[Hlaeth] Ch 4 - A Duty of Fire

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            Six fallen Weirwoods! The amount of magical wood that could be harvested from them might last the artisans and crafters of the kingdom for a thousand years! They would not have to ask the living trees for sacrifices and small limbs at all!

            “I, I will point out the trees that should not be so reduced,” she said quickly, if not eagerly. It was still a great tragedy, but the dichotomy of it being a great windfall left her feeling strangely unclean at the idea.

            “So be it.” It was apparent his dragon didn’t actually need to beat his wings to fly, hovering in place patiently with wings extended, the stars inside them seeming to glitter and to glow with deep power barely called upon. “I’ll be erecting Walls of Fire across the landscape. Given the necroic surge, even the wettest and greenest life here is going go up like tinder.”

            He did no more than incline his head, and his dragon glided forwards, so smoothly it was more like skating along than anything resembling the constant up and down motion of riding a flying beast that she had experienced in the past.

            The human extended his Staff out, and the electrum and unwhite Flames flared. A somber and terrible Note seemed to fill the air, heavy with judgment and power, and instantly the mana in the air became so thick it was almost dancing in her mouth and nose.

            A streak of Light, obviously magical, shining with the power of the Heavens, cut across the landscape and the trees below. It sliced through the broken branches and the greenery, touching the ground below, and flames the exact same hue as those atop the Staff roared into being.

            Her hackles rose as it blazed across the ground, up and over fallen forest giants, and instantly began to ignite them.

            That Wall of Fire… was two thousand feet long! Her long fingers did the math helplessly, staring in shock and awe at the human giving voice to a Song so sublime and powerful it was shaking everything she knew of magic, as he somberly and carefully began to spin his Staff.

            The Fires of Heaven fell from him, Burning upon the land below, and began to spread.

            Normal flames joined the electrum fires, but the whiteness clung to everything as the trees began to go up. There was astoundingly little smoke, and even the heat seemed subdued. She watched green branches shrivel rapidly to ash, fall away to white dust, and where those flames Burned, a cool and rising, sparkling fog of ethereal mist began to rise exactly as fast as the burning forest began to go down.

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            I leisurely charted out our course, matching speed to the crossing Walls of Heavenbound Fire I was pumping out through Mortus Dius. I was limited in the damage I could do with the effect by its very nature, especially given I couldn’t increase its Valence, but it still benefited from all my Theurgies.

            It was Holy Fire, and with Vivus added, also a Healing spell. My Caster Level on it was approximately 102, which meant over two thousand feet of flames rising up to purge the land with every Casting, spending a single point from my destabilized Mana Pool to give it a duration beyond my concentration. It would last only a round a level, so the Walls were persisting about ten minutes after I put them down, but given the heat and power of them, that was more than enough to ignite a vivic inferno and set everything alight in their vicinity.

            I could see spurts and sparks of vivus erupting here and there as animal remains were come across, flared into motion. The flames were actually less important than the vivic mist, which was actually doing most of the work as it went after all the negative energy gathering here, the fire swooping in afterwards and accelerating the break-down. There wasn’t much smoke because the raw materials were falling apart into mist and white dust, and there wasn’t much heat because the potential energy was taken by the vivus and restored to the Land.

            It was a lot of area to cover, but I could cut across massive areas fairly quickly with the Walls, so what it actually meant was I just had ground to cover, which Feature could handle nicely, and I only had to plan the most efficient dispersal of the Walls to do the job.

            The forest itself was in no danger at all. Living matter would ignore the vivus-laden flames as little other than a balmy wind blowing through, and they’d find little to feast on, perhaps a swirl of fallen leaves falling apart, and then the flames would die out in the green.

            Living creatures wouldn’t get the slightest burn, and at worst would feel like standing in a hair dryer or something.

            Quietly turning a rather boring and humdrum Duty of Fire into exercise, I spun through adapted katas with Mortus Dius, while Feature dipped this way and that as he followed the course we were taking.

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            Feature spotted them well before I did, mostly because they were coming from behind. I would have sensed them once they hit the range of my Eyes of Heaven, but with Devasight and Eyes of the Eagle borrowed from me, he spotted them literally miles off, racing through the sky towards us.

            “It appears that some of your countrymen have come to save the day,” I told Captain Fyanyl, who was proudly balancing on Feature’s back behind me, watching what I was doing. Her only question so far had been about the rest of the forest, and I’d proven my point by extending the Walls out into the edge of the forest uncut by the Dimensional Fracture, and the living trees had totally ignored the flames that were devouring their slain compatriots mere paces away.

            She turned at my wave, squinting into the sun going down, at least catching the glint of light on shining metal.

            “The pegasi-rider vanguard of the Stormguard of the king,” she judged, recognizing the gleam of mithral.

            “There are four dragons behind them, and over a hundred griffons as well. It seems someone registered the magnitude of the magic that was used here and has responded accordingly,” were his only comments.

            “I admit to being surprised that the mages of the Royal Court did not appear on the wings of magic almost immediately,” Captain Fyanyl said, aware of the leagues-spanning spells of the more powerful members of the Court.

            “The Dimensional Fracture both broke the Veil and reinforced it, and that reinforcement is getting stronger as the vivus pours into the Land. There’s no teleportation effect that is going to ride the Veil from here to the horizon, another deliberate side effect of the Fracture. They didn’t want any rapid-display forces to get here before there were sufficient troops through the Gate to hold it.”

            She was a sylvan elf, by our metrics, standing just over five feet six, which would make her tall among her kind. Her hair was russet, her skin a pale brown, with the wide shoulders of a lifelong archer and slender build typical of the fey set, a green tinge notable at the tips of her ears and other points on her skin. Unlike the typical anime elf, she didn’t have much of a bust, and fairly androgynous curves that were nevertheless graceful and poised, like a hawk ready to take wing. She’d be considered attractive by any human standards, that was certain.

            A casual Assay confirmed she was an Archer main with Ranger Levels, and had taken that road to a solid Twelve. It made her a minor Primal Caster, so she did have some familiarity with Druidic magic, although nothing higher than IV’s. Her Gear had mild enchantments upon it, strongest upon her Bow.

            Given that she was over two centuries older than I was, the lack of Gear meant a lack of funds to improve them, or the desire to worry about the matter… and also probably meant no Naming Karma mechanic known to them, as simple light hunting over that time period would have fed her Bow to the limit, I was certain.

            “I have no doubt that the incoming riders will be highly skeptical of my actions and presence, but I should be able to bull through it and continue on with Truth,” I informed her, waiting as she swayed for a moment at the lesser Word reverberating through her. “Are there internal threats you have to deal with that they might mistake me for? From your earlier reaction, I assumed encountering a human in this circumstance was entirely unexpected.”

            She resumed breathing, probably unaware that the residual effects of Truth made it difficult for her to lie. “Occasionally some of the denizens of the forest are affected by magic in unforeseen ways, often by the machinations of the Fey or hostile forest spirits, and they have to be hunted and put down before they grow further and become a greater danger. I… cannot recall a time when a human actually survived to set foot upon the main island of Eldara without a specific invitation to do so, and I do not believe such an invitation has been issued for hundreds of years.”

            “Some kind of catastrophe among the human realms, or a general fall in morals and trustworthiness or something?” I asked archly, not stopping my Wall-erecting as the pegasi riders swept in upon me, lances raised high and ready to do some work.

            “Both? I admit to being unclear of the situation among the humans. It is not a manner of concern for my people,” she stated coolly. “I do know that there was an event, nearly five hundred years ago, that closed the planes and gods off from Hlaeth. It is believed to have been wrought by humans meddling in powers that they should not have, but there are no details, only fanciful suppositions.”

            Well, sounded like a good reason to toss a Mitharn Lorelord of a magos into the mix. Fix this, Ael, while we figure out something else for you to do…

            “Good evening to the valiant riders of the Stormguard. Please do not interfere with the vivisizing of the reaped forest below. There are immense amounts of necromantic energy converging on the slaughter stemming from the Dimensional Fracture unleashed by the orcish force attempting to invade here. If the forest is not properly Burned and reduced to the Land, a Dead Rising event of significant magnitude will happen. I do not believe any of you want to be fighting thousands of blood-mad undead animals and animated plants come the night.

            “I say this in Truth.”

            Not a one of the pegasi were affected, but a couple of their riders nearly fell out of their saddles as the Word broke across them from a mile away. Those fellows happened to be Sapphire, so that didn’t surprise me at all.

            Follows of Axiom tended to be obstinate arseholes.

            Foreign dragon, rider, setting the forest on fire. Obviously I was the one responsible for what had happened here, and they could attack first and ask questions later!

            Well, nope.

            The leader, at least, seemed to be Silver, which was heartening to see, with the majority of them Colored Gold to Rainbow, actually.

            Not a one of them was under Ten, either, meaning they were truly an elite force by any normal standards.

            They were also not of the same lineage as Captain Fyanyl here, having pale skin with blue-silver highlights, with a couple of them a lighter golden-brown hue with golden highlights.

            Elves, color-coded for convenience? That should be moon/high elves, and sun/gray elves. Rural elves, urban elves, and noble elves, as the case might be.

            Of course, there could be a dozen other subspecies, but that was the ‘standard’ that many gods worked from, and I had to start somewhere.

            Feature informed me that the dragons coming in were not of any kind we’d seen on Terra-Luna, with hides more like burnished metal than the primary elemental hues I was familiar with.

            I wasn’t unfamiliar with the idea of other species of dragons. Indeed, sometimes it seemed there were more types than there were elves! We’d have to see how they reacted to Feature…

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