“Bird incoming!” Helix called out.
The Coal Apes were plenty dead, including their brute of a ruler. They were baboon-like things being led by a burning gorilla the size of an elephant, big and strong and hey, they couldn’t fly.
Briggs, Sama, and The Mick naturally went in to mess with them personally anyways, while the rest of us blasted them from on high. I didn’t bother to show off, as I preferred to work on rep counts rather than Kill Them All Fast, and everyone else was perfectly willing to strut their stuff and blow the shit out of things, getting their practice in.
First thing was always to loot the fundamenta of Spirit Beasts, that being whatever gem or crystal or whatever congealed their internal Qi. The things burned like cordwood in vivus, straight Power Comp, even if it was aligned to Fire. There wasn’t a shortage of interest in fire-related magic stuff, for some odd reason.
Then skin them, butcher them, salvage any organs or bones that had value, Itemize them, and ship them out via Teleport Item. The cooks and butchers in the distance cheered “Cha-ching! Cha-ching!” whenever new carcasses popped in...
I could see the fire luan coming from some distance away. While Helix was keeping Eagle Eyes up at all times, loving the spell’s visual acuity, I had taken the next step past that and made it Permanent.
Yeah, I had Exemplar Surge’d for the Permanency spell some time ago. The flexibility of having a bunch of spells available to be made Permanent, without having to go through the process of Item Creation, was nice. It only required goldweight to put in place, and some Karma, if you cast them on yourself.
The Mick had given some lip service protest when I started Energizing some gemstones, and then promptly used them up in some personal Buffing process. I gave him a copy of Permanency, the spells it could be used with, and he muttered curses in Gaelic on how long it was going to take him to reach Nine and do that for himself.
Of the many hundreds of spells out there, there were only a few score that would work with Permanency. But, since I had the goldweight and could go get the spells, all of which I had planned for and Surge’d to acquire some time ago, there was no reason not to do this.
The wonderful thing about personal Permanent effects was that they could not be Dispelled unless the Caster actually had a higher Caster Level than that used to establish the effects... and then it still had to get past +6 worth of Girding. By making all the spells Good, and Cold, adding my First Star, Mage of the Wild, and Stormcaster, well, I was Casting at 25, which should be higher than anyone or anything on the planet. I could upgrade later, when I got more Stars...
So, yeah, I had blown dozens of goldweight from Energized gemstones on Permanency effects for myself.
Those spells that I could Widen to double their range, or otherwise improve, I had, and if not, I had Raised them to V Valence, because I could do that, too.
They had all noticed my eyes had a lot more glow to them than before, which was a clear sign of a lot of active Divination magic being used, and basically just chalked it up to me being able to Cast stuff that strong.
So, yeah, I could see the bird coming instantly. Eagle Eyes gave a vision multiplier equal to 2x the Caster Level, so Helix was sitting on x10... and I was sitting on x50, the limit of the spell.
The thing was a few miles away, but I could see it looking right at us, and indeed, our eyes met across that distance as it swooped down towards us.
I saw the flicker in its flaming plumage as it registered that. It plainly wasn’t expecting us to have someone who could meet its eyes over such a distance.
“The bird is coming right for us,” I told everyone. “Kindly lock it down once it arrives, we don’t want it getting away.” I frowned as I continued to watch it as it closed in.
See the Invisible was another Permanent I now had. “It’s got two invisible riders on it!” I notified everyone.
Heads turned my way. “Cultivators...” The Mick drawled. “I’m looking forward to meeting one of these. Lads and ladies, no obliterations, please! I do have to sample them at least once, if only to spit it out.”
Despite themselves, everyone smirked. If the blood of these creatures wasn’t so good for power comps, The Mick would have laid claim to all of it, bottled it, and sold it for massive amounts of money to the Blooded Clans. Since it was simpler to just use them to power stuff up, he had refrained... except for a few bottles he had sold for greater than their goldweight value in replacement to some discerning connoisseurs, and started a whole new market among his folk.
There had been some interest in organizing hunting teams to harvest this new treat, on top of the astounding meat being harvested, but The Mick had informed them that such creatures in the Firezone would be going extinct soon, and the only sources of them would be in China and India.
Some people started looking at the money to be made, and considered what might be done in those two distant places...
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“I’ve got the other one,” Sama said agreeably.
“Safe distance, swap in slugs,” Briggs ordered the others, who started shifting ammunition on their shotguns, or moving to armor-piercing rounds they had to insert by hand. “Trav, you got this?”
“I believe so.” I had been saving it, so for the first time since Mexico, I cast a Crown of Stars.
Motes of starfire gathered and danced around me, glittering and forming up into a brilliant, glittering diadem of Force magic around my head. They were literal Shards, held there and dancing in place, ready to be unleashed; one at a time as a free action per cycle, or three with some minor attention.
“Shiiiit,” Sama muttered, counting them at a glance.
There were thirty-six of them, scattering snowflakes around me with the chill dripping off them, super-conducted tiny sparks of lightning arcing between them with crystalline chimes. Sama’s Sword promptly began to sing along with them, and her Shield to beat to it. Endure promptly added some bass.
The fire luan had no idea what that signified, of course, but she relayed it back to the two fellows on her back, who promptly began to gesture and chant, and send whirls of Qi around all of themselves as they Buffed up cautiously to receive us.
That we weren’t doing the same overall either meant we were stupid, or very confident that all our defenses were basically as good as they were going to get.
Or maybe that some spells you didn’t Cast until right before the fight, because of duration, but that was something different.
“What do you think is going to happen?” Briggs asked, solemn and unmoved by the rapid approach of the magnificent bird.
“Massive AoE fire attack on the approach, with a couple possible attack or binding spells from the riders,” I replied. “Master Fred, please Ward the lads there.”
I didn’t actually need to say that to him, as one of the Permanent effects I’d put into place was Telepathic Bond, which I had set up between us with his agreement. Using the Mark resonance he had with the Mark Sama had Tatted on him, the range of it was unlimited, even extraplanar. Div Warding effects could interrupt it, of course, but distance was no factor at all.
It was a communication tool, not a mind-reading device, but there was no way not to get a mental impression of the other person through it.
His mind was, mmm, dense, solid, stable. It wasn’t slow... it was just packed, focused, and all the extraneous, errant thought and emotion had been burned away. Like a solid-state computer, few ripples, less cold than simply cool and serene.
Given the density of his mind, he actually had all the normal emotional strength of a person, but his thought structure was so reinforced that it barely moved him much. He wasn’t a logical machine, either, as he was far from emotionless... his emotions just couldn’t dominate the strength of his thoughts, any more than logic could trap his slow movements and changes into stasis.
I couldn’t recall another mind like it. With all that, the pain that seared up and out from within it from his Hellpact just washed over his thoughts and past him, and didn’t sway him, either. If anything, the hellfire was just tempering him, making the gold of the soul beneath harder, brighter, shinier, exactly the opposite of what it was trying to do.
When Hell came back and got a good look at him, they were going to vomit blood or something. Their Hellpact had helped make a tremendously Good soul, and even if they got to cook him for a time for his sins, what they got out of him before they had to hand him back over to Heaven was going to be miniscule compared to what he was taking from them.
I could understand why Shvaughn was so attracted to him. She was basically the ultimate result of what a Hellpact could achieve, the Hungry Heart taken to its full end and abused constantly.
He was the antithesis of what a Hellpact wanted, and the pain it was inflicting on him was only making him more stalwart in his course.
What he thought of me he kept to himself, although he did do a double-take at the first mental contact. He had probably never touched someone with such high mental Stats before, even though he was anything but a slouch.
I represented more Karma shaved away from Aelryinth than Master Fred had earned in his life. It made a difference, it did.
Sama tossed her voice my way. “Okay, I’ll bite. Thirty-eight of the damn things?”
“Crown of Stars has a higher cap on the amount of Shards it manifests, if it comes out of higher Valence,” I tossed back at her. The reason for that was pretty simple. Since it could only ‘release’ up to three at a time, the structure of the spell was pretty stable, and so exceeded normal damage caps on spells.
Of course, there was a workaround for this...
So, yes, I was Casting a Shard-type spell at CL 36 now, getting +2 post-Cast from Shardcaster. Crown of Stars was my Valence III Thematic Spell, too!
My Caster Level was still going to go up! I still had a lot of Reserves to get...
-------
It wasn’t very apparent when the luan started picking up speed, but the flames it was trailing behind grew longer, and its metallic feathers began to pulse and change and move with energies sweeping through them, growing out from its wings and gathering.
It was swooping down at us at speed, getting ready to unleash everything, a truly massive AoE, at least equal to a Firestorm, and probably maxed out with its Qi flames...
Nopers!
My opening attack wasn’t Shards or anything, because dumb. Nope, my attack was a Sudden Reaching Spellflare. Sudden Extend, if manifested on a spell without a duration, could be swapped over to Reach. I was taking advantage of it.
The luan was still fifteen hundred feet away when the glittery jetsilver Orb with a thousand multi-colored strings of lightning within it flashed up. It tried to bank, but the spell was a tracking effect, and slammed right into its breastbone.
It was my V Valence Thematic Spell. Base Caster Level 10, +4 Dispel, +1 Star, +2 Cold Magic, +2 Mage of the Wild, +1 Stormcaster, +1 Earth Spell standing on the ground, +1 Words of Creation, +4 Aligned Theurgy Silver Magic, and Arcane Mastery, take 10 on Caster Level Checks.
Base 36, against at best a target of 32, if it Cast at Twenty and was Girded.
It probably thought its Qi Resistance would deal with the spell’s effects, using it like Soak to pay off the damage.
That didn’t work, because all the damage was coming from its own power. I was hitting it with a Spellflare, an area-effect, ten-meter radius Dispelling abjuration against all extant spells in the AoE, and blowing them apart for (d6+5)/Valence-equivalent in damage when I tore them apart. Power in the Blood, Fell Frozen, and Power of the Wild were all in effect here, for a straight +5 damage per die...
That included the monster of an AoE it was preparing, all the Buffs from the Cultivators... and since they were in the area of effect, ON the Cultivators!