Orykson froze as he felt the planar membrane of the world crack at the very edges of his territory, and Aerde began to accelerate their way through the data as quickly as possible.
Some, like the Storm King, questioned why Orykson had ‘wasted’ one of his three spellbinder bonds on a simple knowledge elemental that he’d saved in the wastes of Aergarde.
After all, Orykson was a remarkably intelligent man, and his variations of the Raise Dead spell were still in use to this day. He could have designed whatever spells he needed for himself, and ghosts would work just fine as a knowledge source.
Moments like these were why he was so confident in his choice.
He would have very little time to act before the other powers started to move, and if he’d relied on a ghost network for his knowledge, he may have freed his spellbinder bond, but he would have been that fractionally slower to act.
Before the Spatial King could extend her senses out of her Tower City, before the Keeper could warp time to arrive, before the Antqueen could raise her children’s powers, and well before any of the false occultists in Delitone could move from their marble towers, Orykson cast a massive anti-teleportation ward over the entire island, preventing anyone from getting anywhere near. They could leave – he wasn’t going to waste mana to needlessly lock people inside – but entry? That would be far harder.
It wasn’t impenetrable of course. Nothing was – they’d be able to get in eventually. But it could buy him critical moments to figure out what was going on.
Aerde’s senses allowed him to manifest an invisible eye with Revelatory Sight running through the construct over the island where the Idyll-Flume was anchored.
The planar flume that the Sevenfold Celestial Annoyance had built had been broken, and Orykson felt his jaw grit in annoyance.
Most people thought that the sage had simply warded the anchor point between Idyll’s domain and the normal world, and truthfully, for most intents and purposes, that was close enough to accurate that Orykson felt no need to instruct them on the truth.
But it wasn’t true. The sage had constructed a secondary, incredibly small, but still functional astral plane, and moved Idyll through it, anchoring her entryway there, and altering the astral plane to conform to precise rules.
Orykson had tried to slip past those rules a few times, but they were solid. The only way to get through the flume was to break it, and doing that would sever Idyll from this world. Her realm would vanish instantly, and the spirit would die within seconds, maybe minutes.
Since Idyll’s realm was where the sage had placed his own Destiny Well, Hereditament Headstone, and Gate-gifting Circle, her realm was far too valuable to risk hurting.
Which is what made it utterly inconceivable that someone had blown up the flume.
Orykson and Aerde split their focus, half of them working to act now, and half of them working to figure out what had happened.
Aerde’s eyes flickered and spells wove through the air, and it became clear that someone had used an item, activated by the power of a seventh gate mage, and the help of multiple supporting casters.
A warlock who’d been bound to a multi-local warpspirit, infused with a voidseed.
What a waste, someone who had that much innate connection to Resolve could have gone on to do some truly impressive things.
Then again, most of those who had a connection to Resolve wound up killing themselves in pursuit of their goals, so he shouldn’t be surprised. Not everyone could be him, after all.
But why bother? And who had created the artifact?
Orykson and Aerde traced the lineages of the warlock and their supporting arcanists, and he had to resist a snort.
All of them were descendants of people who’d participated in the original Idyll-Flume, six generations ago. Four of them had gone on to lodge complaints with local powers about the fact that the sage had trapped his familiars within, and had been told that there was nothing to be done about it.
Since then, all of their families had participated in the Idyll-Flume one way or another, almost every generation, though a few had missed some.
The artifact had been commissioned from The Craftsman when the warlock had stumbled across the enigmatic man’s wandering workshop.
The Craftsman had created a preservation stone, but it had then been modified by the gemstone dragon.
That made sense, the old dragon had been a master enchanter, only a few steps shy of the Craftsman. Shame he’d focused on quantity, rather than quality…
Orykson’s eyes narrowed.
That was their game, then. The dragon had provided the magic to allow Idyll to form as a Genius Loci, while the Craftsman’s magic would keep her safely contained for a little while. It was a shame Idyll would lose so much of her power with the destruction of her realm – she could have been a valuable asset.
The Craftsman had been smarter than the kid, though. He’d woven in magic to the stone’s magic that also reforged the realms, creating temporary, unstable planes that would give each of the children time to escape, formed around the strongest points of magic in Idyll’s old realm.
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Annoyingly for Orykson, these temporary enforced several of the old rules, ensuring that the children would have a chance to claim most of the old prizes, all save the Destiny Well.
The destruction of the well would be the perfect ground to produce a worldspirit, maybe even two or three. He’d have to search out anyone who survived and escaped to see if they were willing to sell the infant spirits. He’d been shocked when Malachi had formed one, he’d be thrown into the maw of the beast before he lost an attempt to gain another. The lucky child…
Orykson soothed his irritation by reminding himself that he could look over the enchantment work. He could build something similar, if he had time to prepare the enchantments, but he couldn’t have fit it into such a small item, and examining it in the moments before it was used could be useful to pushing forward his skills.
Calmer, he examined the rest of what had happened.
Orykson had to resist a snort when he noticed that his ex-apprentice had tried to stop one of the supporters. That boy was far too much of a bleeding heart. At least he’d been clever enough to use his new spells well. Of course, if Orykson had been guiding the boy, he would have made it to at least the fourth floor by the time these crazed sympathizers had made their move, but what was done was done.
While half of him delved into that, the other half was dealing with the practicality of this situation.
The bird and dragon, still battling in the air, appeared before him, the dragon clutching the orb that held Idyll in his claws.
“How could you!” the bird cried. “You–”
The bird was cut off as Orykson extended one hand and conjured his life and soul eating dragons, filling the air with six of the forged living spells. He then spoke, his smooth voice filling the air.
“What exactly are the two of you going to do, now that you’re free?”
They turned, and Elio extended the orb.
“I plan to re-establish my sister’s domain,” he said, his voice dark, challenging Orykson to stop him.
“You’re welcome to do so,” he said, inclining his head. “While I suspect that the city of Delitone would object strongly to you claiming them as territory, you could attempt as much. But if you’d prefer someplace with a little less… Problematic… guests, the Isle of Crysite has gone largely uninhabited for more than a century now.”
“Of course, you just want to enslave me like the sage did,” Elio growled.
“The sage was no slaver!” the bird called out. “Just because you were too much of a fool to listen to his benevolent wisdom is no fault of his!”
Orykson’s eyes narrowed, but he just turned to Elio.
“I am not a slaver,” he said, calmly but firmly. “I allow those who work under me to operate by and large as freely as you wish. Certain societal changes are required, in order to keep ups in line with the greater nation of Elohi, but otherwise you are allowed to operate as you wish.”
“The unclaimed continent?” the bird asked skeptically. “How many Occultists could they have?”
“Four magi and six true occultists,” Orkson said calmly. “As such, I’ve found it best to mimic many of their social policies.”
“Impossible,” Elio said, but it was clear he didn’t believe it. “The…”
He trailed off as, in near unison, the Space King teleported into the air next to Orykson, and a portal appeared, the Antqueen poking her head through.
The massive ant was easily the size of a house, and her head alone was massive. The compound eyes took in everything at once, and the antenna twitched, then the head receded and the portal snapped shut.
The Space King turned to look at Orykson, clutching a bottle of Witchlight Bourbon in one hand. She’d been drinking it with no refinement, straight from the bottle, and he had to wonder if she’d done that solely to annoy him.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m willing to beat whatever offer this idiot’s made the two of you for you to join my tower.”
She sloshed the bottle and frowned.
“Oh, I’m almost empty…”
Orykson hit her with a banishing spell, tucking her away in a demiplane. It was incredibly wasteful – the plane he was banishing her to had been one of his designed countermeasures to hold the Space King, and not one that was easy to get out of.
But it felt so good.
“As I was saying…” he drawled. “Elio, I’m willing to provide ample, largely unclaimed but nominally under my control lands for you. You could re-establish yourself and your sister in the wider world as Occultists under my jurisdiction that way.”
“And if I want nothing of politics?” Elio growled, while the bird wisely turned and started to flee. With some interest, Orykson noted it was flying in the direction of Tianzhu.
That would be interesting. The Shining Spirits would likely react poorly to the invasion, but none of them had managed to form a title. The bird and dragon were both close to titles, stymied for over a century and a half by the sage’s interference.
If the Shining Spirits and bird worked together, or if they fought, it might push one to form a title, and that would push the rebellious state closer to outright war with Daocheng.
“You’re going to need a physical space for Idyll to occupy,” Orykson pointed out. “That’s going to require some degree of politicking, unless you plan to stop anyone from living there, condemning her to a life even more lonely than the one she lived before…”
---
Deep within the unclaimed lands, the leader of the cult of the primes watched Orykson and Elio argue through one of her scrying mirrors. On another, she had a recording of what each of the nine agents she’d managed to slip into the Idyll-Flume had managed to do.
The plan had worked flawlessly. It might have taken over a century to build and execute, cost an absurd amount of money to keep the Magi from noticing, and only have been the first of many steps, but finally, finally, it had worked!
As a nice little bonus, she’d managed to kill off the kid that Orykson and Ikki had taken an interest in. That was worth ensuring that Travis would meet an untimely death to stop people from looking too closely at his actions.
Ikki would be sad, but Orykson had to be truly incensed, especially since he’d deployed a contingency against the Spatial King. He was used to shaping monsters. Everyone he’d personally tutored, even if it was only for a year or so as a reward for the Elysian Mastery Tournament, had reached at least sixth gate on their own merit, and most had gone to seventh.
Having one of them die as a rank beginner?
It was simply too rich!
She took a break from laughing to examine the prizes of their actions. Some things were ordinary advancement tools, meant to help her and her Praetors push up in gates. Those were rare and expensive, but not the true goal.
No, the most important byproduct was the birth of three infant worldspirits, one of which her agent was currently tending. The agent would keep that one, since there was no doubt that Orykson would notice it within seconds.
That was annoying, but ultimately good. It would reinforce the cover that they were simply a group of freedom fighting extremists, entirely unrelated to the cult of the primes.
But in the moment the realm had broken, in the moments where even Orykson’s knowledge spirit would be unable to see, she’d snatched one, moving across space to bring it to her, burning a fortune’s worth of magical items and power to ensure she’d go undetected.
And it had worked!
A private realm, one that could be raised outside of the watchful eye of the Magi.
One that, better yet, would be impossible for the Magi to see or detect. A place for her and the Praetors to finally form their own titles.
She and the others would need to go quiet for a while, but that was fine. She’d stir up the publicly known parts of the cult from the shadows, and instruct her Tribunes to begin moving.
Who knew? If she was lucky, they might even manage to retrieve a piece of the key to the Primes’ prison…