Chapter 18-472: The Lands Above (1/2)
Demon-dragon-fertility goddess, eat your heart out.
I took a look around at the drow city, the elegantly creepy architecture that paid homage to bugs and webs and demonic aesthetics, and reflected that it would be good to get out of here.
“I’m going to be using some powerful magic with your mother now, and we’re going to take you away to a place with the stars and the moon that is your birthright, even if you can’t see them right away. However, it’s going to be very bright there, and different, and there will be more elves like me there, waiting to help you all.” I reached out my hands to the two oldest of them, and at Legion’s reassurance, they took them, gasping as Silver Magic sparkled over them. “Let’s get you all out of here.”
They all felt Legion and I pouring magic into the Rune under their feet, the sheer volume and holy power of it making their white hair flutter in a wind fresher than anything they’d ever smelled or felt before. The power of Good was new and alien and weird and dangerous... and it had a rightness to it that the demonic power could never have.
It was hope, in a realm that had no hope to give.
Jet and silver magic swirled in toruses around everyone, and suddenly they were all rising out of the stone, miles above, in the chamber I’d Shaped out of the stone there to receive us as we Earthjumped in.
I could have ‘lifted’ us all up through the Strata, but that would have taken a good hour to Shape that much rock, and I had juice to spare. The Earthjumping Patterns were already in place, as was the two-foot-wide tunnel I’d come down through the Strata.
Up my Lived-Line through the Strata, and plenty of room left to reach the surface with my Caster Level being what it was.
It was night-time, but still very bright for them, and they all clasped their hands to their eyes for a moment to adjust to the desert ‘brightness’, which only people who lived mostly in darkness would call that. Sure, there were glow-lights and faerie fire and phosphorescence and ceiling fires, but mostly, living in the Felldeep was about gloom.
They still gasped as they looked up and saw the Haze above, forming a patchy fog for what lay beyond, and the fact that it extended from one edge of the horizon to the other, a bigger cavern than the children had ever imagined in their lives.
The sand beneath everyone flowed and shifted under their largely bare feet, firming up and forming yet another Pattern for all of them. Guided by the whispers in their heads, they took their places inside the circles filling with silver, ready for another jolt, as the magic rose up again.
This time it wasn’t conducting them along and through the earth, but along the Veil, tracking back through time and space to reach all the way up to Ælfheim, where I had already arranged for some non-fighting elves to meet us.
We swirled into the cavern gently, but their heads still swam and they still fell down, trying to mute their own cries as they did. The babes and toddlers cried a little, but were quickly shushed by the gentle voices in their minds, and a reassuring touch and presence.
I’d spent half an hour carving out living quarters for all the new haror out of a rocky hillside, enabling them to have their own rooms and spaces, or share with others. There were common rooms to assemble for eating, there was a jungle gym room with slides and ramps and swings and teeter-totters and other things, all made for children and not something any drow would ever do and have.
The twenty elven men and women were amazed despite themselves when they saw all the black-skinned, white-haired haror children, who looked back at them and their pale skins and hair of gold and silver and black and brown and auburn and green, especially those with eyes of blue and green shades, in equal fascination.
Gentle voices told them to take the hands of the other children, and those of the elves, and go to another place where they would get new clothes and food and a wonderful warm bath, and they obeyed silently.
Mother was right with them, after all.
Legion handed off the infants and the toddlers to ready arms or Disks, the elves all smiling and taking up the duty knowingly. Elves didn’t have a high birth rate, averaging one child a decade on average, but since they physically matured at half the speed of a human, and mentally even slower than that, it was no great stress on a culture quickly developing around having extended processes to do that.
It also meant less stress on their women, and so it wasn’t unusual for an elven woman to actually have quite a few children, just spaced out much further apart than those of humans.
---
Sleipner was waiting for me outside, ready to start our daily mapping after a quick Teleport back to Australia. Legion withdrew most of their demonic appearance, pausing for a moment to acknowledge the glowing and subtle lights of Runes all over the unicorn cycle, and sighed in relief.
Legion got on before me, and I gently swung on behind. They made no attempt to touch Sleipner’s bars, and actually just leaned gently and fully back into my arms, even as the magic came up and sent us off to Australia.
Eeesh. They were as tense as steel. A single touch, and I could feel the Wrath seething inside them.
They hadn’t let the children see them, and indeed they were veiled in the Markspace right now, because a seething black swirl of corruption was all around them, heavy with the deeds and sins of the drow they’d Consumed. It looked like fourteen thousand miniature demons in a swarm trying to eat them, burning with the cleansing power of their Wrath.
Consecration and Hallow rose up around Sleipner, creating a portable Holy space around the motorcycle while the Alicorn was plugged into it. Sacred energies began to hum as my own mediocre Wrath, still not enhanced much, was loaded into an Atonement VIII,Heaven Attend the Shriven Soul, wrapped around with all the Holy Metas at full power to boot, and I sent it into them.