Forward to the Future, Engage!...

I listened to Warp mutants dying in the distance. Someone was shooting them down with extreme prejudice. After the general thinning they’d received at my hands, it was a bit too much for the poor lads, and they were just dying off.

Heh! I glanced at the airborne leader’s skull, thoughtfully piked while his corpse burned off. The heart of his hieracosphinx mount was already tucked away with a couple gallons of its blood, head also piked next to its master. I’d also salvaged its claws and pinfeathers, good stuff there.

I’d disassembled the two chariots, and made a few cookfires out of them, throwing in a whole lot of crude spear hafts and bows as ready fuel. Tremble’s vivic fire had carefully gone through and purified them, eating away the mutated life energies and stuff from the pigs as the gutted, cleaned, and stripped carcasses rotated over some cook fires, getting that preliminary sealing-in as I got some coals going.

They were big pigs, but you know, once you get the innards, skin, and major bones out, several hundred pounds of meat doesn’t actually take up that much room.

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I was in the middle of burying the second pig when the natives finally ‘found’ me.

They showed themselves in the distance cautiously, drawing attention away from the fact that several of them had actually stolen to within thirty yards of me. I had little to no reaction, intent on my cooking, digging out the hole for the meat with a shovel, wrapping it up in its own hide, then putting some dirt and all the coals back over it, dropping a few more chopped-up spears Tremble had gathered up on top, and proceeding on to the next one.

This continued as more and more of them started to pop up around me. The lack of reaction from me, and Tremble zipping past a few of them with more spears, bows, and arrows to burn, emboldened them, until several hundred were in the vicinity, watching me sitting there going through ornamentation and items ripped off the dead. Forge was melting down the gold and metal I thought salvageable… and Tremble was energetically feasting on the Staff the Shaman had been wielding, crooning a politely damning song in demonic as she devoured and purified the magic in it.

There was more magic here than she could eat in one day, but happily they had some crude gemstones and a surfeit of gold here, so I got together some easy Runework Capacitors, and she shunted the Karma into Stand, Fall, and these storage devices, getting rid of the unclean magic in the process.

Of course, watching Forge and Tremble slag several dozen magical Weapons and Armor was kind of impressive, and kind of put the watching elves off, especially as they considered the Cabinets sitting on the ground over there, totally out of place in this setting.

I made some of the melted armor into rectangular ingots, then cleared off the ground and let most of the scrap form a big round and rather hot slab… which I smoothed off with my bare hands, still totally ignoring them.

They were pretty patient and polite, and didn’t bug me while I was working, despite being pretty nervous. Of course, I was watching them alertly the whole time. Half-elves, halvyr, dominated their numbers. At least two races of elves, judging by skin tones… no, three, if I included the golden-skinned, silver-haired might-I-just-be-a-Caster elfin over there, watching me while barely blinking and trying to hide some frustration and uneasiness in her I’m-not-a-sun-dress robe. Sylvan, moon, sun elves; green-tinted, pale blue-tinted white, and golden skin tones, respectively. Rural, suburban, and urban, if I wanted to be snide.

Their tech level seemed to be late medieval, although metal quality of their gear was superb. Double-stitching, high QL, not at all bad, but of course magic supplemented all of that.

They had some riders in the back, mostly just light horses for riding around, not for fighting. No large deer or anything, but caribou of size and moose were better for war than travel, anyways. Mostly infantry, leather armor or light mail, a surfeit of bows and blades, and a great deal of curiosity.

I took the four rectangles I’d made, smashed them into the ground, and impressed them all when I picked up the big flat circle of hot metal and slammed it down atop them, creating a low table instantly, and making them blink when they realized it.

I sniffed, and trotted over to Pig #1. I kicked away the red coals with my bare feet, reached down into the heart of them, and drew out the bundle of wrapped meat with one hand. The lump of it was three times as big as I was, but I manhandled it without effort. I plopped it down on the table, unwrapped the hide, and let the sizzling meat out there to be displayed for all of them to see.

The smell of it spread very quickly, and their faces changed as they fought off their drool, and wondered just what I was going to do with all of that.

Tremble slapped down into my hand, and I began to cut.

Tremble went through butterfly patterns in blurs of motion, faster than their eyes could track. The circles were very tight and small, chopping through two feet or more of pork without much problem, moving from the top, which was a head above me, all the way to the bottom with rapid ease, well over a hundred strokes. I slid a half-circle around it, cutting it from top to bottom four times.

Fragrant juices were oozing out of it, sizzling on the hot metal.

“There’s three more coming. Eat up.”

They all blinked at the words in Fey, looked at me, and then their eyes turned to the tall and, ah, robustly-built redhead over there with the five-foot sword in I’m-really-forester’s leathers, too much skin and everything.

The corner of her lip turned up. She glanced at the silver-haired elfin Caster, who just shrugged a tiny bit, and then waved her hand.

A cheer went up, and it was time to eat.

Their packs were hurriedly retrieved, eating utensils brought out, and thick chunks of savory pork impaled and passed out. Quite true to my word, the second mound of meat slammed down opposite the remains of the first, eliciting another eager cry, and the force of armed elf-bloods got down to some serious eating.

I put out Forge, leveled it out into a floating round table, flipped open a Cabinet and retrieved a collapsible chair I’d made out of scrap metal, snapped it into form, and then popped out a couple collapsible small stools, setting them opposite me. A gallon jug of water was set down, Tremble kindly froze it ice cold, and even dropped some ice cubes in it as conjured water fell off her freezing blade.

Three carved stone mugs were set down, I sat down on my seat as Tremble delivered a couple cuts of pork to me, added in a bowl of berries I’d harvested wandering around, and I began to eat.

Redhead and Silverhair moved smoothly to join me. They looked over all my worldly belongings, assessing things, glancing at one another without speaking.

I kept my Tats up, because I didn’t feel like being looked down on as a teenaged human child. The black and white Mask of Clarity turning my pupils celeste and my irises hard sapphire was both intimidating and not something they could ignore, while the Whiskers of the Wild looked at once playful and somehow savage, holding power of its own.

Tremble zipped over to float at my shoulder, finding all of this extremely interesting, but knowing enough to give me the lead.

“Welcome to my table,” I said in clearly accented Fey, making it obvious it wasn’t my native tongue, but I felt they should know it. “I am Sama Rantha. May I know who I have the pleasure of hosting?”

Manners brought them up, as the clarity of my voice and the power behind it did not match my attire or appearance.

The redhead took the lead. “I am Captain Shvaughn Turnleaf of the Sidhete Borderguard. This is Usilla Clearsky, Diviner of the Borderguard.” Her accent was quite musical. Fey was a shadowy tongue, full of cunning twists and treacherous flexibility, and sounded too ‘bright’ coming from her lips.

It was a good sign.

“Welcome to my table.” They had set down their own servings of the pork, adding in some apples and nuts from their personal provisions. I poured them clear, cold water, and slid the cups across to them with a tap of my finger. “You’ll have to forgive the lack of provisions. I honestly do not eat much, and most of the plants I harvest are for alchemical purposes, not sustenance… and I do not think it would be appropriate to sample some of my mushrooms in this venue.”

They blinked, and then their eyes danced scandalously despite themselves. “It is a small matter,” Shvaughn waved off, taking a drink of the cold water, her eyes widening slightly at the pleasing chill of it. “You are, after all, feeding a rather large number of my warriors.”

“I would have let you sample the hieracosphinx too, but the corruption was too deep. The vivic fires couldn’t leave any behind, unlike the boars.” I sighed slightly, then sniffed. “One moment, I will get the last two servings ready.”

The warriors cheered again when two more monstrous helpings of pork were slammed sizzling down on the now-greasy table strewn with meat, and the few who hadn’t had any yet hurried over to take their fill.

They noted professionally that not a drop of juice or ash was clinging to me when I returned. “Well, Captain, Diviner, I suppose you have some questions for me… ah, wait one more second.” I glided away, opened another cabinet, and took out several items within. I glided back to them, and placed them calmly in the center of Forge as they stared. “I believe you might know who these belonged to?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

They were the finely-made grey-green cloaks and well-made arms I’d retrieved from several monster lairs, and identical to those worn by many of the elf-bloods around me.

Both women stiffened when I set the five stacked parcels down, glancing at one another. The Diviner reached out her hand, and trailed them down the revealed edges of swords, daggers, and cloaks.

“Enthrus. Ambrosa. Kihilim. Marasanae. Qosh’Sha,” she named off slowly, her golden eyes fading to white for a moment as she recited the names. She blinked, her eyes cleared, and whatever she was going to say faded slightly when my fingers drifted over my two-inch thick pork loin, and it fell apart as neatly as if razors had shaved through it. “Ah. May I ask where you found them?”

“Top two, nest of a Blood Widow, the mandibles of which are hanging there.” I thumbed at the forearm-long things hanging on the door to one of my Cabinets. “Next one in the lair of the Scorpion Emperor. Last two in the nest of a dread of Warp manticores. Had to fix the holes in those two.” They blinked despite themselves as their eyes found the tail stinger of the scorpion and whip-thorn tail of the manticore leader.

“Warp manticores?” the redhead repeated curiously.

“The corruptive energies you sensed around the satyrs, centaurs, minotaurs, manotaurs, and other bestial creatures here were the result of Warp energies. We’re suffering an Incursion, that’s with a capital I, from the home realm of the Dark Gods. I trust you know of the four of them?”

They looked stunned. “Are you certain?” Shvaughn blurted out in shock.

“A hundred percent? No. Ninety percent, yes. This is a typical Warp warband, sent out to slaughter everything in their path and stir up some fun for their dark masters. They also carry forward the corrupting influence of the Warp. You know the ultimate goal of the Dark Gods is the seizure of the entire planet, drawing it into their sphere of influence and cutting off the power of the gods, who generally get rather pissed off when the Dark Gods try this shit.

“However, using Warp warbands allows them to conceal their presence from the direct attention of the Divine. The gods don’t know anything is happening here until we happen to tell them.” I set my gaze on the Diviner. “Do you have your Five Valences, and are you capable of establishing contact with a beneficial power of the Upper Spheres?”

She blinked at me, thinking through her reply. “Yes, I could request answers of a higher power-” she began, and I shook my hand and head at the same time.

“No no no. You are going to be asking questions, but only to get around the powers the Dark Gods have put out to veil themselves. You must follow the rules, but if you know what the rules are, it’s not that hard to put out the alarm.

“You are now the informer for the Divine, not the supplicant. We want the gods to take action, to get other pieces in place.

“You need to ask your Contact the following questions: Do you know that there is a Greater Warp Incursion occurring in the lands to the north of the Sidhete? Can you spread this news to all the celestial forces who would be interested in this news? Is it all right if we keep pursuing destruction of these forces with extreme prejudice?”

She looked at me, her lips pursing as her eyes lit up, as she realized the tables had been turned. She was now the source of unknown lore and secrets, and the gods were now relying on her to get the secrets to them!

“If I seek to just tell them in normal prayer or Sendings…?” she asked softly, eyes keen.

“Your words will never reach them. jRaztl is very, very good at misdirecting such things, or making them gibberish to be ignored,” I sniffed, and then smiled. “Gods fooling gods happens all the time. It’s why the gods of Good strive to keep a good relationship with their followers. Information going in both directions is one of the strongest bonds between gods and mortals. The gods of the Warp really try to batter this relationship and weaken it to further their own view of how things should be.

“The faster you can get the word out, the faster the Good gods can start moving their servants hither and yon, and directly acting against their influence.”

“And you?” Shvaughn asked, not unreasonably, gesturing at the carnage about. “It seems you have some sort of vested interest in killing these creatures, too.”

“I’m a Forsaken, and the gods can’t hear me, or I would’ve told them about this earlier,” I said, completely sidestepping the fact that I’d deduced what they were just hours ago myself. “I consider myself a nominal follower of Aethra and Mithar, and these creatures are very, very appropriate creatures to fight. Hence, I am fighting them.”

“You… seem to have no Aura,” the Diviner spoke up, staring at me again. “I can sense nothing about you…” Her voice held traces of uncertainty and suspicion.

“I’m a Forsaken Null. Trying to read the magic about me is like pouring water on stone. The water does nothing, and the stone doesn’t even feel it. Surely you have some knowledge of Forsaken?” I asked the Diviner dryly.

She seemed uncertain. “The term is used in many ways, and few of them are complimentary or actually descriptive. Most refer to people who have been abandoned by the gods…”

I smiled despite myself. “That’s quite the stupid description, as the gods don’t abandon anyone who doesn’t abandon them… the gods of Good, at least. No, Forsaken basically refers to those people with Hard Souls, who thus can’t wield magic. From the outside, it looks like magic, the gods, the powers above, Luck, Fate, whatever, have abandoned them. What it actually means is they have little to no influence over us, they can’t hear or see us, and so we live our lives without any profound influences directly meddling with us.”

Both of them blinked. As Elfin and Halvyri, of course, they lived and breathed magic, and probably wouldn’t even be elf-bloods without it, as the general consensus back home was that in most fantasy worlds under the Power of Ten rules, elves would just be a species of humans altered at the genetic level by pure magical power, hence able to interbreed with us.

“A Hard Soul, that cannot wield magic,” repeated the diviner Usilla, considering that. “What of the magic you used to pull the flying creatures from the air?” she challenged me quickly.

“What magic? I didn’t use any magic. I just reinforced physical reality. Harpies, manticora, and heiracosphinxes can’t fly, any more than you can.” They blinked at me in disbelief. “Seriously, their wing size and power to weight and area ratios needed to actually fly are totally out of whack.

“Take any bird, measure its wingspan and area, and then look at its weight. Their wings cover a big area for how much they weigh. Any creature bigger than an eagle flying around, can’t actually fly. It’s using magic to remain airborne. I just remind reality that it doesn’t have to put up with that aeromantic nonsense, King Gravity wakes up, sneezes, and down they come, flapping their useless wings that can’t possibly support them without magic… aaaaand splat.” I slapped the table nicely, and they both jumped.

“Stillflight is a fairly powerful magic!” she pointed out quickly.

“And it affects birds, because it uses geomancy to counter lift. A Forsaken version does not. I’m not spending magic to fight magic. I’m letting physics know it doesn’t have to take this magical bending of the rules, and it enforces the rules. Very different in application. Normal birds have no trouble flying in a Null Interdiction.”

She stared at me thoughtfully. “And this… enforcement of rules is why I can see nothing about you magically?”

“I’m a Null. Magic doesn’t move around me. Your magic, my magic, the world’s magic. Your magic is hitting my Null and stops moving. Naturally, it doesn’t return to you and feed you information, nor does it glow and give you something to read and interpret. It just stops.”

That information didn’t appear to make her happy. “I was unable to see you through clairvoyance…”

“Magical spell conveying light magically. How could it possibly see me?” I snorted.

“And the lightning bolt hit you… and just vanished into nothing, like sinking into a void in front of you,” Shvaughn remembered.

“No, the magic just stopped, returned to its default and went back where it came from, exactly as if it had not been Cast at me at all. Magic lightning bolt is still magic. When the magic stops, it is no longer lightning, and just goes away,” I explained lightly.

Shvaughn held her hand up to forestall more questions from Usilla. “Have you a course of action you are intent upon?” she inquired of me.

“Well, first, you should vivify the corpses of every single one of these creatures you killed,” I stated in no uncertain terms. “These creatures were once normal humans, who have been twisted by Warp energy into their mutated forms and become what you saw. They were not twisted satyrs, centaurs, and whatnot. The Warp energies changed them and their children into those forms, so that they could better fight and slay in the name of the Dark Gods.”

I heard indrawn breaths from those around listening to us talk. I didn’t disguise the facts from them.

“You let their bodies fester, the bugs will eat them, and that mutating energy will get into the ecosystem. Things will eat the bugs, concentrate the energy, pass it on to the creatures that eat them… or their own offspring. In a short period of time, this area will explode with savagely mutated creatures who respond to the will of the Warp.

“However, if you vivify them… you are taking an alien energy, purifying and refining it, and feeding it to the Land. Which means you are strengthening and reinforcing the Land against the influence of the Warp. It can birth more treelords, elemental defenders, empower more Druidic servants, and the like.

“If you handle this correctly, this invasion by the Warp could be the same as delivering a huge and hearty meal to the Land, as all the energy they put into their servants here becomes a big draught of ambrosia for it.”

They both stared at me, then at each other, considering this point.

“This aspect of their invasion is the most insidious and the hardest to fight against, because it means after the fight is done, there’s still more work to do. You don’t gain any direct reward from doing this clean-up work… but the Land has other ways of showing its favor, and it will know who is doing what.

“There’s a reason there’s a whole lot of white patches where the things I killed used to be, now.”

Shvaughn turned around and looked at some of her troops nearby, those who had autumnal leaf badges at the collars of their cloaks. Those rangers sighed good-naturedly, and turned around to start issuing orders to those behind.

“Have you an easy way to spread this vivic flame? Such a power is not well known here,” the captain spoke up. She glanced at Tremble tellingly.

So did I. “Go get Ash Nap.”

Tremble flickered over to the armory cabinet, slid it open a couple inches with Cantrip-level magic, and a scabbarded ivory-hilted Dagger floated out. Both zipped back to the table, and she dropped it politely down in front of the two women.

“Ash Nap is a basic Final Rest Knife whose primary purpose is battlefield or civilian removal of accrued corpses and carcasses so as to deny necromancers bodies to harvest and reanimate. You are welcome to use it as long as you wish. I suggest just gathering bodies at several locations, and using Ash Nap to set each stack of carcasses alight. They’ll burn down to white dust in a few hours, feed the energy to the Land, and a lot of flowers will bloom there shortly.”

Usilla picked it up, wrapping long and slender fingers around the hilt. The hilt was a bit too thin for her hand, but some leather wrappings could easily fix that.

“What manner of ivory?” she asked, staring at it. “I can sense more potential within it.”

“Breastbone of a shellycoat.” She blinked in astonishment. “She took an ash nap, and that’s all that’s left of her, helping the Land she used to corrupt.”

“We will see to it the dead are cleaned up. Is this vivic flame a power widely known where you are from?”

“Yes. It’s necrotaoic magic, the exact opposite of necroic energies. It feeds on death and impurity and reduces them to natural powers. Pretty much a necessity given how easily undead rise back home. Can’t leave corpses around, or your dead loved ones try to kill you sooner rather than later.”

“Ah. Certainly an impetus to find such a useful effect,” Shvaughn agreed, taking the knife and drawing it from the scabbard. The enhanced bone gleamed mirror-smooth, sharp and severe and definitely not a toy. “This is fine work,” she observed, impressed, and flinched when the unwhite vivic flame suddenly poofed into existence around it.

“Eh. QL 30. I didn’t put a lot of time and effort into it. You can raise it up to Vier Slots, but I wasn’t going to invest that much into it.”

Both of them blinked at me, not knowing what I was talking about.

“Are you familiar with Quality Levels sans magical item creation?” I asked archly. They both shook their heads. “Slots on magical Weapons and Armor, and relevance to Quality Levels?” They shook their heads again, looking more interested now. “Oi, how do you magical people go through life not knowing this stuff? Don’t answer that.” They shut their mouths.