Hlaeth Chapter 47 – Domains, Wards, and Disruption

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The foundation level was done in forty minutes, assembled from the bottom up as new Blocks were drawn into and up over those that came before into position, as shocked and awed dwarves watched me working in disbelief.

They’d never seen anyone who could move volumes of stone the way I could, which was unsurprising. The normal spell only lasted a few seconds, after all, and both extending its duration and expanding the area like I did was a massive cost in Feats that few could afford.

Interestingly enough, their Priests could probably learn the Dawnstopping Meta, but with the gods walled off behind the Veil, they couldn’t access the Shaping Stone to do what they wanted to do. They were definitely eyeing me hungrily, imagining what they could do with such power to shape the world.

Well, I’d likely be discussing it in a bit.

The dwarves couldn’t sleep, watching in fascination as blocks stacked on blocks, interior areas were left hollow in specific configurations, battlements formed on the edges of blocks, stairs went up and down, and it soon became obvious that this was not just a floating Pyramid, it was a floating fortress!

2,870 blocks, with the hollowed area being used to make battlements, walls, towers, and supports for the exterior, all of it floating waist-high off the ground with a quiet, ominous air that had the dwarves shivering with awe at the power of Earth Mastery at that level.

The top cube, the Altar Stone, set down into place, forming into a proper capstone with an altar on top of it, and the Rune Circuits were complete.

The bottom level lit up first, and the air began to roil, particularly out over the Yellow, past the Ward boundary. The Pyramid actually began to drift forward, breaking the Ward and inserting itself into the Yellow. The first lightning bolts instantly began to fall from a sky that was starting to churn with thunderclouds, as if curdling in reaction to the Pyramid Domain that was going up, yet another tight, hard Domain that had a job to do.

Planar energies trying to revolt against the presence of vivus slammed into the stone, and the Runework began to light up harder, faster, small falls of vivus starting to wisp down from the floating stone as more and more of the Pyramid drifted past the Ward at its mile-an-hour racing-snails pace, and the Yellow in the air began to gather, and to Burn.

By some amazing foresight, the Braziers were just short enough to pass under the Pyramid without scuffing them in the slightest, and the new mountain of millions of tons of rock swept slowly and grandly over and past the burning Lights stretching out for several miles in each direction now.

The air directly over the Pyramid was churning wildly, yet flattened clearly against the Mountain Ward, showing the source of its power. The Pyramid slid fully out from behind the Ward and, ignoring the crashing lightning that sounded… wrong in many ways, and looked completely off in the hues and colors and after-images and trails it took coming down, the Pyramid of the Unwhite slid slowly and grandly down the slope and the valley towards the area of the Yellow, aiming to get to a full one-mile distance where its full Domain would be in effect, and it could feast in full.

Layer after layer of Runes lit up, the Domain pushed out and ahead, and vivus sparked and swirled over a landscape that had already had a lot of Yellow swarms roving over it, and who now were going to be running into a target-rich environment.

I’d let down the stairs in the middle of each side, and eager Children and dwarves had clambered aboard the slowly-moving stairwell, heading eagerly up to the top to look out ahead and watch the white swathes strewn across the landscape puff back to life and start slowly growing again.

The lightning coming from above, despite its screaming, shrieking, laughing, reverberating, and other echoes, was always diverted to the next level of the stones, while the Domain was pushing up towards the sky, clouds of unwhite swirling up there to cling to every bolt coming down… and follow them back up to the kaleidoscope of very weird cloud colors and consistencies above us.

The Portals in the way just popped under the assault of so much vivus in the Pyramid’s Domain field, the Veil far too saturated and backed by too much mass to persist. It was only in the small area, but the very energy used to sustain them became the fuel needed to shut them down, and so I watched the Portals close one-by-one around us.

The first people up had also, at my direction, brought up a LOT of arrows and crossbow bolts. They’d also toted along crates and racks of ballista parts, and the engineers among the dwarves were setting those up at the proper stations.

The last lightning bolt from above, its thunder like the droning rasp of a million insect wings, spiraling down in sideways loops that painted the air with fracturing lines of unnatural colors worrying at the Veil, pounded down into the Altar on the capstone. A straight white light flared and shone upwards, punching through the roiling tempest above us and forcing it back and away from us as the Domain reached the level of the clouds.

We watched the not-mist Burning slowly away under the Domain, while I called everyone to attention to Salute the Dawn.

As the morning stole across everyone, a new Pyramid of mountain stone with Runes shining white greeted the morning sun.

One mile from the Mountain Ward, the Pyramid paused, and there it stopped, its Domain just past the great long wall of the Mountain Ward.

Planar energies pressed in on it and were devoured, the air about us filled with swirling clouds condensing as the planar energies were drawn in by this big gaping hole in the middle of them, ignited, and fell to vivus.

First, fortification of the Domain against any storm surges. Then, slow expansion and increasing the area being Burned.

Our mobile base of operations against the Yellow, complete with barracks, store rooms, guard posts, and assembly areas, was in effect.

A Distance Distortion bringing in an Earth Elemental trapped on this world both gave it a secure magical place to inhabit that would definitely increase its power over time and gave us doubled internal dimensions to the rooms and tunnels inside the Pyramid. Unable to depart this world, the Elemental was plenty eager to let the pure energies of vivus pass through the stone and help refine its own body and power as it rode inside and through the Pyramid.

But it was now a new day, and it was time for the Children to go out and fight again. Almost all of them had been in telepathic Markrooms with me, inside Tempus Fugit areas, and had received the kind of direct mental training that was simply unimaginable to them before I arrived. It was concise, full sensory, impossibly fast and clear, no misconceptions, responsive, and custom to each of them and their understandings of how things worked.

Basically, they’d received the equivalent of nearly two weeks of training and discipline in the new skills they were accessing, and it was time to go out and use them again. Their withdrawal route was to the Pyramid, and the archers could even stay pretty busy with the outraged Yellow creatures being drawn to the Pyramid from all directions, then coming into this atmosphere completely empty of the Yellow and going berserk from deprivation.

Some of the very best Ironaxe snipers had their Crossbows out and ready to defend the Pyramid from all directions, and ballistae were being assembled on all faces and multiple levels to fire in support. The Interdiction and Stillflight Fields inside the Pyramid made sure we didn’t have to deal with fliers, and would even force most burrowers to the surface as they wouldn’t be able to use dimensional shenanigans to drill through stone easily.

But it was time for the Children to go out there and kill, and in doing so Level up and become greater than they’d ever thought they’d be.

I, I just had to sit back on oversight and make sure they didn’t die, while the dwarves handled the supplies and food coming down the hill from the mountain to the Pyramid. Mass Disks made for moving lots of food easy.

To the west, the Firewall Sweep was moving out and going out for distance, dwarves on short carts drawn by strong pigs or tough mountain ponies carrying the poles for the Walls of Flame grinding over the landscape and helping purify away things caught in its path.

I was pretty sure every dwarf-king worth the name was going to pony up the goldweight to get a Permanent Wall like that of their own. It was just too good a weapon against hordes of invaders not to use… and, of course, it would help eat up the Yellow all the more quickly.

Another five hundred Vivic Eternal Flames and Lights each, the latter attached to helms and shields of the dwarves, joined those already made, and consumption of the Yellow began in earnest.

---------

One A Day.

Kord Blackaxe, Borderguard, warrior, smith, mercenary, and now retainer to a human archmage of some kind, still found the whole experience surreal.

His Axe, gripped in two hands, came over and down and split the skull of this insect-reptile-vine-waving thing that literally had no business still being alive, the unwhite fires of vivus igniting on the thing and leeching the planar energy out of its flesh and bones, like the thing was made of magical oil that only fed the mists.

It wasn’t dead. The Master said most of these things had mutant physiologies dispersed through their bodies, like elementals, and had to be totally hacked apart to be killed.

The Armor he was wearing rang with the force of powerful blows, eating the impacts and protecting him from most of the damage of bludgeoning limbs covered with stone-like spikes that should have dented and crushed his Armor easily. Instead, Crystal Shield ki reinforced the Armor as the Armor protected him, and reduced blows worthy of a giant’s morningstar down to glancing hits that only made him grunt in pain… and his Combat Focus would totally take care of.

He ripped Yarhne up and around, Bane to Aberrations tearing through two of the limbs, and opening up an avenue for his adopted brother, Hano.

The big ogryn magi’s oversized bastard Sword Solneshko arced in like the sun coming town, blazing yellow and white flames hewing through the body of the creature and chopping it in two.

Without the slightest hesitation, the two of them spun and hacked and hewed on the still-twitching body parts, chopping them in pieces that Burned heartily and cheerfully. The death of the Tainted did what several days worth worth of work by Vivic Eternal Fires would do, if not more, accelerating the consumption of the Yellow as released vivus also ate at the Yellow in the soul and the air, spreading its mist slowly out in ever-widening circles of unwhite.

One point of Soak a day. One point of Health a day.

It had seemed so minor a thing, but now everyone was seeing the benefit. The amount of punishment his brothers and sisters could take, the vigor and power in their movements, was not something that could be overlooked. Blows that could have crushed, crippled, or disabled them easily they could now not only survive, but shrug off, allowing them to dare attacks they would have retreated from before, just so they could get in another blow, or two, or three of their own, knowing that they wouldn’t be dying so quickly.

The additional combat experience also let them track that Health and Soak, let them know what they could take, what they couldn’t, and how important it was to be able to regain that Health and Soak, because it was the flame which powered their ability to fight and keep going.

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