“The weird thing that Magic does is waste the power. Cold Magic actually reaches out there and reduces heat, making the dance of matter slow down, forcing a gas to condense into liquid, and then pressures a liquid to stop moving and freeze into a solid.
“That... is dumb, and I don’t do that with my Cold Magic.
“Instead of nullifying the heat, I just move it. Everything that my Shards burn, I also suck out all the heat from that which is NOT burning around it, and feed it into the Fire.
“Because I’m not cancelling out the heat energy, just transferring it, it is twice as effective. Because I’m adding extra energy to the Fire, the Fire burns hotter than it would otherwise.
“Cold feeds the Fire. They are two sides of the same coin. Make the one side very, very cold, and you can make the other side very hot, indeed.”
He was almost staggering with the implications of simple thermodynamics applying to magic. I could feel his thoughts churning in the Manafield. “Can this... can this apply to other Magicks?” he asked faintly, reeling at the concept.
“What do you mean, ‘can’? It already does.” I gestured ahead of us, to where more Shades were concealed by folds in the hills ahead of us as I skimmed and he tottered distractedly in that direction. The Silver Foxes could change their size, so he didn’t look as big as a Commander-ranked Beast should right now, making him a more effective bodyguard. “What do you think Light and Shadow are? Draw the light out of an area, you plunge it into darkness. Add it to another, and it gets brighter. Shadow is completely dependent upon Light. That’s why it is so vulnerable to it.”
I pointed at a thirty-foot boulder ahead of us. “Think of how much that boulder weighs. It’s pressing down on the ground with all that weight of gravity and air pressure above us.
“Instead of creating a massive downthrust of gravitational pressure with your Void Magic, why don’t you just take all the pressure which is right there, and drop it on the heads of those Shades over yonder?”
He blinked once, and bounded over to the rock. He was horse-sized right now, but Silver Foxes were still fast as lightning, and he bounced to the top of the boulder effortlessly, staring into the distance.
There was a ripple of Spatial magic. It wasn’t very powerful, and the boulder under his paws seemed to tremble just a little bit.
I felt the presence of the Shades a quarter-mile away and behind cover wink out one by one. The effort he took to flatten them was minimal, a fraction of what he would have used to generate the force himself.
Soul Crystals were dropping into my Void Pocket constantly. Mage Telekinesis had a range of line of sight, and a massive weight limit. I could clean up basically everything within visual range without a problem, and there were also scattered Servant and Warrior Beasts who collected the dropped Crystals, knowing they were valuable, just not why. The unaligned Mana did almost nothing for them, as their evolution was always along Bloodlines which were dependent on biased, Aligned Mana.
Perhaps in time they’d find a use for them. But I could certainly use them, and I did. After all, it took thousands of them to make a Ruler-ranked Soul Jewel, which treated exactly one Star of mine, and I had so many potential Stars in my future...
“This is a great truth of the world,” Winkle whispered, looking around. “Do not create the strength from nothing unless you must, borrow it from elsewhere...”
“Yes.” I Skimmed up on my Disk next to him. “Fire and Cold are nothing more than points on a line of energy and states of matter. To those looking on from the outside, it is simply matter in motion. It starts frozen and brittle. It becomes less brittle, more metallic, before it suddenly melts and becomes liquid. Liquid boils and becomes gas. Gas ignites and becomes plasma fire. Plasma rips free of matter and becomes charged particles of moving energetic lightning. Lightning loses particle cohesion, and becomes waves of light.
“In the truth of the Void, it’s all one. Matter and energy are the exact same things at different stages along the way.”
“It’s all one...”
The Manafield was burbling with his thoughts, he was definitely on the edge of a breakthrough of some kind.
“I think I’m done hunting for the day. Why don’t you take a rest as we go back.” Pumping Mana into the spell, I made a Disk a full ten feet across, and rather distracted, he slid up onto it, curled into a circle, and laid down, staring straight ahead at nothing as his mind churned and his half-dozen Tails twitched constantly.
“Elder Jay!” I waved to the blue and green Avian, who obligingly flitted over next to me. “I’m going to have you ignite those dead Shades up ahead for us.” I wove an Eternal Light, and much to his surprise, put it on the tip of his longest right talon.
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The big Zephyr Jay tilted his head sharply and stared at it in fascination as it burned on the tip of his claw without harming him in the slightest. He could feel that he could push the spell off and nullify it without much effort, but it was definitely attention-getting as it burned there.
Rather delighted with the showiness of it, he chirped at me and flew cautiously out ahead. I could have told him there wasn’t anything Shadowy within a mile, as Winkle had excitedly crushed them all into dissolving paste as he borrowed the weight of the boulder to do the job for him.
It was all good. I turned around and headed back the miles to my healing station and Torch-making area, certain there was more work to do after I was done with my Meditations.
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Nine-Tailed Silver Foxes had to accumulate power to their Bloodlines to grow like any other Beast, and it was just as difficult for them as any other.
However, their true power had always lay in the power of their Will, and the Psychic and Void Spheres that ran on that Will. Sure, it made them less adept at slaughtering armies (at least, until you remembered they also used Air), but it made even the lesser Foxes capable of taking on stronger opponents and dominating them in the mental arena.
Achieving Nine Tails weren’t a reflection of their size, but of their Wills. Winkle was starting to grow his Seventh Tail!
He was decades early in the process, basically a guarantee that he would make Noble some day, probably as soon as the resources could be gathered to aid in his physical evolution. The Silver Foxes were all delighted that another Baron would be joining them shortly, and they weren’t dumb.
It was plain hanging around with the furless monkey was proving to be very beneficial in many ways!
To the Silver Foxes, Will was something that was pitted against obstructions, barriers, and others, alternately a scalpel or a hammer as needed, their great weapon against their opponents.
To be able to use the Will and existence of the very world around them to do as they wished, instead of having to overcome it... it was a fantastic piece of enlightenment. Instead of wrestling with the Will of the World, they could use it for themselves instead!
It was little wonder his Will was undergoing an evolution, as everything he had learned about it was now being turned on its head. He could still slam into stuff, sure, but if he could only Borrow some strength to do the same thing, wasn’t his Will naturally stronger just for being able to do so?
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Days pass as Winkle completes his sudden Enlightenment on magic vs the reality of heat...
I stared at the two ornate jade head-sized half-eggs in some astonishment. The shattered remnants of two shattered eggs, one’s fragments glowing and moving like a lava lamp, the other glittering like mist-filled frozen crystals, filled each of them, waves of the Fire and Cold innate to them bearing peculiar Energized qualities to them at the high end of the scale.
The two great Birds of Paradise who had delivered them to me looked down from thirty feet up there aloofly. Their size was a mistake to judge them by, as they were both Noble-ranked, and their Bloodline only below that of a true Phoenix itself.
A Fire and a Cold Luan; one with blazing plumage in the golds, oranges, and reds of fire, and one with all the icy blues, whites, and pale greens of frost.
Their arrival had caused a stir among the Beasts, as their Bloodlines were in no way inferior to that of the Silver Foxes. Their command of Fire and Ice was acknowledged to be at the very highest levels of all Beasts, surpassed only by Phoenixes and the purest of Dragons, so them coming here was quite an event.
They were delivering to me the remnants of their eggs at the behest of their Emperor, probably favor-trading from the Flowing Silver Emperor after I’d also Healed hundreds of the Shiningwing Emperor’s servants.
Eyes golden and clear looked down on me, and despite their beauty and majesty, I could sense their disapproval. Not only was this precious gift being given to a being they did not decide themselves, it was to a Human, a creature who should not even be in the Beast World to begin with!
The last thing I wanted was the disapproval of two literal Rulers of the skies. Whether or not they understood the value of the vivic fire, this was something personal to the two of them, and they didn’t care about the other implications or arguments.
The fact I had a latent Fire and Cold Bloodline was apparent to both of them, and I could tell they found it curious, but not vital.
Thinking furiously, I bowed to the two of them. “If it pleases the Elders, I would first give them something in return for the honor of their presence.” I explicitly said nothing about the eggshells, as they were obviously something out of both of our hands. Emperors had decided, and that was that.
“A... gift?” the haughty warbling of the male replied, definitely looking down upon me. “What manner of gift could such as you give us, Human hatchling?” he asked scornfully.
“Indeed!” I agreed with him, making both of them blink. I turned around. “Master Deeproot, could you raise for me a thirty-foot cube right over there?” I asked the shale-colored Deep Armadillo who had hung around after being fixed up, the metallic layers of his hide splattered here and there with gold and silver badges of honor.
The Commander-ranked fellow perked up, happy to help out, and dug his massive metallic claws into the ground. With just a flexing of his Will, and a small scattering of assembled Beasts who were being careful to stay humble in the presence of the Ruling Birds, a clear block of sandstone hefted itself out of the ground.
I brought up my Shards.
I had the full set of Snowcaster Metas, and the full set of Silver Pyro Metas. I had to be careful about wielding those two energies, keeping them in balance, and so I tended to learn Fire and Cold stuff either alternating or in sets, one after the other.
Despite themselves, the heads of the Luans tilted to get a good look at the flames hot and cold writhing and whirling in and around my Shards, and only getting hotter and colder as they did so, instead of canceling out.
Without preamble, I began to shoot the cube.
Each Shard went out, one by one, every half-second, keeping up a continuous rain upon the cube. Around me, the air temperature dropped, and ice spread on the ground, even as streaks of Fire in all sorts of hues twisted through the air and slammed into the stone ever more savagely.
The Shards bored holes into the stone, melting and searing craters into it, yet around the impact sites the stone was frozen clean and brittle. Fire and Ice didn’t war at all there, and my machine-gun volley of magic cracked and banged into the stone in a straight line, impacts of Fire getting larger and deeper, the ringing of Ice harsher and cracking more violently about them.