Chapter 7-210: You Were Jealous! (1/2)
Both of the boys were giving me funny looks when I rode up on the back of something that looked like it had crawled right out of the flaming pits of... hmm, what dimension had jetsilver as a theme? Even the ball of fire burning inside The Old Steed’s chest was edged in silver, Eidolons were pretty good with color schemes.
The Mick turned to Master Fred and just pointed, lifting an eyebrow at my fire-and-bones, black-and-silver ride, complete with a burning Sigla below the wicked flaming horns on his head.
NEUTRAL AND HAPPY ABOUT IT, Master Fred answered the unspoken question, without batting an eye.
“Steed, this here is Master Fred. As you can see, he’s a Four Pact Warlock, and could go Five at any time, but he’s patient.
“That there behind him is his friend Sleipner. I imagine the two of you might want to chat about things at some point.” Empty burning eyes in a supernatural skull considered the spirit unicorn, and his head dipped in acknowledgement. Sleipner’s alicorn gleamed in careful response.
“Over here is The Mick. He’s a Tome-Tainted Blooded, I’m not sure if you are familiar with his people. Go sniff him; his subspecies has some hard connections to vampires and the undead.”
The incredibly intimidating Old Steed trotted over to The Mick with a gait at once dog, horse, cat, and absolutely quiet and powerful murder-machine. Steed stuck an aggressively gleaming fanged maw into the Mick’s rather impressed face, and inhaled with a sound like a furnace opening and venting.
He straightened back up with a proud arch of his thick bony neck, dipping his head once.
The Mick just pointed at me. “Ye were jealous, and got your own ride!” he exclaimed knowingly.
I what-? Oh. “I so was!” I agreed without batting an eye, and as he grinned at me, I licked my finger, pulled out a couple sheets of paper with writing all over them, and held them out in his direction. “I also realized you were going to be VERY put out if you had the only Named ride that couldn’t fly. Perhaps you’d like to see some new plans for Bone Marrow, now that you’re stinking filthy rich, Lord Mick?”
“And why would that be important?” he laughed in exaggerated dismissal, before darting up, snatching the plans away, and retreating in under a breath, glaring at them urgently and with great focus, muttering to himself as he walked away.
The sky above was gloomy now, but there was a big white flame burning on a column at the end of a pier built out into the lava lake, the Node Tap blazing with whorls of pyromantic energy around the working area and forge built into it.
All in all, it was a good trade-off. The negative energy from all the undead had been blasted and burned away in a huge area by the Offering to Aru, and more of it would naturally be drawn here by the prevailing mana currents and burned away. Part of what I had been doing was setting up the ley line currents here to do directly that, the pressure of the pyromana chasing the necromana this way to get eaten up and extinguished.
The flow of pyromana through all seven volcanoes was now basically subdued and back to normal; four of them were cooling down now, and would start slumbering soon, but would still be Nodes of the power. ‘Soon’ in geologic terms was a mite longer than ours, and given how much lava had already been disgorged across the landscape, any pressure to vent was long since met.
I left The Mick to contemplating the imminent decrease of his copious bank account, swinging down off the Old Steed, who wandered over to communicate with Sleipner in whatever way old spirits did. Who knows, they might have known one another...
“How goes the world outside?” I asked him. With Sleipner’s Obelisk up, he’d have no problem keeping track of stuff via his Vaccine... and he was probably taking pictures of me manipulating a gorgeous firestorm of pyromana out there like the mother of all flaming floral Seals, just for aesthetics.
EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOTHER WANTS TO TALK TO YOU, he informed me blandly. THE UNITED NATIONS, THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, EVERY FOREIGN GOVERNMENT ANYWHERE NEAR A SHROUDZONE, EVERY NEWS ORGANIZATION THAT CALLS ITSELF THAT, ALL THE MAGICAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SECRET SOCIETIES. HEAVENBOUND HALL IS VERY HAPPY AND SOMEWHAT VEXED AT YOU BEING OUT OF CONTACT AND HAVING TO HANDLE THIS, BUT YOUR MOVES THROUGH THE ALLEGIANCE ARE TAKING SOME OF THE PRESSURE OFF.
I had no difficulties communicating with my Allegiance while doing all this, and explosive recruitment was now underway as the first true Shroudzone ever was destroyed... and most of it was caught on video.
The sensation of the Glory Award going off for all the people who’d helped, and that pillar of light going up and opening up the sky at the same time, was something they’d never forget.
There was a beep as a holo-gnome popped up, red hat firmly photonically intact. “Lady Traveler! The whole Council wants to speak with you!” Gregorigori piped up, illusory fists all clenched in excitement.
“Master Gregorigori,” I said calmly, soothing him down. “The members of Heavenbound Hall are the best in the world at their jobs. They don’t need to talk to me, they have far too much work to do. I will take their well-wishes, I can feel that from the others within my Allegiance, and I am sure it is being reciprocated and shared among people all over the world.
“It is a small start on the job that needs to be done.”
The Holo blinked at me for a moment, and sighed. “You do something that has never been done before, and it’s like nothing important. I don’t know whether to feel small or inspired!”
“With time and Karma, everything I did here, you could have done as well.”
“We, we didn’t leak out the footage of how you were killing those flying Indians, Lady Traveler,” the gnome admitted quietly. “That was, ah...”
“Too frightening?” I asked quietly.
He made a swallowing sound. “Yes...”
“If it was a tight-packed March of weaker undead instead, the kill rate could easily have been a magnitude higher.”
The gnome made a sound like he was going to swoon. “That is going to frighten a lot of people, Lady Traveler.”
“Ask any member of my Allegiance if they fear me or my goals, Master Gregorigori. You will not find any. Those who are fearing are those who have reason to fear. There are massive changes coming, and perhaps they are wise enough to know it, or cunning enough to feel the shifting.