Chapter 5-156: Into the Firezone (1/2)
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(Back to the Story)
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“Anything special we should know?” Sama asked me, her Vajra dealing with the wind as my Force Armor did; we didn’t need helms or to tie our hair up as Sleipner zipped smoothly along.
I flicked up a Holo, courtesy of The Mick, courtesy of Tamalgand’s Toughs, who had limped back into town earlier that day, down two men who wouldn’t be coming home. They were a skilled, experienced crew, with decent Gear, all Sixes, and they’d been mauled rather badly.
She looked at the picture of the crimson and golden burning snake coming up out of the ground, melting its way through it with a burning aura, breathing a terribly powerful blast of flame, tossing fiery spells this way and that, and tanking their bullets and cold spells without too much trouble.
Her eyes narrowed when she saw the two claws, and the small horn on its forehead. She looked very sharply for the ones further back, catching a glimpse of them as it arced up and dove down into the flaming soil to disrupt the shooting formation of the Toughs.
“What,” she scowled, “is a Hou Lung doing here?”
I held out my hand. Helix made a face and flicked me a gold coin. Sama smiled slightly, then scowled again. “What, you thought it was a fire linnorm?” she teased the young Sorcerer, who blushed in embarrassment. “Linnorms don’t have rear claws, Helix!”
He turned away, muttering to himself at missing the obvious tell. Fire linnorms had a frill of horns, not just one, too...
“Sama, I really hate to say this, but you’re going to have to go to China as soon as we can send you there.”
She looked at me, then nodded slowly. “You disrupt magic like a star, no way to hide it close to you. Is that a fake Ten Aura around you?”
“Yes. Human/2, got me to Faux Wizard/10. I’m still a Five Sorceress base.”
“They’ll be able to pick you out of a crowd, even if you morph.” She turned an eye on Briggs. “And Fuzzy here is like a light bulb. He can’t blend in either, even if he morphed.”
“Yes, yes, the price of being unique and irreplaceable,” he pontificated, also watching the Holo. “They dropped off a dragon here? How the hell?”
“They evolved it from a snake, of course.” Both of their faces twitched. “If they can get a Daoist Immortal from a human, how hard is it to get a dragon from a snake? Just need the fire Qi.”
Both their heads looked up sharply at the dim crimson lights on the horizon. “They’re converting the fire mana here?” Briggs rumbled dangerously.
“If they’re doing it here, imagine what they’ve done back home.”
Both of them looked very unsightly. Sama even rolled her eyes. “All the shit the Imprusar, the Wolves, and that lot have put me through, and they aren’t even players in what is going on...”
“No.” I let the Holo shift to a map of the area. “It was seen here, and this is the closest volcano, which would be at least a Minor Fire Node.”
Both of them nodded. “So that’s our eventual destination?” Sama asked.
“Yes, but no hurry. We’re going to wipe out the landscape as fast as possible.” I flicked up three Darts, and they both blinked, then smiled.
“Nice,” Briggs said approvingly, eying the dagger-long teardrops of hardened jet and silver frost, quietly seething with all sorts of dangerous energies. “What’s the base?”
“3-18, but Penetrating Cold, so double damage to Fire; 6-36 on different targets.”
“Ouch!” Briggs flinched. “What kind of fixed bonuses?”
“+20 or so?”
They both sucked in a breath, and then Briggs chuckled softly. “Goddamn have I missed having an experienced Magos around. Quick, get us into the Fellowship. We are going to be riding the Karma Train as much as possible!”
“I’ll be relying on the two of you to lure stuff in and bait stuff out. You’re definitely the best equipped here to do it.”
Sama nodded. “Tip of the Spear, got it.” They both waited as I invoked the Ritual of Fellowship, which would conjoin and coordinate everyone’s efforts, sharing Karma gained according to honest contributions. A spotter calling out enemy attackers and warning everyone earned as much Karma as those fighting below if his warnings were timely.
They’d naturally heard about the mass slaughter I’d been able to unleash on the undead, and now I had even more Darts available to wipe out the enemy. Granted, Fireborn weren’t undead, but with this level of killing cold against fire creatures, it was going to be even better for me.
And we were going to be driving back the Firezone as we killed. We were in no hurry.
“Do you have the Commune memorized?” Sama asked in a low voice.
The Commune she was talking about was Commune with Nature, the Druidic spell that allowed you to talk with the Land and learn all sorts of interesting things about the make-up of it, the landscape, and the creatures and plants that dwelled upon it. Pointedly, you could also get a pretty good idea of the minerals present in a location, if you were the sort to exploit that... and I certainly was at this time, not that I intended to harm the Land while I was doing it.
“Not yet. I need Elemental Theurge at Five for that, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be forced through all my Theurgies now that I can take them. So, it’s coming, but it’s not right in front of me.”
Sama nodded understanding, grinning slightly. “Sucks to not be able to optimize properly, right?”
I threw up my hands as I scanned forwards. “You have NO IDEA. I don’t have proper Rep Counts on ANYTHING, even Shards! I’ve been totally distracted Casting other spells and keeping reserves...”
“Rep Counts is an accumulation of time,” Sama agreed somberly. “There’s not many ways to get around it.”
I knuckled my head. “Aelryinth had access to a +9 Meta he Weirded down to +3, Perpetual Spell. He tied it to Shards and just added the basic Metas as he needed them, got them all Efficient within a day or two, then used Residual Magic to chase up the rest of them, swapping Perpetual Spell in and out for the other.” I was sooooo annoyed I didn’t have access to Soul Magic Weirding abuse to do the same!