The massive golden-furred Monkey-ape opposite the Tiger, a hundred feet at the shoulder and hugely muscled, screeched out in total delight, revealing gaping metallic fangs as tall as I was. “HAHAHAHAAH!” He bellowed with thunderous glee, pounding the stone of His place with humongous fists on overlong tree trunk-sized arms enthusiastically. “UNMAKING THE MAGIC OF AN EMPEROR! WEAK, THIS SILVER ELEMENT IS?” He chortled at the Tiger, who flushed in embarrassment.
None of them called me on my totally-obvious fib, of course. That would be rude given what I'd just done with a Mage-level spell!
Reynard had sidled in close to me so as to be able to keep breathing. I reached out to touch his head and stroke him soothingly, a gesture not lost on the watching Emperors.
I think they were a bit embarrassed as they hastily reined in their Presences, and Reynard’s rolling eyes came back down as his gasps and wheezing evened out a bit.
-You need to practice with Ancestor more if you’re going to be visiting Emperors,- I told him, giving his head a quick hug.
-Thought was tough!,- he complained, leaning in for more finger action. The fact I wasn’t overwhelmed by the Imperial Auras was quite apparent to everyone watching, of course, nor was I at all discomfited by being in the presence of so many overwhelmingly powerful Great Beasts.
“AN IMPRESSIVE DISPLAY.” His words were more thought than sound, of course, but it was still Heaven Westward Fox Emperor’s Voice. “COULD SUCH MAGIC BRING DOWN THE ICE EMPEROR’S GREAT FLOOD?” He asked me.
“Your Imperial Majesty, it is a question of scale. The Ice Emperor’s spell is both immense in size and self-regenerating. With the amount of Mana this one can wield, large sections of the spell could be shorn and torn apart, but they would merely regenerate shortly and The Great Flood return. This one conjectures that with tens of thousands of Castings she could exhaust His great spell enough to deplete it, which is a massive waste of everyone’s time.
“It is much the same as asking if Guan Yu Emperor could level every mountain in K’un-Lun. The answer is yes, but it would take so long it is not worth it to do so.”
The Tiger General huffed, His wounded ego soothed at the example.
Effectively, I’d need to dump basically ALL my Mana into the spell, which would clear The Great Flood out for a huge area in real terms, a tiny fraction of it in relative terms. Then I’d have to relocate to another area, get back all my Mana, and repeat the process.
In the meantime, Ice Emperor could just dump more Mana into the spell and it would be as good as ever.
“HOW DOES THUNDERBIRD INTEND TO HOST THIS COUNCIL?” Heaven Westward Fox Emperor asked firmly.
I tapped Noble on the ground again. “But give me a Token of your Will, Your Imperial Majesty. There is a Formation at Thunderbird Emperor’s Nest that will use them to allow all the Emperors to speak from across the world, without leaving their domains.” The Wills on Noble seemed to clink and clatter at mention of them.
He glanced about and inclined His regal head. Mythic Beasts, like the draco-elephantine Baku Emperor, joined the gorgeous Butterfly Queen, enthusiastic Monkey King, and more as all the Emperors made little gestures. Crystals and stones flew towards me, stacking up on my hand in jade and diamond and gold and other materials, all exquisitely carved.
The Psychic power and Will in the diamond and jade Seal given me by Heaven Westward Emperor was enough to inspire an Archmage to Sagedom. Its value was easy nine figures in dollars, and not the lower half, either. It could literally Make a Sage.
I tied and glued them all up one by one, trying not calculate the value of these things, just like I had tried not to calculate the others.
But, yeah, I had something in the neighborhood of five to six billion dollars in potential Sage-Enlightening Tokens hanging from Noble right now.
I admit I found it pretty funny.
“THIS SILVER MAGIC IS NOT A MAGIC WROUGHT BY ANY BEASTS,” Heaven Westward Fox Emperor commented intently. “HAVE YOU MORE SUCH SURPRISES, HEALER FAE?” He asked with curious amusement.
“Your Imperial Majesty, Summoning Magic is not something wielded by Beasts, either,” I pointed out gravely, and there were hurfs of amusement all around the Court at that simple observation. Summoning Magic had been known by Humans for thousands of years, of course. “But of course, a demonstration of some changes to the standard...”
I swept Noble back, expended Archmagic with 343 Mana, and the Portal formed almost instantly, flaring open as Reynard and I turned around. We both bowed even lower than we had to Heaven Westward Fox Emperor, whose dark eyes widened very quickly after He saw the size of the Portal... and also that no Beast could actually pass through it.
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Then the Aura leaked just a bit from the other side, and all the Court of K’un-Lun went deathly still.
“Healer Fae greets Flowing Silver Nine-Tails Fox High Emperor!”
The Portal bent in an arc, allowing Flowing Silver, sitting up on a mountain peak and looking over His realm, to see the entirety of the Court at once.
“HO, WHAT FUN IS THIS? A WHOLE COURT OF JUNIORS?” the massive figure of the High Emperor observed of the shocked K’un-Lun Court. “I THOUGHT YOU WERE SAVING SUCH INTRODUCTIONS FOR LATER, HEALER FAE!” he half-laughed.
Despite the fact there was an entire dimension between them, the whole Court did not make a sound at being called Juniors. They were still stunned at the abrupt appearance of a High Emperor right in front of them... called by a Human!
“Heaven Westward Fox True Emperor asked for a display of other magicks not used by Beasts, Your Imperial Majesty,” I explained calmly.
“WELL, SAVE THE TRUE SHOW FOR THUNDERBIRD’S LITTLE COUNCIL, IF THEY WANT MORE OF A DISPLAY. I SEE ONE OF CRIMSON DREAM’S KIN HAS MADE SOMETHING OF HIMSELF HERE, SO LET US TALK AMONG EMPERORS. YOU MAY DEPART.”
And in a very minor show of power, Void Magic reached out through the Portal, swept over Reynard and I, and deposited us down the audience hall and back at the doorway.
Reynard was trying very hard not to giggle. -Ancestor make big impression!- he puffed up in delight.
“Like He can possibly NOT make a big impression,” I murmured back, swinging up on top of Reynard as he got back to his feet. “Hey, let’s go flying down out of here into India, see the sights on the way.” The Tokens of the entire Court glimmered on Noble, including Garuda’s. No fliers were going to bother us on the way down.
-Oh, very fun!- Reynard agreed, spreading his wings, his paws misting with Soul Tats, and he bounded for the edge of the plateau.
Even if the Emperors could Maze the whole thing at will, it wasn’t right now, so the first-ever true map of K’un-Lun and the Himalayas was going into The Map for people to oohh and ahhh over.
The ‘Beasts are just savage creatures’ meme was getting clouted on the side of the head more and more as they saw the wonders of what the Beasts had wrought and how they lived together. It wasn’t magitechnology and steel, but it was Magic and Nature at its most wonderful level.
The high end of Beast society was every bit as advanced in its own way as the highest level of ours...
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I wrought the capstone, and the Altar atop it that was meant to call out to gods who were not present. Fire Phoenix Emperor watched the long and careful empowerment of it closely, His own Blessing Magic swirling about it and sinking into the stone ‘around’ the Formation and magical Rune Circuits I’d empowered into everything.
He didn’t wait for it to levitate into place on its own, bending down with His burning wings, easily grasping the multi-ton block in His talons, and helped lift it cleanly and surely into place atop the Pyramid that poked up through the underside of His Nest.
The Stone slid into place, and the Rune Formation was completed.
Fire swirled and grew, but this Pyramid had been washed beginning to end with Chaos, Healing, and Blessing Magic as it was put together, and so the pillar of Fire that lit off towards the sky was indeed something different than just heat and power.
It was glorious life-affirming flame of a Phoenix, reaching up to salute the Heavens and bring joy and wonder to the land as the Pyramid Power field reached out for eighty miles in all directions. It did not quite cover all the Firelands, but as I’d noted, other Pyramids could be raised to envelop those areas not covered in the future, and they certainly weren’t going to be worse off, only not as good as those covered now.
Rain began to fall. Burning, golden rain from a cloudless night sky, precipitation that harmed nothing beneath it, warm and friendly and pouring down all the Beasts of the Firelands who came out to bathe in it, and exult in the magic and the grace of the Emperor of their Firelands.
I sang the Sublime Chord, and Fire Phoenix joined in the parts He could, His voice ringing throughout His new Domain, the second true Domain of an Imperial Beast upon North America.
I also hit Twelve in Sorcerer, which meant I could now hit Seven in all the Secondary Classes. That was important because Seven was also the post-Human Level, and so an important step in every Class, even if they weren’t Primary.
The sensation wasn’t that of the huge influx of a Glory Award, but more of a barrier being removed by the world because I was worthy of advancing. After all, no spellcaster other than a Sage had ever exceeded Seven in a Class on this world, limited by the specifics of their Magery system and the Human Racial Class tied to it.
Briggs and Sama had, of course, but they had their own broken Rantha Racial Class, so that didn’t count. The magic of the world here could no more limit them than it could stop the sun from rising.
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Back at Coralost...
“Mwahahahaha! The Internet is blowing up! This time the effect got a lot of witnesses, and there’s already been some Fire Mages testing the borders of His Domain!”
Sama was reading stuff as it was scrolling rapidly by, while Markspace was also lighting up. Of course, she wasn’t in just any chat boards. She was in the very hush-hush and conservative ones used by very self-important people with very self-important goals, all of them pretty much universally horrified by the fact Fire Phoenix now had an Imperial Demesne and was pretty much immune to being attacked in His own lands now, regardless of how many Sages wandered over to do so.
“Yeah, well, they wanted the benefits of the Heavenly Rain, and really didn’t get there in time to participate.”
Unlike, oh, ALL our Fire Element Mages. Red had straight-up made Archmage, and Sunny had broken through to Ruler-Class. Most of the Fire Mages had straight-up maxed out their current cultivation, and were ready for or had broken through to the next Level, a feat equaled by many Beasts with Fire who were Contracted with us or not.
Even Lord Quake had been allowed to participate in the Heavenly Rain with Big John, although he’d had to swear an Oath of Fealty to Fire Phoenix Emperor. He had done so with great eagerness, totally willing to serve under the greatest Fire Emperor in the world, having no desire whatsoever to go back to the Charlands of Heavenly Fire Emperor.