Chapter 8-240: A Lesson in Scale (2/2)

“I am an Elemental Theurge. I CAN talk to the Land, although it is dreaming and scarce responds to anything. Its scale of time and awareness are both vast, and it doesn’t even register my presence at all while we are under the Suppression of the Shroud.

“I am Shroudbound. Does it surprise you that when the Shroud rolled across multiple worlds and sacrificed all that lived, including the spirits of the worlds themselves, to Death, that there were some very powerful Druidic souls caught in the Shroud?”

Master Dorrian swallowed, and slowly shook his head. “I... did not know that, Great Lady Traveler. But it does make sense,” he admitted carefully.

“It is good that you believe so. Let me make this very plain, for the benefit of every single person in the room.” I held up three fingers. “Without actually manifesting an Avatar and bringing Herself down to the level of a dust mite on your skin, Australia is basically only aware of those living upon Her in three ways.” My fingers shone for attention, the Holo repeating my words behind me.

“The first is Sapience. She can determine the difference between intelligent, self-aware beings, and those of animal intelligence or less. This is because the thoughts of self-aware beings affect how She manifests and is interpreted by mortal life, the same sort of power which drives Faith, Duty, and Loyalty.” The point spelled across the Holopoint presentation behind me.

“Two, She can determine if you are born of Her soil, or of another.” They all blinked. “Yes, if you were born here and raised here, you are made out of Her.” Despite themselves, a few of the people in the room swallowed, including Priest Brevington.

Given the lack of migration since the Shroud fell, pretty much everyone in Australia had been born here now, and so was ‘of Her.’

“Three, She can determine if you are Powered or not, and naturally enough if you have been tapping Her power if you are... or if you are tapping Something Else’s.”

That all caused faces to change as they thought about that.

“You are all intelligent mortal beings with Free Will. The onus is on you on how to interpret how you are going to deal with your life here, and the obligations to the Land from which you sprang, and to the entities who control your soul in the hereafter.

“Perhaps you think that one is important, and the other is not.” I simply looked over them all, one by one, and all the eyes, even the most fervent, found themselves looking away. “You are all fools, if that is so, and that is a shame, because the two great channels of Faith, the Divine and the Lands, do not choose fools.”

They all winced at the cold and slicing note in my words.

“As of right now, in my professional estimation, the natives of Australia, and especially Her Powered, have been very, very lucky... and you are still headed for disaster. It gets even worse because you fools have been contributing to the disaster that is coming.”

The map of Australia zoomed in on the Sydney Shroudzone... and the grey ring around it. Perhaps it was not a coincidence that Master Fred chose that moment to lever one transport atop another outside in the pile they were making, generating a nice crash that made people jump.

“You all may or may not know that the entire Shroudzone is Blighted. Oh, a minor issue. Oh, to be expected. Oh, we can deal with it later. Oh, it’s not important.” My voice had dipped down into low, heavy tones that rippled with danger, and it was raising hackles on their necks. “Oh, it is someone else’s fault, someone else’s responsibility, someone else’s problem.”

My eyes fell on Master Dorrian, who swallowed despite himself. “What, what are you saying? We have always killed Blighters as soon as we discovered who and what they were!”

“Because there is no way to cure Blights... except there is. It is a Valence V spell, available to Druids and Clerics of non-Evil Faiths, called Hallow. It restores the flow of natural energy and returns life to the land and soil in the area of effect.”

Master Dorrian straightened excitedly. “But that, that is wonderful news! We will be able to restore Blighted areas we have been unable to, once we take advantage of the methods you have proposed, and finally reach Nine!”

His bubbling excitement dimmed as my stare didn’t get any lighter, nor my expression any brighter. He shrank a bit and decided to shut up until I was finished.

“The reason you are all so very, very lucky is that every dead Druidic Caster who was caught in, killed by, or sentenced to the Sydney Shroudzone by idiotic parties,” I snapped my head around at Priest Brevington, who went white instantly, “becomes a Blighter!

“A Blight is formed when a Blighter rips the power out of the Land to empower false Druidic magic, desecrating and Tainting it, destroying all the Green and lower life forms therein, destroying or banishing any Nature Spirits in the area, and stopping the flow of natural mana through the area entirely.

“A decent enough analogy is a writhing mass of dark cancer forming on your skin.” They all looked at the back of their hands reflexively, picturing it. “And it is growing!

“The size of a Blight is dependent on how much greenery and elemental mana there is in an area to take. It should come to you as no surprise that there is remarkably little of either under a Shroud. It may come to you as a surprise that the effect of a Blighter ripping away that power is conducted throughout the Shroudzone.” The image of the Sydney Shroudzone, and that grey ring around it specifically, zoomed in. “Every time one of the undead Congregants enslaved to the Dark Druid of Sydney renews their powers, this Blightzone grows. If the ground is poor... than the Blightzone grows even faster! If it reaches the desert...”

I let it trail off, and the quick-witted among them pictured the effect, especially as the Zone in the picture began to grow, and bulge out to the west, devouring more land faster...

“You... have been lucky. Very, very lucky. The undead aren’t taking spells every night, they aren’t Blighting every night. Part of that is because you have been feeding them undead and bodies, growing the Shroud instead.

“But, if they start tearing the power of the Land free, they can grow that Blighted area very, very quickly, indeed. I estimate between one and two hundred meters a day in fertile areas. In a desert or arid region, that could be ten to twenty times greater, instead!”