Elevation of Mana Chapter 175 Beasts of Blood

Construction of my first flying machine was proceeding apace, and by that I mean slowly. There was so much that went into any sizable build that it took time, time and patience. Oddly some of the other elders in the city had too little of the latter, which you think wouldn't be the case for people who were literally ageless, but it was.

I got almost daily questions on what I was doing and how it would work, and when it would be done. Eventually I just stopped even bothering to pretend to answer them. Instead I told the messengers to shove off, or if the elder in question had taken the time to learn to write, burned their letters.

Writing at least had caught on to some degree. Many people still thought it was a very niche skill but with how we could remember things learning to read took literal minutes and writing not terribly much longer. Penmanship had failed to catch on yet though, so most of the bits that were done looked like they'd come from a first grade classroom. However I knew my people, and we liked to do things well, so I had no doubts that soon things would get far more nice looking.

“Did you secure the second site?” I asked Chien as he entered my workshop.

“Sure did boss,” he told me. “Think we'll need all that room though?”

“Yes, this thing is gonna be big. The cloth as well?”

“I've got it. You know I'm surprised that you're letting me take care of that on my own.”

“You've earned my trust Chien, if you say you've got it I assume you've got it.”

“Aww, I'm touched.”

“Honestly you could probably take the project from here if you wanted to. Would you like to?” I asked.

“No, but why do you ask.” He saw my eyes flick towards the back part of my workshop, the sealed door nobody but I was allowed in and sighed. “Seriously boss? That thing is doomed isn't it? I know you want it to work, but I'm just not seeing it.”

“If I could just get it to hold and release the mana it would be there. I can even use it to a limited form now, but without the ability to store anything...”

The object in question was one of my attempts at making a magical computer. It was very, very proto, but that wasn't the point. If I could just get it to function I could explode our society going fast. Nobody here realized how important the ability to parse that much data that fast would be. In my old world it had been able to do wonders, and here, with magic we could bypass so so many of the steps in putting it to use.

“Maybe your approach is wrong? Not that I'd know where to go with it, but we don't have time anyway if you want this project done.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I've got plenty of time until you get these taken to the other site.”

I turned to indicate the frame pieces. They were as near to done as they could be without putting them together, stacked one after the other, measured, bent and ready. So long as they weren't broken in transit or lost we could start building the outer shell right away. There would still be the needed envelope and the carriage for the people to ride in, but the balloon part was really getting close to ready.

“Oh really? Even after the scout has returned?”

“What? When was this? Has it sincerely been that long?” Thinking back it had been a few months, enough for dedicated runners to make it there and back, but not really see too much.

“Why do you think I came down here? I appreciate your work and all, but you hardly need my input for this.”

“Bah,” I grumbled as I gathered up my things to head to the old palace. If the scout they'd sent was back already then I needed to head what he had to say.

The room stretched out around us, the rows of leaders all looking inward, all looking to the light, wiry elf that had been sent away and returned with a haunted look. I'd gotten here as soon as I heard of the return but still had to wait for hours for the full presentation, giving others time to interrogate him and work their own plans into place.

“So,” the head of our gathering said. “Tell us what you've seen.”

Three weeks earlier

“Careful Sochu, I can almost feel it from here,” my companion Lilien said, peeking up and around the rocks.

“Don't worry, I just need to get much further, just get a view.”

Over the last couple of weeks we'd found less and less. It was clear that the people of the plains were fleeing as fast as they could eastward, abandoning villages, and setting up shelters almost against the mountains, and it became clearer why. Whole villages were burned to ash, paths in the beaten dirt the only sign they'd ever existed. Other sections of the plains were still aflame from the fleeing monsters, wildfires burning out of control across land that shouldn't have supported such blazes, only kept going by the herds of beasts stalking within the firestorms.

Many of these creatures were coming from the flaming mountains, bare stretches of blasted rock and rivers of melted stone, and they needed the flames to live. They thrived in the heat, and I suspected would die like a flower in winter if it got too cold. However their needs didn't make them any less dangerous.

The only question was what was driving them this way, one we needed to answer, one we needed to chase west to find the cause of. So we did, running through scorched fields, avoiding what we could, passing what we could. There were few streams or rivers among the endless grasses, or what had been grasses, a challenge for stopping the spread of the fire, and issue for our resupply of water.

My legs pumped up the scrabble of the mountainside. There were few places along the western mountains were we could get over, and fewer that I would want to. This ridge however was high enough that nothing on the far side was likely to see me, and if it did, it would be less likely to be able to get to me here. After all, there had been few beasts crossing in this particular section, evidenced by the small growths of new grass at the mountain's base.

As I got to the top there I found a sheer cliff, not tall, perhaps four times my own height, and I began to climb, fingers as strong as stone digging in and pulling me up. I could hang by one alone if needed, my speed and strength almost equal to that of an elder.

The crest had a small flat top, enough for me to look down, enough for me to see over these barriers and onto the other side. What I found chilled my bones. We'd seen burning lands on this side, places consumed by flames, but the far side of these mountains was different. Nothing grew that I could see, bare rock stretched almost to the horizon. Tall, almost glassy stones rose, and along the landscape a orange ribbon flowed like a snake, slithering through the land. Smoke rose here and there too, spraying from rents and cracks in the ground.

None of that compared to the corpses though. Everywhere I looked were strewn the charred remains of massive hulking beasts. Things that looked like turtles or odd lizards were broken and burned, not even eaten, just ripped apart, with a few bearing claw or bite marks. It was like they'd all been slaughtered, and soon I found the killers.

Among the carnage were two enormous creatures, lizards of some kind, currently engaged in ripping apart a beast that had glowing rocks along its back. They harried it, striking and slashing with claws. For its part the other monster seemed to desire only to flee to the river of lava, striking only enough to push them back for a moment so it could run.

Gauging size was impossible from this height, with no form of reference for any of the creatures I couldn't possibly give an accurate accounting, but they were all massive, that much at least I could see. Their strikes one and all rent the stones upon the ground, leaving gouges and scrapes where it had been smooth.

As I watched the two lizards grabbed and pulled, with coordination that spoke to some form of thought they managed to flip their enemy before ripping apart its belly. But why I couldn't guess, because they spent mere moments engaged in that pass-time before jumping back. As the blood dried upon their muzzles they looked about themselves, searching, hunting, but why?

I looked upon them for a couple of hours, together they searched, pulling apart the ground and checking wherever they could, looking for anything else, but finding no other living creature. Then one of them changed, waiting until his companion stuck his snout into a rock formation, and then charging at the other monster's back.

Their fight was bloody, brutal, and brief. In seconds it seemed one had ripped the throat from the other, leaving his previous ally to die upon the stone as he threw back his head and screeched to the sky. In seconds came other screams, terrible keenings just like the one I was observing had loosed. The monster turned his head, going towards what seemed to be the nearest.

As I returned to the side of my companion he looked at me with fear in his eyes. “You look bad.”

“We need to go, now.” Without further preamble I turned east. Those things hadn't yet made it across the barrier of the nigh cliffs, but they seemed to want nothing but bloodshed, and when they did, I had no doubt they would hunt anything and everything they could. That was why the beasts were fleeing towards us, they were all running for their lives.