An Age of Mysterious Memories

Despite me and Teuila having methods of travel to try out, like our Honoris Causas, the most efficient use of our energy at the moment is to let Lil ferry us towards our destination. His elongated draconic side-evolution stage is marvelous to behold, but I understand that he can’t keep it engaged permanently like he can his Agnewt stage. Well, his Dragnewt stage by this point. Or maybe Dragni? Point being, Lilagni’s a fully fledged dragon these days, no longer a soft nearly-amphibian appearing winged lizard.

Sighing, I wish I could comfort my best bud more, or offer more to him than a chance at power at a risk to Teuila. Worse than not being able to offer him more, I’m worried my request and plan will get Te or him hurt. All three of us are actually fairly heavily injured, Lil the least of us for once, though not by much. I might be able to get side-evolved into a combat form by preparing a long time before we get to Al’pa’ca’s lair, in order to minimize my own weakness from my own injuries though.

The weird thing is, the file from earlier, from scanning my Backpotter’s form’s inventory had what I thought was just some vague numeric identifiers at the top, but I’m just now realizing—. I think those numbers were my current and max health, at least in hitpoint values from Can’Z’aas. I suppose it makes sense that the Backpotter’s form’s health was maximum, but I get the vague sense that it meant my hitpoints are also full as well. I’m certainly not fully recovered from my injuries, but then again, I guess injuries and hitpoints are only tangentially related, aren’t they?

Certain injuries are immediate death, no matter your hitpoint total, while conversely, Teuila and I are both living proof that you can be murderously, heinously damaged, and still recover to full hitpoints, long, long, long before your body can put itself back together. I mean, it also probably makes sense that most people would have died of shock at having their legs atomized, left in limp lumpy noodle flesh casings, rather than surviving that, and being able to recover at all, much less doing so in a reasonable period of time.

At least I’ve also got—. Crap. I pass a note along back to Solace that I need bags of Adamantite shavings placed into our interdimensional storage ASAP, for my defensive magic. I hope there’s some left after the door project, and me having taken a warren full. I might have to settle for Orichalcum. Anyway, hopefully my defensive magic can protect my base form, but we’re going up against archmages.

Eugh, enemy archmages. They could perhaps possibly strip away enchantments, or attack with forms of magic that can’t be protected against, or who knows what else. I haven’t learned every single spell on Rayileklia, there could be thousands for all I know. It’s why I learned the dispellation magic that allows for countering spells. Sadly, it also means I should save almost all of my SP until the final battle, except in cases of dire need in order to counter deadly things like meteors.

If I do almost nothing else with my SP, I can counter five devastating greatest tier magics. That’ll put me at six-hundred seventy-five SP used out of six-hundred ninety-six. Twenty-one free can’t do a lot normally, but as long as I don’t try to burn through them as rapidly as the blasts I was using yesterday, my runic clips should be able to handle proc’ing around twenty or so times. Ugh, if they’ve recovered well enough. Fudge. Just assume I can only get maybe ten safe blasts out for proc’ing purposes. Save them to do things like clear mental effects from the three of us, embolster us, and ping powerful things I’m having a hard time getting the attention of to bring down.

It’s us. For the first time in so, so, so very long, it’s the three of us. The main muscle of the SAP, the Shellcracker Adventuring Party. Letting a few tears fall, I hug Lil’s back from atop him, and Te smiles down at me. She’s helping conserve Lil’s energy by reducing gravity and drag on him to zero or near zero, but that doesn’t really take focus for her, or any of her mana, since it’s her Latent. We’re making excellent time, and even Lil’s burning almost no more energy than if we were all sitting on a sofa.

Discussing our strategies, synergies, and contingencies, we don’t have a lot that plays into one another’s abilities any longer. We can mostly survive if one or the other of us throws something heavily area-damaging in a space we happen to be fighting at, but that’s less synergy, and more just lack of need to worry about friendly fire too much. I’m a little worried that a lot of our foes are going to have storm related powers, so Teuila using Mjolnir or related things might either be nullified against them, or worse, empower them. Or even worse, our foes might be able to assume control of those powers that Teuila displays or utilizes.

Te and I also can’t let loose our shadowy evocations and conjurations while within sight range of any spellcaster, and most enemies are likely to be spellcasters. They’d see from Teuila’s mana aura that she was using illusion magic, and so the rest of our uses of those abilities would be foiled, if they spread word around that we had illusions.

If it were just me, my spellcasting mana aura’s signature is obscured, or hidden, according to Jarrah, by something called a subtle spelling metamagical rigor or something like that. The subtle spelling metamagical rigor is why I can even use Rayileklian magic at all, since I can’t use a mnemonic, and it’s also what allows me to proc the runic clips in my bangle on every spell, without needing to add further metamagic to them. Te doesn’t have any of those benefits, but she could possibly cast from out of line of sight, around corners, especially if she utilizes her Mirage Flash.

Focus up Reggie, I can sense we’re approaching an edge of the Worldstorm, one that shouldn’t be possible. The amount of magic and mana at play is nearly overwhelming. I imagine Lil and Te would be being bombarded visually if their senses were still the same as back on Can’Z’aas when they saw auras and souls as a matter of fact. From where we are, gliding just above the Worldstorm, it honestly looks like we’re sailing off the edge of the world into an abyss, with the sun at our backs. The way the storm buckles and bends at its edges gives the appearance of a raging cascade of waterfalls in this massive several-mile circumference. Of course, at the center of this circle is, as predicted, a spire of rock that virtually pierces the heavens, signifying a gargantuan mountain, one that we’ll have to infiltrate.

I’m almost certain that if we were willing to risk taking a lot of resistance-piercing lightning hits, Teuila or I could perhaps infiltrate from above, because I see arcs of lightning leaping like spokes of a bicycle wheel from the exterior circumference of the storm, to the spire every few moments. I bet there’s a path down in through the top, that might be wide enough for a body to drop through, but that body would need to be able to take repeated arcs of the most deadly, concentrated lightning imaginable. All of the power that would, and should be spread across this enormous circle gouged out of the Worldstorm, is instead channeled into those strikes, and those are fueling something even more nefarious deeper within. This is more or less exactly what I expected when I’d first theorized what might be causing this.

If my Can’Z’aasian powers are able to increase things in an exponentially multiplicative manner, such that my highest tier powers are thousands of times what’s available to anyone else, this set of reactions is thousands of times what I’m capable of, maybe even millions. I doubt even I’d survive a single bolt of this ultra-condensed, primed lightning where all of the spokes are funneling together before they’re filtered down into the mountain. Well, maybe I could, I’d have to do some math. Still, that’s before even factoring in that it also possesses some resistance-piercing or immunity-piercing properties on top of its ungodly power. There’s something like a thousand cubic miles of storm compressed into each of these streaks, these rivers of nature’s unbridled fury, that flash across this circle.

I can understand quite well why there’s no one in the foothills or along the smaller mountains within this radius of the Thunderpeak range. As we approach Stormspire itself, even finding a point of entry seems challenging if I don’t want to see Lil, Teuila, and myself fried to a crisp. We’re going to have to divebomb, but only one of us can safely divebomb fast enough to avoid, or ride lightning. That’s Teuila and her gravity-assisted diving capability. She might also be able to literally ride lightning with Mjolnir, but who the hell knows the limits to her powers at this point. I’m not willing to risk her trying to drop down the center funnel of lightning to test those limits though.

Scanning diligently, I see the faint traces of what might be exterior cavern entrances, far below the Worldstorm, along the Thunderpeak range. Gnawing on my lips, I announce telepathically, “Guys, I think I have a pretty stupid idea that might work to get us in.”

The fact that Te grins and giggles, while Lil rolls his eyes, huffing as if already accepting the prospect of my plan being crazy, lets me know how much faith my beloved inner circle has in me. Chuckling, I start, “Yes Te, you get to show off how much of a badass you are. Lil and I will take a deep breath, and climb into my portable hole. You fold us up, and put us in your pocket. Not one of your pockets with any other interdimensional bag or anything though!”

The raised brow and eyeroll I get from Teuila at my overreaction is her reminder that she’s a seasoned adventurer too. Blushing, abashed, I continue, “I, I know you know, sorry. Anyway, after that, you go be you Te, be awesome, and take a ride down to that crevasse right there. I’ll leave it up to you whether to try to infiltrate a ways before letting us out, or to try getting us out right away when you touch down.”

Lil grumbles, and rolls his eyes, but he can’t help smiling at Te as she beams proudly at him. He quips, “Save some for us, It’s-a-secret,” which earns him an SFS from Teuila, as she sounds her elation at the backhanded, veiled praise.

As Lil flaps to break free of our forward glide, Teuila helps pause his gravity, allowing him to remain in the air effortlessly. I set out our portable hole on one of my TK Squares, then hop in, and make sure to verify that either I, or Lu, managed to clean up all the blood inside last night. Thankfully I don’t slip in a mess of gore, so we seem good. Lil shrinks down to his humanoid form, subsuming his equipment into his shapechanging, in that way that many dragons seem capable of, and joins me inside. I can’t say I’m not at least a tiny bit panicked as Teuila folds the portable hole’s edges up. Mostly since it cuts off the view from my goggles, reminding me that this is some sort of pocket dimension, or other plane of existence.

Struggling to hold my breath, so that I don’t hyperventilate at the sudden fear that I have for Teuila’s safety, and our possible eternity trapped, with a limited supply of oxygen, I try to focus on anything else. Lil distracts me pleasantly, which, okay, I probably needed, but normally I’d chastise him that this isn’t the time. He smirks and rolls his eyes though.

Around a mouthful of my lips, Lil quips, “At least we can’t suffocate pal, we can just take turns breathing with your neck thingy. Besides, It’s-A-Secret’s too smart and strong to not let us out if there’s trouble.”

This is true. I’m ashamed of the lack of faith my brief fear and paranoia showed for Teuila. Lil absolves me of this as well, stating, “Eh, don’t worry, she knows you know she’s strong. She just likes showing it off. She’s kind of a hottie in a lot of ways. Oh, speaking of hotties, Ixey said she thinks you’re pretty swell pal. Thanks for not being jealous of her or mean to her. Ixey’s so great. I’m glad you two get along. Mm, she’s so great.”

When Lil begins spacing out, going googly eyed as he thinks of Ixeyla and her red dragon form, I can’t help chuckling. Still, I also find myself silently agreeing with him that Ixey’s pretty great. I’m really happy for him, though a bit embarrassed at several implications. She’s incredibly friendly, and exceedingly flirty when she’s comfortable with, and likes someone. It seems that it takes a fair bit to get her to see you as decent though, so I’m pretty honored to get to see that side of her. I feel like she doesn’t take on a lot of friends, perhaps because of her desire to be there for her sibling.

Hm, yeah. Ixey took on Leeza as a friend for me, basically at my request, salvaging that whole situation. She only got to know me because Lil basically makes it an impossibility not to. Well, that and she had to deal with me since I grew fond of her oddball twin sibling Zayzi relatively quickly. I know Ixey has some friends on the wrestling circuit, though I don’t recall Lil ever naming names. Even those though, it feels like she must keep at a fair distance, because, well, I mean, I’ve never seen her with anyone other than Lil, Zayzi, or Leeza, and I’ve been seeing more of her lately.

To be fair, if I were dating Lil, I’d probably be spending a lot of time trying to spend more time with him than anyone else in my life too. Then, yeah, I’d probably shmooze and tease his friends a bit to make sure we’re all on one another’s good sides. I mean, I’m not trying to insinuate she’s disingenuous, or a manipulator, far from it. I just think that I’m lucky to get to see more sides of her than she originally showed, with her over-protectiveness of Zayzi.

Starting to get lost in thought about Lil’s life, and all I’ve missed out on, I’m not quite ready for it when Teuila unexpectedly unfolds the hole rather quickly, and telepathically calls out to us, “Guys, I think you’re gonna need to see this.”