[Hlaeth] Ch 8 - An Awakening

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            I was satisfied with my haul, about a hundred tons of each type of Elder tree and a bunch of seeds of magical trees was perfect. No doubt there were hundreds of magical plants in the surrounding area I could have yoinked as well… if my Valences had been stable and my Matrix not resetting as it adjusted to the new Manafield.

            Well, it was what it was.

            We were down on the ground now by the utterly massive weirwood that had stopped my fall to this world, the one the elves called ‘Grandmother Dancing Moon.’ Grandfather Dawnsong the Sunbloom, Grandmother Sadwind the Heartlonging Tree, and Grandfather Chimelight the Crystal Needle Pine were the other Elders in the area, bulwarks against the orcish magic that had cut into the Rupture and saved thousands of trees and animals in so doing.

            I had Meditated for my required two hours, arranging things in my Matrix and Valences and getting them into place. My Permanents were back in place, my Soul Magic was balanced and harmonizing my Tats, and the manafield here was responding to my force of will.

            There were some definite differences between what it was used to doing and what I could do, and I was microcasting through Siegecaster efforts to test the limits of what could and could not be done, using subsonic Sublime Chords to test the magic here further.

            For all practical purposes I was back to full strength and awareness, although I tamped down my Aura so as not to completely alarm them. They’d already been impressed with the endless amounts of firepower I’d used yesterday, no need to alarm them by sitting there like a vortex in the manafield.

            I faced the east precisely, bowed my head, and invoked the Salute to Aru as the elves watched silently, their large eyes fixed in the same direction.

            The first rays of sunlight washed over the horizon, and the vivus stole silently away as Natural Renewal did its thing. My Matrix settled in, attuned to the natural flow of the world, and everything clicked into place for me to Cast.

            A large part of the mists hereabouts were vivic energy, so it basically meant the ground cover fog dissipated with supernatural speed, wiping away any obstructions to visibility while leaving a few wisps here and there, and a lot of dew on the ground.

            Ground already covered with green.

            It was kind of surreal, seeing what almost looked like a golf course rolling out in front of us. The biggest breaks were the holes and hollows where so many of the trees and their roots had been, now settling into many, many depressions in the landscape where the ground had collapsed, dotting the area with craters where the trees had been.

            But still, it was all green and covered with new growth already. It looked… almost pastoral.

            The only trees not vanished from the utter destruction of the day before were the Elder trees that had fallen. Already the word had gone out, and elves from across the kingdom were coming to transport their remains away. They were already pre-sliced, as it were, so it just involved transporting thousands of tons of extremely valuable wood away, piece by piece.

            The grand Elder Trees had no opinion on the matter. The dead were dead, the perpetrators were gone, and plants were fatalistic about such things. Using their bodies to make stuff was perfectly fine by them.

            “This vivus of yours is extraordinary in what it does, Master Aelryinth,” Commander Tellusian commented to me gravely. I could tell he was a little put off that he wasn’t taller than I was, since he was definitely the tallest elf here, but I didn’t let it bother me. I was far from the tallest of humans, after all.

            “Vivus is the fire of the mortal plane, Commander,” I corrected him mildly, earning me a sharp look. “Hell has its hellfire, the Abyss has its balefire, the Heavens have their angelfire… and the Mortal Plane has vivic flame.

            “All planes have a method to purify, cleanse, and consume that which is impure to themselves. Vivus is the means by which the Land feeds on the negative energies of death and the intrusive powers of other realms.” I smiled thinly. “It is a fearsome power, for all that it is far more subtle and passive than others. There is a reason why other realms don’t like coming to the Prime, and vivic flame, especially once it is harnessed, is one of the reasons why.

            “The Land here is hungry, and it will feed on them all.”

            He looked surprised and impressed at that statement. “Are you willing to share the secret of it?” he asked directly.

            “There is no secret to it.” I held out my hand, and one of the many tips of severed branches whipped over to my hand. I blithely dropped an Eternal Holy Vivic Light upon the end of it, the magical wood being a fine focus, and a brilliant yet soft electrum glow blazed into existence at the end of the branch.

            His sapphire eyes widened as he stared at the spell, automatically grasping the branch as I handed it to him. “As you can see, it works fine with Holy powers, too. Vivus is always a rider, a Kicker to the main energy and form of an attack. That should be sufficient for your mages to work out how to tack it onto their spells, or add it as an elective Kicker to a Weapon.” With a silent ripple, vivic flames burst up from the head of Mortus Dius and spread down it, their mists pouring silently down into the green beneath us around the grip of my hand.

            He was both a little dazzled, mesmerized, and awed by the spell, I could see it in his eyes.

            That was probably because the Caster Level was in excess of 50, so it was understandable.

            “The mages of the High Council are at the origin site of this magic, and have expressed a desire to meet you. Are you willing to do so?”

            He was being astute and polite after seeing the relative gap in our abilities. He might not have liked me and been suspicious of me, but I could also crush him like a bug, and he wasn’t stupid enough to get that level of animosity going.

            Also, his dragon was very leery of me, able to sense my Title, if not specifically what it was. When dragons are wary of something, little elven riders should be, too.

            “Certainly. We can begin after I’ve attended to a request from the good Captain here.” He blinked as my Disk Load swirled out of my Masspack, formed a comfortable seat next to me, and I pivoted to face Captain Fyanyl. “If the Captain would be so kind as to have a seat, this will be over quickly.”

            A bit startled and nervous with all the eyes on her, the sylvan elfin officer removed her weapons and set them on the small table on the side of the chair meant to take them before sitting down. It promptly rose off the ground, bringing her to my eye level exactly.

            “Palms,” I said calmly, holding out my hands. Carefully, she gave them to me, letting her long fingers lay in my grip as I touched the chakra points of her bones there.

            There was a glitter of light up from her hands, up her arms, around her shoulders, meeting at her neck, and then flowing up in green-gold glitters inside her cheeks and temples.

            She gasped and sat upright at feeling the power flowing through her, glowing out her eyes now.

            “You should feel your Matrix singing to you,” I told her calmly as she clutched my hands tighter instinctively. “Right now, you’ve only the basic energies of Primal Magic in your Matrix, so you can feel it interacting with the new growth around us, and the satisfaction of the Land,” I continued, unperturbed by her grip.

            “Yes! Yes, I can feel it! The Land, the land is… happy…” Her face twisted, not quite knowing how to think of that after the destruction of the day before.

            “It is because so much has died and returned to the Land, waiting to be reborn. If it had just died and was left there to rot and decay, the Land would be irritated at the sore upon it. Life is returning here swiftly, aided by the lives of those who died before, and the negative energy which would have affected all has been consumed.

            “What we are going to do is attune your Matrix in a different direction, a direction shared by the blood of all the elves about you, and all your ancestors who came before you. Let us find the song which is appropriate, and build on it.”

            Then I started the Sublime Chord, and every elf in the area jumped in shock as the manafield around them thrummed like a maestro had just struck a chord on it.

            She instinctively matched the note and tone, confirming that the elven language made all of them natural singers. I rose up the scale, paused as something tweaked in the weave of magic around us, and carefully led her back to a point where her blood had pulsed, so imperceptibly she hadn’t noticed it, narrowing the notes and chords and alignment of the magic until…

            The pure, sharp note rang out, and every elf there opened their lips to sing a match to it on pure reflex, feeling the magic pouring through them and dancing in the blood and nerves in an awesome feeling of perfect communion, as if their senses were extending out into the weave of the manafield.

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