Copy Protection Void Part 20

"Are you dating anyone?" Nara asked as they headed over toward the cage of air filled with a couple of hundred trollocs, trying to distract herself from the thousands of dead trollocs.

"Not exactly," Egwene as she used mana to sweep an area around the cage clear of dead shadowspawn, wanting to make sure they weren't just pretending to be dead. "I was dating Rand but things didn't work out in the memories I picked up and he met a cute girl from Baerlon so we sort of broke up."

"That sounds like my brother, he's almost as bad as Mat when it comes to flirting, yet all the girls are always happy for the attention," Nara complained. "What about you?" she asked Egwene's clone.

"Only in my dreams," Egwene's copy replied with a shrug. "So, what does Eldrene do for fun when she's not helping in the inn?"

"She likes carving monster masks when she's not running around with us exploring, watching her niece or helping her mother in the kitchen," Nara replied with a smile.

"She also makes excellent cookies," Allora added.

"Niece?" Egwene asked, not wanting to jump to conclusions since things seem to have changed once Tam returned.

"Sara al'Vere? Berowyn's girl?" Allora asked, fairly sure she was going to have to make a list of the things that were different.

"She died in my world, bonebreak fever along with her husband when she was a baby," Egwene admitted, trying not to think about her niece's death from the illness that had almost killed her when she was a kid.

"I remember her catching a fever," Allora mused. "Nynaeve and I were running around that entire winter healing people. Nynaeve was tired enough that she exhausted herself saving Sara, I healed Dan and the fool ended up dying because he refused to rest like I told him to."

"At least Sara survived," Egwene offered, not sure what else to say since she could barely remember her sister's husband.

"It wasn't my fault, I warned him, he was too stubborn to listen," Allora complained, wishing that she'd convinced Berowyn to tie him to the bed, if only because the entire situation made dealing with certain members of the Lewin family a pain in the ass because they blamed her for Dan's stupidity.

"Two rivers men," Egwene's clone muttered.

"I'm going to ignore that," Mist teased as he turned his attention to the trollocs trapped behind the wall of air that were snarling at them. "What do you think about giving everyone that can't fight a crystal with sword skills and letting them borrow the armor bracelet? That should make it safe enough to try the arena spell."

"Sounds good. Give me a minute," Egwene told him as she turned her attention toward the four most dangerous looking trollocs that were waving crude weapons at them, "I have an idea." She embraced the source and wrapped four cable thick threads of air around their legs. She yanked the trollocs into the air and over the barrier then slammed them into the ground.

"Light!" Nara blurted out when Egwene split her flows and cut all of their hands and feet off using flows of fire, shocked that Egwene could split her flows sixteen ways.

"Here," Apple offered as she handed Egwene the sword the smith had left on the anvil.

Egwene glanced down at the armor bracelet on her wrist then focused on the crippled trollocs in case one of them tried to crawl over to bite them. "Ready?"

"Ready," Mist agreed and cast the poison pit spell on Egwene and the trollocs that she'd crippled, sending them to an arena.

Nara twitched when Egwene vanished along with four of the trollocs. "Where did they go?!"

"I can't channel but I have a couple of tricks, one of them involves a spell that sends five creatures to an arena, the losers die and the winner gets two percent of the dead's physical abilities which means that she'll probably be able to lift an extra thirty to eighty pounds with one hand depending on how strong the trollocs are."

Allora glanced at Egwene's clone and relaxed when she nodded, confirming his story about not being able to channel. "That doesn't sound like a lot, especially for a fight to the death."

"It doesn't have to be a fair right and cutting their feet and hands off left most of their strength intact while leaving them crippled," Mist pointed out. "Her bracelet is a ter'angreal that creates armor that they'd have trouble getting through even if they weren't crippled and she can bind them in place before she cuts their heads off with the sword."

"It might not seem like a lot but it stacks," Egwene's clone assured them. "Killing forty of the creatures would give us eighty percent of the strength of a trolloc as a magical ability which means that we could toss a person across the room and probably survive a couple of arrows long enough to get healed."

"I wouldn't mind being stronger than my brother," Nara admitted. "What do I have to do?"

Mist conjured a pair of loincloths and halter tops and handed them to Allora and Nara. "Put the loincloths on under your dress. If you're wearing the loincloth when you kill shadowspawn, you'll give a mana pool that you can use when you're too tired to channel or when you don't want people seeing your weaves or feeling the power."

"Is this a prank?" Nara asked, having a hard time picturing herself wearing something so revealing, even if it looked good on the girls.

"It feels like a ter'angreal," Allora offered as she ran her fingers over the silk like cloth, curious if she could duplicate its magic.

"It's not a prank," Mist assured her. "The more shadowspawn you kill, the more power you'll have to work with. The halter top permanently increases the height and distance you can jump by one inch per shadowspawn you kill up to a total of one hundred feet and reduces any falling damage you take by one percent every time you kill a shadowspawn."

"Meaning we're going to have to kill at least one hundred shadowspawn," Nara mused, excited about being able to jump out of trees without getting hurt.

"The main problem is that you can't have anything covering the halter top or wear anything under it for the magic to work," Egwene warned them.

"Great, at least none of the Taren Ferry folk are brave enough to cross the river right now," Nara muttered.

Mist smiled when Egwene reappeared holding the sword. "We happen to have a couple of hundred trollocs that need killing and a regeneration spell for when you get tired or injured that should make everything a lot safer than it seems."

"I'm willing to try." Allora turned so that she wasn't facing Mist and worked on putting the loincloth on under her dress without showing off too much skin, not looking forward to wearing the sheer top.

Nara glanced at Mist then copied her mentor, deciding that she didn't really care what someone from another world saw if he was giving her the chance to permanently improve her ability to use magic and beat her brother at an arm wrestling contest.

"Everyone gets scattered around the arena so you'll want to pin them down with threads of air before you get close," Egwene suggested, looking forward to picking up more strength but willing to wait since she'd have plenty of opportunities later.

0o0o0

Vanessa took a couple of seconds to look around the Roman style arena, making sure that she knew where her opponents were before she focused on the roaring crowd of demons that were cheering for the death match. Cheering that promptly turned to booing when they realized that four of the combatants had been crippled.

"Fucking humans!" one demon shouted, his voice booming over the clammer of the crowd.

'Fuck off,' Vanessa thought as she carefully made her way over toward the closest trolloc that wasn't uncomfortably close to another trolloc. She stabbed her borrowed sword into its neck when it lunged for her with its teeth, going from whimpering and 'fearful' to bloodthirsty in an instant as soon as it thought she was in range. She stumbled back a step as the wound caught fire and the creature turned to ash before it even hit the ground, letting out a bloodcurdling scream that seemed to echo in the arena as what passed for its soul was consumed.

'Yeah, that's nasty,' Vanessa thought as she made her way toward the next trolloc, fairly sure the blade would count as a war crime back home since it consumed souls. 'Does it still count if it only works on corrupted creatures?'

She jumped to the side and slashed the next trolloc by reflex when it lunged for her, grateful that Mist had given her a crystal that gave her the skills of a master with the sword because the damned thing had moved faster than she'd been expecting and her previous skills wouldn't have been up to the challenge of reacting properly. She did her best to ignore the creature's screaming as its soul was consumed, not sure how to feel about the fact that it would never be reborn, sent to hell to become a demon or any of the rest of the things that were supposed to happen when corrupted creatures died.

'Who the hell just leaves soul-eating weapons lying around?' Vanessa asked herself as she walked toward the trolloc that was trying to scramble away from her, its face a mask of terror and hatred as some part of it seemed to understand that getting hit by the blade was a fate worse than death. She reflexively brought her blade up and cut a bottle out of the air that some asshole had tossed from the bleachers. "Hey!"

"Boo!" a group of demons shouted, voicing their displeasure with the rigged nature of the fight.

Vanessa flipped the crowd off with her free hand then stepped forward and hacked the trolloc's leg off at the knee, her blade cutting through flesh like a hot knife through softened butter. She watched as the wound ignited with azure flames that quickly started consuming the creature, causing it to writhe in agony. 'This would be a lot harder if Egwene wasn't crippling everything.'

She scowled as a rotten tomato bounced off her bracelet's conjured armor as she made her way toward the last trolloc, annoyed that they were shouting at her for doing the same thing they'd do in her situation. 'Sorry, I'm not fighting fair in a real fight.' She lunged forward and cut the trolloc's head off, giving it more mercy than it had given any of its victims. She blinked when she went from being in the arena to being outside of the cage filled with trollocs.

"Why do you have tomato pulp on your arm?" Apple asked Vanessa.

"The crowd didn't appreciate the lack of a good fight," Vanessa replied as she gestured and used a cleaning spell to remove the tomato pulp and juice from her clothes. She handed the sword and bracelet to Nara. "They'll probably appreciate it less when you wrap them in chains of air and cut off the trollocs' heads."

"I'll try to keep it interesting," Nara promised as Egwene pulled another four trollocs out of the cage and crippled them with weaves of fire. She slipped the armor bracelet on her wrist and took a couple of test swings with the sword, trying to get a feel for its weight before she had to use it.

'What's the point of getting a lute as a gift if it doesn't come with the ability to use it?' Mist mused as he looked through his gift menu. 'Thom can probably find a use for the lute or find someone that can use it.' He turned his attention to Nara, doing his best not to stare at her breasts as the halter top left nothing to the imagination. "Don't worry about being interesting, just kill them."

"All right, let's go," Nara replied, trying to sound more sure than she felt.

Mist cast his poison pit spell, causing Nara and the four trollocs to vanish. "At least the arena disposes of the bodies."

"It certainly makes it easier," Egwene agreed as she went back to using threads of mana to shove the dead trollocs on the field into piles so she could burn them without catching everything on fire.

Bodewhin glanced at the pile of weapons that she'd collected from the dead trollocs. "Do you think melting their weapons would remove the taint?"

"Probably but I'm not sure it's worth the risk," Mist replied as he went back to sorting through his gift menu. 'Noose that increases your existing damage reduction by five? That's probably worth seeing if the crafters can duplicate it and Vanessa can transmogrify it.' He checked the description on the next item in his menu and smiled when he realized that it was actually useful, unlike most of the junk that he'd checked so far.

Allora stared at the ruby and silver pendant that Mist had just pulled out of thin air. "You might want to be careful showing that off, the ruby is probably worth a king's ransom."

"At least," Mist replied as he checked the pendant with his sunglasses. "Every twenty thousand shadowspawn you kill while wearing it increases your mana regeneration and the speed that you recover from channeling by one percent per minute, up to a total of fifty percent."

Allora shook her head. "You'd have to kill entire armies to make it worth it."

"Per minute?" Egwene's clone asked in surprise.

"That's what it says," Mist replied with a grin, wondering how long it would take to kill twenty thousand trollocs and where he'd find enough to make it worth it. "Even one percent would mean that you'd go from barely able to channel enough to light a candle without causing yourself harm to perfectly fine in a touch more than an hour and a half."

Egwene held her hand out toward Mist. "Can I borrow that for twenty minutes?"

"What are you going to do?" Mist asked as he handed her the ruby pendant, already having a good idea what she was planning.

"Kill an army," Egwene replied as she slipped the pendant's chain over her head. She used mana to open a gateway to the room where the White Tower kept their sa'angreal. She reached through the gateway and grabbed the long white staff with a fist sized sapphire in a cage of branches at the top and pulled it through the gateway.

"Did you steal that from the Tower?" Allora asked in concern.

"Borrowed," Egwene replied as she reached through the sa'angreal, embraced the source and drew on the power until she couldn't handle anymore. "I'll give it back when we're done." She used mana to open a gateway to the Blight to where an army of trollocs had gathered in her world and unleashed a barrage of fireballs when she found a large group of trollocs camped.

Allora shivered as she watched Egwene obliterate the army with fire and weaves that looked like spinning blades of air that she set to fly in random directions. "They can probably feel that in Watch Hill or Baerlon."

"I doubt they'll feel it that far," Egwene replied as she started opening more gateways using her mana so that she'd have more targets, letting the gateways close and opening another one if she couldn't see any shadowspawn.

Nara blinked when she reappeared and felt the insane amount of power that Egwene was channeling using an unfamiliar staff. "What's going on?"

"I'm increasing my mana regeneration and the rate I recover from channeling," Egwene replied as she swapped to just using mana since she was starting to feel worn out from channeling too much. 'At least I pushed the amount of power I can channel.'

"Do you want me to grab the next batch of trollocs?" Egwene's clone asked Mist, wanting to speed things up before the trollocs started killing each other.

Mist pulled his attention away from the torrent of mana Egwene was using to obliterate as many shadowspawn as she could find and focused on Egwene's clone. "Might as well."

Egwene's clone grabbed four trollocs with threads of mana, hauled them over the wall of hardened air then cut their hands and feet off with threads of fire.

"Be careful," Nara told Allora as she handed her the bracelet and the sword that had made killing the crippled trollocs easy.

"That's the plan," Allora replied as she put the bracelet on.

Mist cast his poison pit spell, sending Allora and the trollocs to the arena. "Did you have any problem killing the trollocs?"

Nara shook her head. "No, I just wrapped them in threads of air and cut their heads off. The crowd wasn't particularly happy with the display but no one stopped me."

"That certainly makes it easier," Mist agreed as he went back to looking through the gifts he'd picked up from killing the trollocs. 'Schematic for a self cleaning magitech vibrator? That's probably more useful than just giving me the vibrator, assuming we can make the parts. Crystal that gives the user two years of experience with channeling, we might have to wait until Bode or Eldrin have had a chance to pick up more talents. Regular knife? Chalice that causes your urine to glow blue, amusing and useless.'

"Can you scan this?" Egwene asked as she held the sa'angreal toward Vanessa, not taking her eyes off the thousands of shadowspawn she was killing with various weaves.

"Sure," Vanessa replied as she cast her spell to add the staff design to her collection. "It's nice to have a bit more mana to work with."

"It certainly makes things easier," Egwene agreed as she continued killing all of the shadowspawn she could find, taking advantage of the fact that she was killing enough shadowspawn to keep her mana pool at a reasonable level despite the mana she was using for the gateways and to kill the monsters.

Mist smiled as he read the description for the magic wand that he'd picked up. "We're going to have to boost your mana, I just found a wand that permanently boosts footwear but it turns them into garish slippers covered in glitter that you're going to need to fix."

Vanessa laughed. "It could be worse. One of the dungeons has a set of pink boots that are always wet and never fit quite right."

"Why would anyone use them?" Eldrin asked.

"Because they let you walk through slime without being dissolved and give you twenty points of acid resistance," Vanessa replied with a smile, thinking about some of the horrible shoes that her sister had told her about.

"What type of boost does the wand give them?" Bode asked, wondering if it was worth using.

"It causes the slippers to double your carrying capacity and the distance and height you can jump while wearing them," Mist replied as he pulled the childish looking wand with a glitter covered star on the end of it out of his gift menu, wanting to test things before he got carried away planning.

"Why does it have a star on it?" Egwene's clone asked.

"Tradition…" he trailed off when he noticed the glitter falling off the wand every time he moved it. 'I'm going to have to stick it in a case or something to keep it from covering everything with glitter.' He conjured a set of goathide boots then waved the wand over them, turning them into glitter covered pink ballerina slippers that looked like they would fit a child. He checked the description on the boots to make sure the wand hadn't broken the boots' normal enchantment then handed the slippers to Vanessa. "Can you fix them?"

Vanessa laughed as she used her magic to transform the boots back into a pair of comfortable black lace up boots. "And I'm out of mana."

Allora blinked as she reappeared, not used to getting teleported around.

"Welcome back," Mist told Allora, sneaking a peek at her breasts before going back to double checking the boots that Vanessa was holding. 'Everything looks good.'

"Thank you, I don't think the crowd likes us cheating," Allora said, thinking about the rotten fruit she'd had to dodge.

"We should probably have someone that can give them a show go next, it might keep things from getting worse," Eldrin suggested, not seeing a problem with cutting the trollocs apart in a 'fair' fight or at least as fair as wearing the armor bracelet and using the magical sword made it since she wasn't walking into the fight without armor.

Allora took the bracelet off and held it out for the next person.

Eldrin took the bracelet and slipped it on then accepted the sword. "I'll give it a try."

"Four mostly unharmed trollocs, coming right up," Egwene's clone said as she used threads of air to haul four more trollocs out of the cage.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Nara asked, not all that comfortable about seeing a teenager to fight trollocs without the trollocs being crippled.

"Between the damage reduction I picked up from a set of ter'angreal gloves and the bracelet, I doubt they'd be able to scratch me even if I let them hit me and I'm not going to," Eldrin assured them.

"If you run into a problem, cheat." Mist cast his poison pit spell before he could change his mind, sending the trollocs and Eldrin to the arena. "If that doesn't help, we might as well just disable the trollocs and have Vanessa or Apple cut their heads off for the mana."

Egwene smiled as she felt her third pulse of magic flow into her from the necklace letting her know that she'd probably killed sixty thousand shadowspawn over the last couple of minutes of obliterating everything she could find. She stopped tossing fireballs and swirling blades and turned to look at Allora and Nara. "Do you want to use a sa'angreal to kill a bunch of trollocs to boost your mana?"

"Yes!" Nara replied without hesitation.

Egwene smiled as she handed Nara the sa'angreal staff and the necklace. "You shouldn't be able to draw too much with the buffer in place but you should be careful, it's a good habit."

Nara glanced at Allora, thinking about all of the times she'd told her to be careful over the last couple of years. "I'll be careful."

"Good," Allora told her, knowing she had a tendency to get overly enthusiastic about things.

"Which weaves should I use?" Nara asked as she slipped the necklace over her head.

"How's your fire affinity?" Egwene asked thoughtfully.

"Decent but not as impressive as some people," Nara admitted, thinking about Loise's affinity with fire.

"That just means you need to practice," Egwene told her as she started opening gateways into the Blight, looking for more shadowspawn to kill. "Everyone has a certain amount of natural affinity for the elements but practice can help you refine what you have. Using a sa'angreal is like using an angreal only you'll have access to more power. Once you kill enough shadowspawn, you should be able to swap over to using mana. Using it doesn't wear you out and you should be gaining almost as much mana as you're burning to kill everything which means we should be able to kill enough to get the necklace to give your regeneration a boost."

"Sounds good," Nara al'Thor agreed as she embraced the source through the sa'angreal and started tossing fireballs through the gateways, having seen Egwene use the weave enough to copy it.

"I need better spells," Vanessa muttered as she watched Nara do her best to obliterate everything on the other side of the gateways.

"Yep," Mist agreed as he went back to looking through his gifts while he waited for Eldrin to get back.

0o0o0