Sama had already started her killing spree, instant kills abounding as Tremble flowed Ruby and did her thing, leaving the corpses for me to reduce down and toss into storage... and a whole lot of local webbing which I started to roll up, too.
The majority of the Spiders she was running across were naturally the smaller ones, which were the easiest to kill and not be missed. I actually caught up to her fairly quickly, using non-Void Magic TK from Zeben to roll up their webbing in tight coils. The Spiders had no idea what was going on as we disassembled a good chunk of their sensory network, popped off waiting Night Weavers who did not believe they could be surprised in their own shadowy web-festooned territory, and generally cut through them with impossible speed and surety.
Humans not able to fight so good, eh? Well, let me introduce Sama Rantha to you...
King Dorado had never actually seen Sama at work like this, and was kind of slack-jawed as he relayed what was happening to his guards. One strike, one kill. Barely a twitch, nerve ganglia shredded, no squealing alarms, no final shrieks, no spasmodic twitches. Just punching through a shell it would take his strongest blow to crack, taking out the brains and equivalent of a spinal cord, and the Night Weaver slowly collapsing in on itself as it lost tension in its legs.
Then I came in, severed its webbing from the sensory network, rolled it all up, stuffed that away with the corpse, and we were on to the next!
Sama had definitely been here before, and she knew her way around. She was aware of where the Spiders should be, what to avoid, and how to approach the locations. My Divs sussing them out just helped take care of any random factors.
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We popped off fifteen of the things, only one of them at the true Commander Level, basically gutting the younger generation before wimping out and leaving. The Baroness would feel the deaths of the more powerful Spiders and could probably cover the ten miles to here in seconds, so no reason to test that out.
There was, however, reason to try out some of the best alchemical explosives we needed to field-test in the various egg chambers and whatnot.
Sama popped the button, and six pyroclastic explosions erupted through the jungle, covering the egg chambers in bone-melting Pyrophorus fire, really doing a bloody number on the places as they did.
The Monkeys watching from the distance saw the Baroness materialize, her Aura paralyzing everything around her, and then equally quickly vanish in a blur of Void Magic. Night Weavers were going wild in the ancient ruins of the temples back there, but we were already gone. Huge swaths of their web network were aflame and vanishing, and with it the gathered influence of Shadow in the area.
There were still minor Conduits in the area, existing connections to Shadow made by the ancient peoples who had once lived here in the past, all obsessed with death, and we weren’t going to be able to clear them as long as the Baroness was here.
That did not mean we weren’t going to continually whittle down her species, as we were pretty sure that their home origin was not on Earth. That belief was based on the memories of King Dorado and some of the other Beasts, who could not remember the Night Weavers ‘always being there’. They’d likely been sent/emigrated from Shadow to the Mortal Plane to help spread Shadow and Poison as Dark Magic...
Regardless of that, we were a fine distance from the lair when the explosions blew, the Baroness wasn’t going to find us, and so much of the web network burned away in all directions there was no way she could even tell what direction we came from or who or what had killed everything.
Well, the quasi-magical fire and explosions practically reeked of Humans, sure, and I was pretty sure they’d heard Tremble before, and Sama laughing at them.
King Dorado and the five volunteer Monkeys were waiting for us, with Reynard deigning to allow his new personal hairdresser to ride him. I had the feeling they were going to be thick as thieves about certain things rather soon, but also that the little Marmoset was going to get a rude shock when it came time to Contract, and Reynard was anticipating that bit of fun, too.
The feast this time was a bit quieter, as the Monkey King didn’t want to attract the attention of the Baroness. On the other hand, he also knew he needed to grow the power of his Stick, and it was probably the thing that would save him if the Night Weaver Baroness decided to pay a social call.
The fact King Dorado could now reach all the way across the world and ask for help from us was also something he could not do before, as well as ask for advice, and both keep informed of stuff and keep us informed of stuff.
The Monkeys had gained a new and very, very keen appreciation for stealth skills they had not had before, being more the gang-up-and-kill-them-with-numbers type of Beasts, and maybe some of the Monkeys would be testing out to see just how sneaky they could become...
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The people Reynard picked out for the various Monkeys weren’t on the main combat teams, but they did do Boonies duty, or, for those on the West Coast or in Mexico, Baja duty, so the Monkeys would be getting some combat experience.
The Monkeys were basically all Plant or Earth-biased, hardly a surprise, which worked out well. Three of the four were allocated, beside my little Emperor Tamarin the Mighty Turk, who literally fell off Reynard’s back in paralyzed fright when I received and acknowledged his Contract. He was a clever little fellow, and if not as sneaky-minded as Reynard, he definitely had a wily streak to him that I was sure he and Reynard were going to put to good use.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He was also awed and shocked when I shared the power of Heaven with him, and his Bloodline immediately began to change...
The Monkeys were there to learn how to fight, to see the world of Humans, and expose themselves to us and our weird society. Bringing them all the way to the north, where snow actually fell and there weren’t Trees and Flowers and Birds and Snakes and Bugs all around was a totally new experience for them. They were soon bouncing all over the Coralost Compound exploring everything... and being careful, as these weren’t millennia-old forest hardwoods that could take the impact of their steel-hard bodies so easily.
Briggs remarked that we were going to have to teach them lightfoot in some form or another, just to save wear and tear on the buildings, and Sama agreed.
Soon enough there were Monkey Trees all over the place, odd pillars and things of stone the Monkeys could leap along and to and from, with trailing chains, branches that occasionally rotated and moved, sometimes links between them, sometimes requiring them to jump; with ramps and slides and poles and ladders and perches and other things for them to blow off steam and wander around as needed.
The engineers had a hoot putting the things up and designing them, and the Monkeys even helped. Sure, there were no skyscraper-high trees, but going up a few hundred feet wasn’t much of a problem, and if it meant some of the newer buildings were going up with a decidedly more, uh, natural design than before, that was just a challenge.
They loved going around with their Contractors and looking at the strange, smelly, unnatural, weirdly rigid Human society, finding out about stuff, asking a lot of questions, and so on. Their insights were usually very blunt, often crude, and really not that much different than many of the other Contracted Beasts.
General agreement: Humans were strange.
That only got more intense when they got Marked and were exposed to all those bright, smart, flashing Human minds... and the other ones way up the scale in there, moving like titans in the Markspace, and their own King Dorado wasn’t even one of them!
Regular Oak and Willow lessons started, and were dutifully attended to every day. King Dorado practiced along with them down in his jungle home, helping introduce his people to them, albeit without the helpful physical touch and guidance of a certain someone. A lot of combat wizards clutching their Staves attended right alongside the Monkeys, with the Monkeys being excellent sparring partners who could easily display how strong and overwhelming trying to take on Beasts without magic really was. Mages went flying and learned how to roll with it, Monkeys beat them up and hooted and danced in dominance displays... and then got to learn how to fight spellcasters, going flying and bouncing and rolling and smoking in turn.
All in good fun and practice, and the Monkeys grew to learn of and really appreciate Healing Magic and what it could do for them.
==========
The Lighthouse Novice spells went public as promised, a year to the day after it was set up. Oddly enough, the number of people willing to pay full price for the reservations at the Lighthouse and the ‘improved’ versions of the spells didn’t really tail off.
Schoolchildren in the Magic Schools of Michigan received them for free. Basically, every adult with Light Magic in the country and then overseas bought them as rapidly as they could be made, a surge of expected income.
Also, the Adept-Level Light Spells went on sale, for five thousand dollars each, or highest bidder for the first five hundred every day.
And there were twelve of them!
It was almost an upheaval. Revealing six Novice level spells per Element had been a game changer, sure, but they’d been Novice spells.
TWELVE new spells of one Element, and all of them a Tier higher!
Sharp-eyed watchers videotaping our KIA crews at the Boonies had seen signs of multiple spells of Adept or higher, but hadn’t been able to confirm anything with the dreaded Coralost Code of Silence on such matters. Even under the best of enticements, none of the Coralost Crew said a damn thing...
Adepts of Light were practically frothing at the mouth to rush over and get the spells. It was a level of magic versatility basically not seen before Archmagery, and now it could all be theirs!
There were nowhere near as many Adepts around as there were Novices, but for some reason, we didn’t have any problem keeping the queues full. Adepts, Mages, and Archmages from all over the world were soon arriving to gain the new spells and what insights they could glean from using them towards their own advancement.
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The opening of the Blessinghouse outside the Arlington National Cemetery didn’t cause the intellectual furor that the Lighthouse’s Adept spells did, but it clearly did not make the Acropolis happy at all.
It was the first of the Advanced Lighthouses, being able to Awaken the Element only for an Adept or higher-Level user. Furthermore, the criteria to do so were strict, and it could only be done with the help of another Blessing Element user supplying the power to do so.
If one failed at opening the Blessing Element, it would devolve into Healing or Light or Water. Success was assured if one qualified (the nebulous ‘Good heart’ requirement) and was a Mage or Archmage, but otherwise there was a risk of failure.
It wasn’t exactly a high-demand Element to have, but the Blessing Element users and potential users nevertheless flocked to the outskirts of the American capitol city to gain access to the new spells. An overwhelming number of them were Acropolis members, but it was apparent to anyone that their dominance in the number of Blessing Element users was going to suffer in the coming years. They no longer had the monopoly in the training of the Blessing spells anymore, or in deliberately Awakening it.
However, the criteria for Awakening the Blessing Element at the Blessinghouse was much stricter than doing so outside of it, much to the surprise of many people, including the Acropolis, who found that a good chunk of the people they sent over simply were not eligible to use the Awakening Stone there!
The five spells of Frenzied Speed, Endless Energy, Heavenly Insights, Elemental Energy, and Sacred Crafting were all amazingly useful, multiplying the diversity of the Blessing Element manyfold, and even the Acropolis went silent after realizing just how well the minor spells helped out other mages and themselves. Although more than a few ardent members of the Acropolis called for the Blessinghouse to be destroyed, the rest looked at the Lighthouse and the twelve additional Adept spells of Light there. They realized those might be happening for the Blessing Element, and that Coralost could simply keep the Blessing Elements benefits strictly for themselves in the future if any action was taken.
The youngest candidate for Divine Mother of the Acropolis, the Lady Sakura, startled everyone by making an executive decision to reserve as many positions at the Blessinghouse for her followers as possible as quickly as she could. Almost all of the early positions were snatched up, leaving her rivals to stew with their followers over getting the spells themselves, and basically cementing the Acropolis’ position for them.