Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

I was in Aurora Stance, going for mana. “I’ll do a Lesser Restoration for you in a couple of minutes,” I told them both, drawing in mana at the rate of about a point a second. “I went through over nine hundred mana for this fight.”

Everyone looked at me in shock, and I just shrugged. “Only the Healing Darts are free, everything else cost, and she was ladling out the spells, if you recall!”

The Archers took the moment to sit down on their Disks, working their arms and shoulders, each of them having loosed over a hundred arrows in this fight. “Please tell me there’s not another fight after this,” Selena groaned.

“No guarantees,” the Mick sighed knowingly, and everyone else groaned with feeling and mock enthusiasm, even the stoic Kopf. “We be here to find some clues about the Rose of Celdon, mind, an’ we’ve seen naught more o’ that, aye?”

They glanced at me and the Ring on my finger, remembering they were here because of it, and maybe finding out something about the fate of the legendary Harlune.

“These chambers were excavated by tools, expanded by the olthoi,” I told them as I waited there, hands clasped and bright red and gold swirls of mana converging on me, dominated by the Fire and Earth ley lines through the area. “They go further in.”

They eyed the tunnel I’d closed off, easy enough to Shape back open.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Magos, but is this place basically a regenerating mine for Fire Crystals? The olthoi looked to have placed seed crystals in the walls and all over almost randomly, yet all of them sprouted into viable crystals,” Kopf spoke up deeply, taking long and deep breaths as he recovered his wind.

“That does look to be true,” I confirmed for him. “But I want you to remember something the Stone Collector in Ziakhal said.” The Mick glanced at me sharply. “Harlune hates the olthoi.”

There was silence for a few moments as everyone ruminated on that, and then Rogar looked around sharply. “This place is a trap for olthoi…” he breathed out, and everyone else joined him in glancing about, and then our Markspace Map of the place, whose wandering tunnels and size now seemed to hold a bit more significance.

“A regenerating mine is a source o’ wealth,” the Mick pointed out slowly. “Once word leaks out, people will come here t’ harvest it. Why didn’t the olthoi run away when they realized it was changing them?”

“They had no guards posted, nor were there any olthoi nearby on the landscape!” Milee pointed out quickly. “That’s… like they all got drawn in here…”

“We’ve been at this for almost fourteen hours,” I pointed out, all of them startled at how long it had taken. “We killed over six hundred olthoi… and looking back on them, I can fairly say that while all of them had the same kind of mutations, not all of them came from the same hive.”

Visual Files were good for bringing up images of the dead olthoi after our fights, everyone examining them more closely, especially their original coloration and shell patterns.

“Aye, that’s at least three hives involved, an’ that’s without, what, a matron lured into here, an’ force-evolved into a mutant queen to dominate all the mutated bugs?” the Mick asked thoughtfully.

“Pulling them in, getting them working on improving the mine, and ensuring that they are wiped out regularly regardless. That strikes me as efficient and pragmatic, both traits associated with Master Harlune,” I nodded back to him.

“Can ye feel any magic doing the like?” the Mick frowned, casting about in the manasphere.

“Olthoi communicate by telepathy from their queens, and pheromones and sound. That means scent and noise. I notice everyone is still wearing a breathing mask, and the olthoi aren’t… and there IS a hum in the air, but it’s below normal hearing range. I can only feel it because it’s apparent when contrasted to the Sublime Chords,” I confessed.

“So, there’s something in the dust, and in the noise that pulls them in?” Hundig asked with great interest. “Master Harlune is a fiendishly clever mind to devise such a thing…”

There were general nods of agreement all around at that observation from the Gharu’n Saber-wielder.

“So, there might be something Master Harlune left behind t’ defend his little trap here,” the Mick drawled slowly. “If prior experience be meaning much, that means magic traps an’ golums.”

“That sounds like a typically non-undead Empyrean thing to do,” I agreed.

“I have had enough of olthoi for one day,” Camwise muttered aloud, leaning on his Autobow.

That earned a chorus of aye’s from everyone, as we all sat quietly and recuperated in our own ways.

-------

One of the Augmentations from pre-Fall involved being able to suck mana directly out of the ground to replenish yourself quickly, boosting your renewal, revitalization, and regeneration capabilities. As a result, the Mick was up and ready to go before I was, but he was the only one with the ability at present.

Something else people could pour Karma into, although the amounts required on the Isparian side were kind of the teeth-gritting kind if you weren’t over Level 200 and had all your skills and Stats maxed out already, just needing places to put your karma.

The Shapings I’d done to the stone here were set back to the way they’d been and, sincerely wishing for no more fighting, we headed down the tunnel to the queen’s chamber and whatever lay beyond it.

There was another pool of water on fire, as it were, which I waded over calmly while everyone else rode Disks, not caring to test out something which was probably as hot as lava AND poisonous. There were a few large crystal formations scattered about on pedestals, by far the biggest we’d seen, and definitely worth some good money.

Naturally I appropriated all of them, spinning up some Disks for them to ride on.

There was a large and very square hallway at the back of her lair, leading first up slightly, then down and around to the right. We looked at the relatively unmarked walls, and I tapped them calmly.

“Mana-reinforced. If they dug at them, they just healed up,” I told the others, who nodded the same line of thought.

The rather somber and formal-felling hallway opened up into a large rectangular room, complete with ornamental carvings of pillars in the Empyrean style in the corners, and alcoves everywhere festooned with sculptures of birds, animals, and geometric shapes carved out of amarinthine ruby quartz with a master’s touch.

All of the objects were worth small fortunes in pyreal for their craftsmanship, but I only picked up a rendering of a gromnatross the size of my palm before putting it back.

“They’ll fall to dust if they leave the room, and reform here. But that definitely looks like Harlune’s magical signature and style of crafting.”

The others were watching the far end of the room, rather tense at the moment.

Two twenty-foot tall suits of armor were standing there, with breastplates formed in a grid pattern, showing emptiness inside… and burning ruby quartz crystal Formations of spectacular power inside them, blazing bright and snappily within their iron homes, hot enough to make their cages faintly reddish in hue about them.

“Well, hokey shiznit,” I murmured, staring at the two Constructs, guarding a great steel door leading to what was probably private crafting chambers beyond. “I think those are Iron Golems…”

“Ye don’t mean Golums? They don’t look like no golums I ever seen afore,” the Mick said warily.

“Remember when I said the things wandering Osteth weren’t golems, but golums? These are the real things.” I whistled softly. “I wonder where he learned to make them. There’s little doubt they are the reason why the Ruby Queen didn’t get any farther than this. Those things are virtually immune to magic, and fire Heals them on a point for point basis.” I pointed at the blaze in their chest. “Not only will they be Healing constantly from those flames if attacked, but if the Ruby Olthoi did, the flames in their attacks would be Healing these two things up as they fought. There’d be no way the olthoi could win.”

“How hard be they to kill?” the Mick asked the pertinent question.

“Powerful magical weapons of adamantine are about the only things that can punch their hides readily.” He and Kopf looked at their adamantine Weapons with some relief, but didn’t seem all that reassured. “They don’t move fast, but they are extremely powerful, too. Can probably breathe fire and Heal up when they do, too. Almost none of my magic will work on them.”

That was less than assuring. “Will they attack us if we close in?” Kopf asked directly.

“I think it would be wise not to test it out.” I raised a hand, and flickered up three sigils in front of me, which glowed with a steely, metallic light. “Open the doors, and let us pass!” I commanded, as the Master Construct spell glimmered in front of me.

The two iron golems quivered as the magic accessed their command protocols and inserted itself into their recognition as one of their masters. The two golems turned precisely, put their hands on the doors, and pushed firmly.

The doors swung open on noiseless hinges, and the iron golems pivoted back in unison.

“Move along, children!” I called out airily, confidently stepping forward and between the two awesome, looming Constructs. Everyone hastened to stay with me, and we hurried past the doors and the silent guardians.

The golems reached out behind us, grabbed bars set into the doors, and with disconcerting quiet pulled the doors closed again. They locked behind us with a loud click.

“Well, if only getting past the guards were always that easy,” the Mick muttered in relief. The hallway beyond was large enough to give headroom to the golems, indicating they were probably used for labor within at some point.

The hallway wasn’t long, with a couple man-sized chambers branching off of it that proved to be living quarters and a storage room for tools and supplies. We left it all untouched as we entered the main chamber.

“Okay, that be impressive,” the Mick admitted, staring at what awaited us ahead and below.

It was another one of those flaming pools of burning water, but something was growing out of this one.

It was made of organic amaranthine crystal, tendrils and roots wrapped around a stone jutting out of the burnwater there. On a thick stalk with crystals jutting out like deadly thorns, all of them pulsing with their own lights, rose a gorgeous flower wrought of flowing ruby crystal, as wide as Kopf’s chest.

Pulses of fiery energy ran along and inside each petal in a random fashion, making it look like the thing was truly on fire inside. A strange and compelling odor touched the edge of our noses, making our nostrils burn, and we all hastily adjusted our Masks.

For a moment, we did nothing but stare at the gorgeous thing, all of us certain that it was why Master Harlune had come to this place, and that it was at least as deadly as it was beautiful.

“My Rose of Celdon was carved from one of those thorns,” I said with certainty, studying the hue of the crystal there. “Pretty sure this is at least one ‘upgrade’ point for the Ring’s inner Formations.”

No one tried to stop me as I walked down the gentle slope and out over the burnwater, my Ring starting to glow and hum, lights playing about inside it as I did so. I pulsed my mild internal flames from the Ritual of the Fiery Heart through the Rose, and it lit up as I did so, pulsing as if alive in the presence of that which it was made from.

Pretty confident of myself, I reached up and touched it to one of the gleaming, razor-pointed thorn-crystals on the stalk of the Amarinthine Rose.