Highmoon was coming. The celebratory drinking was set aside, and everyone converged for the Salute to Sylune.
It wasn’t the most popular of Salutes. Everyone loved the Salute to Aru, as it was a wonderful way to start the day. The Salute to Mithar at Highsun was an affectation among the martial-minded and leaders working their way through the day.
The Salute to Aethra at dusk was taken up by the Royal Scouts, as it called to their mission and purpose of standing the Long Watch, the service during the night against all that might threaten them during it.
Sylune’s Salute was most appealing to Good Spellcasters, and sailors at sea. A Light in the darkness, a way through the murk of dark knowledge and awareness of how deadly the world was out there, and a way home.
Most people being asleep at the time was another big reason it wasn’t as popular as the others were.
Princess Kristie Saluted Sylune as a matter of course. Hagchildren were intimately tied to the Silver Queen, and the very existence of the Rantha Curseline was evidence of the power of the Silver Queen against the darkest of magicks. Hagchildren in general could be released from the Hag Curse by Sylune’s power, and Ranthas, Ranthas WERE that light in the darkness of the Curse, and took the job very seriously, indeed.
“There is a light in the darkness.
Our Lady in Silver walks the night, not the day,
There to guide us on our way.
The Moon cries silver tears along the Shining Road,
The Court of Stars sings in the silence,
Where the dark would be deepest and strongest.
From the evening to the dawn afore.
Walk through the darkness and follow the path
Travel from light to light,
And sing to the Day once more!”
The gods did not answer here, save by the faintest connection to their Domains, which the words of the Salutes invoked.
That didn’t mean people didn’t have Faith. I adamantly knew the gods existed. Inability to contact them or be heard was not because they were absent, but because they were either very far away… or they were being blocked.
My Ur-Priest Class Levels made me VERY sensitive to matters of Faith. Ur-Priests were the First Priests, the Shapers of Faith, the ancient shamans who could turn faith in ANY entity into power and magic, taking the belief of their tribes and peoples in ancient things and entities and shaping it into something more… the first miracles!
The arrival of the gods and their formal styles of worship and greater power had given Ur-Priests a very bad name as Faith-stealers and con men who opportunistically served whatever deity figure was around, whether it was real or not… and their ability to steal Faith from even the gods was utterly reviled by the churches beneath them, allowing them to pass themselves off as priests of said gods, without even actually having any real belief in those gods!
But a Good Ur-priest of Heaven, who could take Faith from any Good god with their implicit permission to do so? With the option of also stealing it from Neutral and Evil gods who had earned such attention, in the tradition of the finest of tricksters?
That was just a generic priest of the Heavens themselves with an extra kicker… and deniability of mortal deeds where it was needed. After all, the gods themselves couldn’t tell when the Faith was stolen from them, they had to rely on mortal agents to suss such things out for them.
Mystic Renewal turned as the moon and stars glittered above me, and swept across my Valences with the reinvigoration of a new magical day for me.
Mental hands hit mental levers to release Karma, formulating what I intended to advance, the road already traveled, filling in what was already present with enlightenment and power.
Sage Sorcerer of the Arcane Bloodline, Level Nine!
Karma poured into my Matrix, peeled back the lines of resistance that might have taken prior Sorcerers years of introspection and self-study, and perhaps a lot of luck and magical accidents to unlock. Not knowing how to take the desired Spells when advancing, they would stumble into some other magical secret, making their advancement unpredictable and erratic, and forming the basis for the Wizardry that would follow in their footsteps, taking the way Sorcerers fumbled and wondered how their magic worked and decoding its secrets into the more predictable and disciplined art of Wizardry.
Where Sorcery and Wizardry came together, you had the Arcane Theurge, or Magos.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
I didn’t have to tolerate the random whims of magic depositing some sudden insight into a trick of the universe. I picked a spell off the Wall of them in my head and planted it, even as my Bloodline lit up with the conceptual heredity of countless Sorcerers Awakened to magic BY magic itself, and their desires and practices rippled from the akasha of the past into a form passed on to their successors.
The Arcane Bloodline of Sorcerers marked each of the Schools of Magic as it advanced in Level.
Ghost Sound was the automatic Cantrip every Arcane/Sage Sorcerer knew. It was the sound of Magic speaking to you, and thence to others.
Identify, a Divination, was the manifestation of the urge to understand what magic was at its core.
False Life, a Necromancy, was using magic to preserve your own life with magical strength and vitality.
Dispel Magic was an Abjuration, domination over others who thought they knew magic, taking it apart on them with your superior feel for the magic.
Improved Invisibility was an Illusion, allowing you to walk the world unseen and do battle when others could not perceive you, as if magic itself was striking at them!
Contingency was an Evocation spell, asking magic to do something if thus-and-so happened, and lo, magic obeyed your will!
Silver Magic sparkled around me as the Valence opened, the manafield reacting to the landmark novelty of a V Matrix Ring opening up, the greater power and control it represented, and the base magic that was now possible with it being there.
I didn’t have to be a Ten yet, and had no intentions of moving that way until all the Advanced Theurgies and Classes I could advance to /5 were taken… along with a LOT of Masteries. It was not that important, as long as I had the relevant Theurgies.
For instance, Teleport and Sending? They were both IV Valence spells to a Binder, drawing on dimensional magicks as they did. I already had access to IV Valence spells, and Writing up Teleport as a V in Sorcerer meant I could also put it down in my Binder Slots without any problem… tomorrow, when I took Eldritch Theurgy and got a bonus Eldritch Spell Known out of it, leaving my Domain Slot at V open for something else.
Like, oh, the Regenerate I was going to surprise the Mick with and give him back his ring finger. Another spell that could eat up a lot of Valences over the course of a day if I went off and used it for the public, hundreds of whom had scars and injuries they’d had to live with for years gained during the events of the Fall or afterwards, up to and including King Borelean himself.
There were… a lot of things to fill in.
Sorcerer Spell Known. Mastery for Extra Spell Known/5, the permanent version. Arcane Healing Domain. Ring Domain from a Witchbonded Ring. Divine Domain from Ur Levels.
Extra Spell Slots were forming, gaping holes eager to be filled with mana. Favored Class, Extra Spell Known of a level below the top I could learn.
Skill points, two plus Intelligence Modifier, said Modifier having gone up a LOT over the last few months as I rounded out my Deep levels and got them all to Four, along with maxing out my Mark for Intellect, and Sustained Effort did its thing.
I was actually pretty damn buff now, which was no surprise, as so was everyone else with Matrix Levels. Most people started higher than I had, of course, and I had regretfully found myself unable to work a Shadow Matrix and Nog myself up to Human Perfection, nor was I going to cripple my magical ability to do so.
I guess I would just have to be content with when I reached Ten and the Human Exemplar began to unlock, stacking with the Isparian Stat Raises began, and our Stats really began to shoot for the moon.
The only one currently benefiting from this was Lord Mick, and one of the reasons why he felt so domineering compared to the other Paramounts. He was basically getting Stat buffs similar to when the Gear was plentiful and Creature Magic Buffing Magic gave you bonuses for hours on end, making him right now the fastest, toughest, strongest, and wiliest of all the paramounts… BEFORE all the Feats and Masteries he had picked up kicked in.
Very few paramounts had actually seen him fight, and would have been hugely intimidated if they had. The Mick was now at least as murderously competent as he’d been before the Fall, Bunita was closing in on ten Slots and becoming an ultimate-tier mortal Weapon, and he was freaking enjoying the return to dominance of the physical melee combatant.
A bunch of things on Dereth had quietly found that out, too, as he ground his way up to Melee/10 with the wide non-Caster Classes on Deep support, mainly because Princess Kristie chewed the shit out of him any time he thought about going Higher any faster.
“I’ve got about a half hour of Meditation to do, and we can begin on our special projects,” I told everyone quietly.
Three base V Spell Slots. Four more from Int 45 Valence bonuses, for seven Slots each needing fifty mana-equivalent to fill. I had to settle all the new Domain Slots, fine-tune my Matrix, and get all my ducks in order to finally start on what we’d been planning all along.
We had plans we’d quietly put off until this moment, concentrating on basic grinding, recruiting, experimenting, and training. As the highest Level, Mick had the Allegiance lead as it was reformed, even if he deferred to Kris on most things, acknowledging just how ruinously adept she was, and she was only getting better.
It was time to go out into Dereth and make it a much less exciting place, and see just how much the powers there liked it when it was their turn to Fall…