Chapter 16-425: Brilliant Celebrations (1/2)

194 hours of open sky, testing, and results reported and displayed for all to see. In its final two hours of early evening on the 29th, the whole world watched the greyness sweeping back across the sky as the gentle holy fires holding back the angry hate lightning and swirls of darkness faded away, and the Haze once more cut off the stars.

But this time, there were a lot of bright and willful eyes glaring up at it, promising that it would be coming down.

Mr. Vroom helped those who could Teleport get back to where they wanted, and I shuttled hundreds back to conflict zones, too. The mood was good and grim, and the break in the fighting to see the sun was exactly what those fighting needed to recharge their batteries.

The Banner of the Jet and Silver continued to grow, to the dismay of many Allegiances trying to get off the ground. The fact I had such international reach was something they just couldn’t emulate, and even national militaries couldn’t rival our enrollment, as Allegiances were about the person at the top, not the national duty.

Without a King, the idea of a National Allegiance tied to the Land just wouldn’t work.

The Constitutional Convention was going full bore, getting a bit of a shock when the hamadryad Queen of the Northern Pines showed up and demanded to be admitted as a representative of the Fey. As she wasn’t a mortal with Free Will, this was denied, although she was admitted as an Observer... wearing a Greyfield Choker so she couldn’t access any of her magic. When she protested, Commander Haru’Ara showed up, politely explained her options to her, and the Fey queen knuckled under and restricted herself to an Observer’s position... just like him.

On paper she was a Fey queen and a Twenty. A Seventeen planetar would kick her arse all over the place, let alone one with Divine Magic at Twenty-One. Just the fact that they had verified that he was alive had a ripple effect on the Fey that only those keeping track of interactions and conflicts with Spirits, Fey, and Elemental entities could really appreciate. Suddenly, the breadth and frequency of such conflicts began to fall at a statistically significant rate.

Heaven has a certain rep, and its generals sure did, too.

I also took receipt of my Helm at this time, although it was closer to a Tiara. The protection to the head it gave was a Force effect, instead of metal, and it was actually designed to incorporate my horns when I had them out.

One side was black adamantine, the other side was butter-silver mithral. It was designed to incorporate two Baneskulls, shrunken and pressed into their Seals, meaning I could have a third on Clavus or Spike. One side was the skull of a Black Arhat, double Bane to Cultivators and Evil, potentially to Law, and the other side was the shrunken head of a Drolem, double Bane to Constructs and Undead, and potentially to Dragons.

I had plenty of other Baneskulls, but they were for my Implements. Aberrants was important...

I had basically none of the charged stuff that a normal Helm of Brilliance came with, as all I wanted was the passives. The layered fire and lightning Resistance was specifically there to layer and work against alternate forms of fire, like Dragonflame, or Primal or Divine fires.

I also wanted the AoE Halo damage effect/warning against undead and Fiends, and the Fire and Lightning effects on any weapon I wielded.

I also specifically wanted those AoE effects to apply to the Halo, along with the Banefire. That meant a crackling, shuddering 6d6 AoE Halo thirty feet across. I could Infuse Vivic into it for 7d6, and so just being close to me was going to burn undead and Fiends down, down, down.

A free +2d6 Kicker to all my spells would be nice, too.

Yeah, it was showy, with fires flickering around the star rubies on the one side, and little crawling voltage dancing occasionally from the star sapphires on the other one. Chains were designed to hang from my horns if I let them out, and all in all it was pretty eye-catching.

It was a Helm of Brilliance, not a Helm of Subtlety. If it was working, I was going to be noticed... which was fine, that was the intent.

Of course, if I popped some magic into it, the killing radius of the effect and the range at which it sensed Undead and Fiends increased nicely. A V got it to sixty feet in radius.

Modularity was important in these things. Being able to bring up fire and lightning on all my Weapons was just one of those little hee-hee showy things I shouldn’t be thinking about as a great wise and powerful Caster who couldn’t help snarking over her +2d6 of damage.

Well, it’s the little things...

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July 2, 2019...

Happy Birthday to me, I guess.

It was exactly one year since I’d come to this Shrouded Earth and been stuck into the body of a dying halvyri teenage mother abandoned to the undead in the New York City Shroudzone.

Physically I was an eighteen-year old halvyri. Chronally, a year old. Mentally... heh, how do you rate the mental age of a Soulshard of a Templated gamer like Aelryinth?

There were a lot of people coming into New York City since it had been cleared. Some were looking for family keepsakes and valuables. The majority of them were looking for loot.

Unfortunately for them, the undead had largely beaten them to the goldweight stuff, meaning what was left was basically raw materials or machined goods that hadn’t rusted away. Some people had ideas about getting rich on copper cable, but even that had been taken down and hauled away by the undead. Their storehouses of it had been discovered and claimed by the government, and auctioned off a long time ago.

A large amount of it was Death-Energized, and had some specific uses in Binding, Sealing, and Necromancy of various sorts. Molten copper from New York City was going into a lot of high-end Wards, Seals, and Bindings.

The more modern van was still in the parking lot. Legion and Azaia eyed it, sitting there and getting more weathered and beat as the static dry conditions under the Shroud had been replaced by normal NYC cold and wet weather.

I led them into the garage, making illusions of the undead I’d had to kill here and there, replaying the scenes for them as I led them to the room where Elrii Morningdark had died, and I’d arrived here.