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

There was an immediate flaring of the stone in the Rose of Celdon, and I could see the energy Formations deeper inside the Ring flare and fill up as perfectly attuned energy did its thing.

Three layers completely filled. The base one, the one filled by the crystals in the olthoi hive, and this one by touching the Rose.

Two more to go.

===

A Rose of Celdon

Burden: 5

Spells: Legendary Combat Medication, Night Racer, Legendary Healing Prowess, Legendary Flame Ward

Wield Level: 180

Arcane Lore Required: 300

====

It must have been looking at total Karma, as I wasn’t actually Level 180, but if counting the Karma in my Matrix Classes, I was probably closer to 200 on the Isparian scale.

Arcane Lore was one of my nearly maxed skills, and was basically Use Magic Device on the Matrix side.

Legendary Combat Medication… was no longer a regeneration booster, as regenerating was no longer intrinsic to people. It was a +50% boost to Healing effects used on yourself, however, which could include Fast Healing, use of Potions, Healing Kits, Spells, and the like.

Useful, if not overwhelming.

Night Racer was a +20 bonus to foot speed on the Matrix Scale, which was pretty impressive, all things considered.

Legendary Healing Prowess… gave the same bonus to Healing effects used to Heal others as Combat Medication did.

Oh, the undead weren’t going to like that.

Legendary Flame Ward stacked 25% onto my intrinsic Fire Protection, which with Silver Fire Protection was at a base 50% mitigation… but I was immune to any flames below Primal-grade, so this was only useful against higher-order flames which might actually be able to damage me.

This was actually a really good Ring for a melee combatant now, although the boost to Healing others was definitely useful for any support Caster.

The undead weren’t going to like the +50% boost of damage to my spells against them, however. Not the intended effect, but I was perfectly happy to abuse it nonetheless.

Zeks sniffed mentally, as finally the other Ring would be contributing something useful. I’d have to give it a Name and start improving it, preferably with Wizardry… no, Regeneration would make much more sense.

“Lord Mick, the table,” whispered Selena, and everyone’s eyes turned to a plain table sitting off to the side.

There were over a dozen familiar purple-red Rings sitting there in individual slots on a jeweler’s stand.

“Huh,” the Mick blinked, then smiled as he turned around to look at me.

I glided over to look at the Rings, and nodded slowly. “They need to be touched to the crystal formations out in the mines to advance the second tier, and then to the Rose behind me.” I drew them up out of their niches and sent them shooting out to all of the Scouts, who grabbed them eagerly. “Not sure what Harlune’s intentions were with these, but we’re going to charge them up and give the extras away.”

“Ye heard the lady. Mark yer course, split up, an’ tap the rings to the crystals until they don’t dim no more. Then come back here and use a Disk to glide over an’ tap it to the Rose.”

Fatigue was displaced, replaced by the cheerfulness of actually getting a magical reward for all the fighting we’d done!

---

The Mick watched his team hurry out eagerly, then looked over to find me inspecting an alcove in the wall. It had a Seal on the floor, which I reached down to touch, and invoked a specific Divination I had originally grabbed to use to track the Green Hunter’s Teleport destination at his message drop back in the south.

“Find something?” the Mick asked calmly.

I flicked up a Holo of Dereth, assigned direction and distance, and a line shot down the map from our location in the Olthoi North, down south of the landbridge.

“This was a Portal anchor. It connected to Ulgrim’s Island...”

He thought about that quickly. “If it’s a Quest tree, that’s the next step?” he asked reasonably.

“I don’t know about it improving the Rings further, but finding Harlune would be pretty big…”

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A day later, the Southern Landbridge...

Briggs, Kris, King Auberean, Queen Mother Elysa, and Princess Fan were all handed the extra copies of the Rose of Celdon we’d recovered from the Amarinthine Hive. None of them had functional magical Rings, so these were actually quite a gift, and the legacy behind them, as well as who made them, made them indeed something special.

The Buffs also stacking with Cast Magic were also great, and very appreciated by the Royal Family. Briggs and Kris, not so much, but they didn’t mind the Healing and speed boost benefits.

Warlords and Royals had led a fighting force into the Direlands that had definitely proved its mettle, clearing the landbridge itself entirely, while Scouts and adventurers opportunistically cleared out the canyons and valleys below. That had included at least one Tanada camp, and scattered enclaves of virindi, the undead, and the shades, all of them mostly ignoring one another, or using lugians, banderlings, or drudges against one another in pointless conflicts that satisfied some non-existent purpose.

Whatever, the adventurers and soldiers killed them all, pretty much wiped the Spawn Points clean, and met up again as the aspirants to the Lost Light came down off the Landbridge and entered the Direlands proper.

Creatures here basically started at a hundred Levels higher than were often found in Osteth, and could go much higher. The Spawns were highly randomized, and could literally spit up almost anything that could survive the terrain. Olthoi, who had no Hives outside Osteth and the Olthoi North, could be found as Summons all over the place here, whole minor clusters of them appearing at one time.

One of the more annoying features were the Lord and the Champion Spawns that popped up all too often.

Lord spawns were simply semi-unique ‘promoted’ bosses of normal spawns, that at one time had dropped particular magic items that had some value to them, something we were pretty sure no longer happened. They were basically a little tougher than the ‘normal’ tough creatures that spawned here, Cast a higher Tier of spells, had better armor, more Health, and so forth.

The Champions were more annoying. If you killed a bunch of Hea tumeroks out here, skeletons, mu-miyah, undead, shades, monguas, or golums, a ‘Champion’ of that species eventually popped up out of nowhere and joined the fight to teach you the error of your ways.

It was a decent way to earn extra Karma, sure, but the fact was that if you killed large numbers of creatures here, and we did, annoying numbers of Champions kept persistently coming in, and there was no way to stop them except having Interdictions up. When the Interdictions came down, they’d materialize anyway, acting against any non-Summons nearby with enthusiasm.

Beneficial yet annoying, especially when there was a route to clear to Candeth Keep.

It was thirty miles overland to Candeth Keep from the end of the southern landbridge, and all of that territory was basically contested by spawn points sitting in the way, over and over again.

What there was not were very many free-willed creatures running around, something nobody found surprising. Any Summons not of your own species would happily go off on any wanderers, so forces native to the Dires likely moved around in force or not much at all, keeping to their own enclaves except when they had to travel somewhere. When they did so, they usually did so here at a trot or a run, skirting the Summons and basically evading them while getting out of pursuit range as swiftly as possible… or recruiting Summons of their own type and using them as a screening force to ward off and screen away any wild Summons.

We did see a couple of those groups in the distance, virindi convoys racing along, with hovering virindi circled by minions and galloping enslaved tuskers racing by in the distance, both shooting spells occasionally and getting shot at by the spawns they zipped past. Sometimes their Summoned minions swept in and occupied spawns so the virindi could pass or blow the spawns to pieces, it was hard to say why they made any variations in how they approached things.

Still, we definitely had the ranged advantage, and clearing the spawn points, planting markers, and Sealing them off so they wouldn’t respawn gave everyone a sense of purpose as we proceeded at different speeds, companies leapfrogging one another from spawn to spawn and making steady progress along the route we’d chosen.

From the landbridge, along the southern sides of the triple knolls, and then into the dry and desert-like badlands of the southern Direlands, we killed everything in front of us with prejudice, and encountered not a single true living thing as we did so.

Kind of spooky, really.

That said, the combination of terrain and clearing a wide path meant it took a full day and part of the next to reach the Tombs of the Sand Kings and see Candeth Keep in the distance.

The South Dires Deathstone was shattered and with its own steaming pit of shards and bones. It wasn’t as big or densely packed as any of the towns of Osteth, but obviously there were still some people out here who’d used it, likely on secretive business, and they’d paid the price for it, their bones pulsing in the sun for close to two decades now, open graves avoided by the natives of the Direlands.

The pit of Deathstone crystals was set to vivic flame somberly, our forces filing past it as it Burned with heavy mist, and the air of protest and hate swirling about it slowly faded away as the unwhite fires did their cleansing job.

It put everyone in the mood to clear all the undead out of the Tombs to the west, too. While their duty was ostensibly honorable, all the mu-miyah guarding the Tombs of the Sand Kings, especially their revered Anadil, were Summons, and so mindlessly attacked anything nearby, while Summoned pests, like Wasteland Rats or random skeletons, infested the tombs.

We wiped them out and Sealed the Summon points, save for one being.

Garaena the Emissary was still there.

---

The undead servant of Lady Aerefalle was almost as tall as Briggs, but far thinner, especially with his withered blue flesh clinging so tightly to bones that should have crumbled thousands of years ago. Yet his darkly burning eyes looked about with arrogant confidence, sure in his own status as a diplomatic envoy, although anyone could tell that his inspection of the vivic fires on so many Weapons around him did make him a bit nervous.

“Ho, Emissary, long time no see,” the Mick said, stepping forward to talk with the undead ambassador.

“I recognize you, Isparian,” the undead said in only a slightly hollow, sneering voice. “You paid to use my Portal to the island of my Lady many times in the past, until you learned how to go there yourself by stolen means!”

“Aye, ye’ve totally the right o’ it. Did yer Lady forget about ye an’ just leave ye standing around out here in the desert?” the Mick had to ask, scratching the side of his head in confusion. “I mean, if she wants a real envoy, she’d be speaking t’ the Sand Kings out o’ Chalicmere, not here. We all know ye only chose this spot afore it’s so close t’ Candeth Keep there, an’ ye were taking bribes ye’d turn over t’ the mu-miyah.”

“My lady has not forgotten about me!” the revenant replied stiffly. I wasn’t the only one who made a show of looking up and down his sun-beaten, extremely weathered clothing. He was a noble of the Dericost, and should have had much better attire on.

“Uh-huh. Curious as to whether that Portal t’ Aerlinthe Island ye used t’ bring up is still working?” the Mick asked casually.

The undead glowered at him. “The traditional Portal Magic has not worked properly since the surge of magic blasted through the island’s ley lines. If you seek passage to my Lady’s Island, Isparian, you must needs find another path!” the undead declared firmly.

“I see. Do ye know that yer kin were exterminated from the keep by Candeth Martine?” the Mick continued cheerfully, earning a quick glance in that direction by the ancient undead. “I see he didn’t bother t’ come out here an’ wipe the area of the tombs, so he must have had at least some pity on ye for yer thankless job.

“Given all the other undead who were there are dead, ye might want to wander over there an’ announce yerself as a proper emissary an’ everything, an’ be available fer any dialogue between your mistress an’ Martine.” The Mick made a show of looking around. “He ain’t comin’ out here ta talk t’ ye, an’ there’s no other undead here or there to tell ye t’ stick around here. Quite a coup t’ dare open diplomatic relations with the virindi-altered Prodigal Isparian that wiped so many o’ yer peers away, aye?”

“That… is an intriguing idea, Isparian,” the Emissary admitted thoughtfully. “Do I have a guarantee of safe passage?” he had to ask.

“Candeth is a law unto himself, but he likes t’ play at kingly things, so he’ll likely respect yer position.” The Mick did lean forwards and whisper, “Although you might want t’ get some more courtly attire, Emissary…”