had to ru-
*Whoomp*
A black hole pulled the magic from his core in an instant, triggering mana exhaustion. He felt pressure inside as the wave passed over and through him and then fantastically tired, like he'd donated blood and gone running. The wave front hit the gathered Orlethrem and most of them fell down, instantly drained as well.
Staggering forwards, Ulric was then hit by the physical shockwave, which sent him ass over elbow up the hill a good six meters. What few Elves had remained standing were similarly knocked flat, even though they weren't tossed like leaves in the wind as he was.
Lying there, bruised from being thrown against several large rocks, he recovered the breath that had been knocked out of him and turned grey eyes on the origin of the blast.
Horrorville is fucking gone man, He thought.
No smoke, no fire, no debris or chunks of wood, nothing. Just a great big godsdamned hole with its geometric center where that chest had been sitting. Water was pouring from the surrounding swamp, slowly filling it. Even as it did though, weird shit like pale ghost lights rose up from the edges of the hole. A few times, jagged sparks of almost shimmering black lightning jumped out at random. Anything that lightning hit burst into the negative image of flame and that included rocks, water, dust, and the air itself. Those more obvious ripples of badness faded over the next minute or so. Yikes.
Ulric put making another one of those on his "Never again" list. Holy fuck. At least the Bane cores were gone, deleted from reality along with the place of their making.
Getting up was a multistep process. The depletion effect was insane, it reached into your whole body. He was completely mundane for the first time since his reforging. That wouldn't last of course, his core was already beginning to pull latent mana and refine it into lightning. But it would take time and leave him weak while it did. Same for everybody else gathered above. Taipan was glaring at him.
What? He'd told her it was just a hypothesis.
