Another day of random Crafting lost. It was good Naming Karma was a thing.
Guangzhou was digging out from the wind and rain and devastation, but for all the deafening assault of the magical storm, it had done precious little damage to the abodes of normal humans. Some had died as buildings collapsed, and I regretted it, but the way it hampered the mobility and visibility of both forces of Cultivators, and provided an extra punch from above that had killed thousands of them and breached all their strongholds was not something I could give up.
It was war. When they saw the stacked corpses burning unwhite with unnatural vigor as the power they’d stolen was returned to the Land, they’d probably think the same.
“Brother Wavespear, Brother Wayfist, Brother Lightscepter, there is no need to conceal yourselves. I am not your enemy.”
The three Presences that had gathered around me hesitated, so I dropped pebbles on their heads to show that I could tell exactly where they were. Chagrinned and nervous, they melted out of cover to look at me there on the edge of the cliff, still riding Sleipner.
“You will forgive us if we are cautious,” the trim middle-aged Wayfist half-bowed to me, moving with a deft precision that heralded very advanced open-hand skills. “Your senses are keen to notice us, great Lady,” he said carefully.
“On the contrary, I can’t detect you at all. What I can detect is those trails of Qi you’ve ripped apart and exuded as the purest mana behind you, and the touch you’ve left on them.” I flipped around to face them, while Master Fred just sat there as his scarred self and said nothing, although one could say he had a certain pressure to him.
All three of them sighed. They needed to manifest Voids to escape magical senses, but the Qi here was so thick that it meant they started carving paths through it in so doing.
“There are other ways to sense you, of course, but the obvious trails you are making are merely the easiest to notice, Brothers. Did you come here to receive a Blessing?” I asked them cheerfully.
The three humans looked at each other uncertainly. Brother Wayfist was the oldest, trim and athletic, small as the Chinese often were. Brother Wavespear was also short, but brawny and paler of eye than a normal Chinese, with wide shoulders and banded with muscle. Brother Lightscepter was tall and with a receding chin, giving him a rather weak face, but his eyes were large and very intense, a disturbing combination that made him look like a fanatic... and since he could feel Faith, that probably wasn’t far off.
“Our apologies, but we do not know who you are,” the Wavespear grunted suspiciously. “The level of power you have displayed is far beyond that we’ve ever seen from a mortal.”
I noticed they were not speaking Human. Of course.
“Would you like to speak with your Brothers about me and mine?” I flicked up a Holo of the orc, human, and hyn of Ancientaxe, Firesword, and Shadowknife, and they all blinked.
“You... have contact with them?” Lightscepter asked, staring at me, probably not even aware of how unnerving he was.
“I do. As a matter of fact, I can get you in contact with them on a direct basis in mere seconds, or...” I nudged Master Fred, who held up his Vaccine, “I can just get them on the phone. Which would you prefer?”
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They ended up turning down the phones, mostly because someone else was assigned to them to handle their data and communication needs, and they had no phones themselves. Batteries and charging weren’t easy to come by out here.
Then they decided to keep their +4 to Intellect bonuses, talking with other Void Brothers here and across the ocean, learning Human, and generally were rather agog at the massive community of people with all that not very pragmatic goodwill in the Markspace.
One of the Skills all of them received was Tattoo Artist. They were all Tens, if with, um, not very optimized builds and Gear, but ten Ranks is ten Ranks, and they could train it up to be able to apply Marks... if they went Veil-walking up to Sama and got a Mark of their own to fit their Blessing inside.
Spreading Marks to the deserving was like a really Good thing, and a great way to reward those who worked with them. The trio were on their way north while Master Fred and I headed south... south along the road the Buddhists had come by, riding invisibly, and with a Duskstopped Commune with Nature moving with me, giving me perfect knowledge of the terrain for The Map for ninety miles around... and awareness of Qi and those drawing on it.
Sleipner was plotting his course accordingly.
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“... and dreams of the wind at dawn.”
Ding! Ding! Ding!
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The last three days had been hectic, and I really hadn’t cared what I’d been getting, focused on rep counts, gawdawful Levels of Concentration and targeting, and simply monstrous levels of spellcasting.
Today’s addition was Witch/5. The previous days had been Warshaper/3 and Magus/5.
It appeared the Shroud was worried about shapeshifters for some reason, because the first two Feats were directly related to it. Countenance of the Mage gave me a Unique appearance, instantly recognizable; grooming at will; and altering my own clothing at will. Basically, it let a spellcaster always look sharp, tidy, and stylish if they willed it.
True Name meant that I could not be duplicated or imitated believably. Conversely, I couldn’t seem to be anyone else, as no other Name would stick to me.
I was the Lady Traveler, and nobody else could pretend to be so without instantly looking like a cheap fraud, no matter how closely they imitated me.
It also built upon my online identity and prepped me for the world stage.
Spellwarp Mastery/4 now extended to converting IV’s to Rays.
Warshaper/3 built on minor shapechanging to extend my physical reach by 5 feet, giving me the ability to instantly lengthen my limbs and retract them, or just plain bend and stretch as if my bones were rubber.
It came with White Fist: Use Healing Reserve or Cure spells freely during unarmed attacks... which conflated with Spellstrike through my Staff, too. The Mastery was Moon Dragon Mastery/1, which gave me access to the first level of Moon Dragon Forms, and +1 Ki.
Magus/5 increased the bonus a Pool point could give to a Weapon of mine to +2, along with the option of alternate Enhancements. The bonus Magus Feat was Enduring Blade, which increased the duration of that boost from one minute to one minute per Caster Level, for 1 Pool Point. Okay, that wasn’t bad...
Purchased Feat was another Magus Feat, Hasted Assault: Spend 1 Pool, gain Haste for rounds equal to Intellect bonus. That... actually wasn’t that bad, either, if I could recharge them fast.
The Mastery was Extra Pool/1: +1 Pool Point. Mmm. Well, the more, the merrier.
The General Feat was Of the Invulnerable World, a +1 Meta that made your spells work like those in a video game, i.e., they did absolutely no harm to objects, the terrain, or the environment, even if they blew the creatures on them into atoms.
I had actually been getting rep counts in on this, because it was a nice thing to have free on AoE’s for situations like, oh, being in a city and tossing block-clearing magic around at throngs of smiling, chanting, mindless minions of faux-Axiom.
Today was also the day that Einz finished up his mission of becoming Indestructible, which greatly soothed both our minds. Nothing short of a god’s direct efforts were going to be able to harm him now, so he could only get stronger.
Tomorrow Einz would begin his telepathy/intelligence upgrade. That was going to take a while, too.
I had the feeling my Class Levels were winding down, as if all the big stuff I needed had been taken, and there was going to be a long lull of progress ahead of me.
Catching up on my Masteries, no doubt. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a crapload of them to fill in. Heck, I still needed Concentration/5 to get my Sage of Focus, tyvm!
I’d been busy, eh.
-------
“Waghh!”
I turned a lazy eye on the brunette Amazon who was now wearing Master Fred’s adjusted clothes. Her surprise and the alarm on her face didn’t affect the arm that was extending his Grit, or the aim that blew a Buddhist’s smiling head off brilliantly, either, forking to take out his two assistants, too.
Scything Shards ripped through the village as we rode through, and left burning Buddhists scattered everywhere on vivic fire. It literally did not matter if they thanked us or not, all these twats still had to die.
I had found sixteen Qi-Forming Formations disguised as sites of worship before getting here, too. They stood out like foul centers of pustulence in Commune with Nature...
Her alarm had steadied down to confusion, especially when her hands were still shooting, and she wasn’t actually guiding the motorcycle at all. She did watch me burn down hundreds of chanting acolytes and disciples, went a little white at the scattered body parts burning in swathes and heaps as we went by, and remained very quiet as we pulled out of the town, at least three thousand dead Buddhists behind us.
“So,” I asked conversationally, as Sleipner adjusted course towards the next Formation for me to set on vivic fire and reverse its functions, “who might I ask is currently wearing my Warlock’s clothes?”
I leaned forward on her shoulders, which were arguably approaching the strength of steel and could support a tank, let alone me. I did not keep the dry amusement out of my voice.
“My-my name is Candace Stryther,” she answered in a firm British accent, watching her hands put away Fred’s Grit. “I was an Amazon in Hong Kong.”
And I didn’t recognize her, so not one of the two I’d put down to start the show.
“An Amazon of Rue.” I was right next to her ear, and she couldn’t draw away or throw me off, because she wasn’t really in control. “Miss Stryther, you may consider me extremely unimpressed with you.”
She took a deep breath despite herself. “That is... understandable.”
“Mmm.” I kept my head there, because it was easy to, and it was distracting her. “So, why are you out here, and not screaming as your Sins burn you on my Warlock’s Hellpact?”
Her face crumpled at the words. “He offered us a deal,” she half-whispered, her brown eyes still looking around as Sleipner zipped along. We never really stopped moving, it was just a question of how fast we were going. “I-I took it, for a few minutes, to see if I could stand it.”
“Oh? Describe this deal to me. I’m all ears.”
“He replaced the mental Buffs our Amazon Pact gave us with Buffs based on him.” She drew in a sharp breath. “There is... there is no comparison...”
“You mean my Warlock is not a hypersexist, domineering, vainglorious hellbound bitch? Even when he has a woman-eating Hellpact there dying to turn him into one? That is absolutely amazing, Miss Stryther. Do tell me more.”
“This...” She closed her eyes, trembling. “This is so... serene.” Her face was twitching as she looked around slowly, then up at the sky, and hastily brought her eyes back down. “There’s so much powerful, horrible stuff I can see, and, and... it’s alarming, and I should be terrified, and I’m just looking at it... It’s like all my fears are too small for me now...