The Power of Ten

“Shvaughn took Freyalise?” I was rather surprised. “I thought she would Bind and Consume the erlking for certain!”

“Shvaughn’s reasoning was that if another hamadryad popped up, she would likely be of Spring or Summer, and she would not be allowed to take them. However, erlkings by default are ravagers of civilization and killers of mortals looking to advance themselves, and she would certainly be allowed to take such.”

There was a ripple, and suddenly golden hair became elegant golden feathers that perfectly complemented fox ears, and draconic wings rippled to glistening, gleaming dark feathers. Clawed fingers that could chop up skulls as easily as water settled softly on the heads of the two Fey, who leaned into the touch despite themselves.

Black and gold theme. Danger, Will Robinson!...

“Hmm.” I could do it. My Binder Levels stacked on top of Druid and Wizard when dealing with entities of Nature here, and Fey were included. I could thus Bind 48 Hit Die worth of them, with a cap of 18 Hit Die from the Theurgy. That cap was 14 and 28 total for Miss Lilithi Five-Tail and things like her.

That would give me a full trio of Bound and Sealed entities, although at least one of them would be Going Away soon enough. Another week of burning slowly or so.

It was like the Shroud was preparing me for something like this with stupid Binder Levels and Summoning Feats and stuff.

I slid off Sleipner, feet not touching the ground. “You have their Truenames.”

Talons caressed cheeks, able to rend steel, making both Fey shudder as tails whispered over their skin. They blurted out the Names instantly.

I looked into the blue and gold eyes of the sylph, who looked accepting, defiant, eager, and afraid all at once. “By your Name, I Bind and Seal you,” I stated calmly, and expeditiously leaned forwards to kiss her and draw her in.

Wind swirled into my lungs and through me as she disincorporated, and went into the Sealing Tat on my back.

My wings popped out and spread wide. The silver on black Runes had now been incorporated into a dazzlingly beautiful butterfly-esque pattern, swirling with elemental power added to the magic there.

My new antennae reached out and twitched as I slid over to the nymph, gold and grey eyes staring at me with the exact same emotions, only this time adding desire to the mix.

Ah, the two of them were also more than good, good friends...

“By your Name, I Bind and Seal you,” I told her, and she leaned into it, and I let her taste holy fire before the magic activated, and she dissolved into wisps and a hale autumn wind that flowed through my lungs and into the Tat on my back.

And yes, I Feebleminded both of them, and Cursed their Wisdom down to 3. They were enemies of the advancement of mortals, and normally I would just kill them. I definitely wasn’t going to let their minds and wills influence my own directly, and they were Fey, living tropes. They couldn’t ‘just change’.

It was the penalty for all the deaths they were responsible for. It wasn’t the active malice of winter, but the cold and cruel impartiality of the most unconcerned aspects of Nature.

I could, however, dump a Geas onto them, and have them open up all their powers and memories to me. Normally such things would be a bargaining point between a Binder and Bound Entity, but I had no need to be polite here. What was theirs was now mine with to do as I wanted, as they were the losers in this fight.

Hmm!

“The great warlord looks marvelous inside My Warlock,” I observed, rising to my feet and smiling at Legion. We took a step together and flowed into an embrace as if made for this, new Fey energies joining the dance of Wrath, ki, and holy magic.

“His harem grows without him,” Legion murmured as we parted, blue and green around silver on black Mask of Tats glowing as they feasted at the sight of me.

“Binia and Usephila, however?” I touched their antennae with mine.

“Well, they were not his lovers, and we did not want them to go to Shvaughn, who has Encela and Nipeotryx.” I inclined my head, tallying up the three sylphs and nine nymphs of who had followed Freyalise. “Our lovers we reserved for our lovers, as it were.”

I had to smile. “And you think I do not know of the dryads among her Royal Guard?” I laughed softly. “And the satyrs, who were his Secondary Grantors?”

“Yes, we had to split them with Shvaughn. The satyrs are unrestrained womanizers who are massively turned on by their current circumstances.”

“I did say dryads were in your future, did I not?”

“You did.” We kissed again, and I enjoyed the ethereal feeling of fey magic mixed with some new elemental potency there. “Was the Binding useful?” they asked, parting while our antennae still danced.

“The two of them are hundreds of years old. It will take time to go through their insights, and effectively make a Permanent Binding.” Which I would do. “I am curious if it will break Twenty for me, but I doubt it.”

“Twenty?” They blinked at me. “How?”

“My current Wizard Level is Five. I have nine Faux Levels layered on it via the Double Helix.”

They glanced at my antennae and newly ornate wings. “Limalisx is a Twelve...” they murmured.

“There is nowhere near the Karma to do such a thing, however... and doing so completely obviates the reason the Shroud is only letting me do Masteries right now, so I doubt it will actually let me do so.”

They frowned. “Ah. Your Ur-Priest Levels have not actually risen?”

“They rose to Eight, which makes me a Faux Twelve, and there they sit... instead of a Faux Sixteen.”

They caught it instantly. “But your Wizard Levels might then make Eight...”

Which would make me a Faux Seventeen, and open up the Ninth Valence.

The sign of a true Archmage...

Heck, that would put me into territory Aelryinth hadn’t hit, as he kept going Deep, seeing as how he had decades and the incoming Karma was intermittent. If he’d just gone for Height, it was likely his Secondary Levels would take literally centuries to catch up.

Cheating on Depth with Theurgic and Racial Levels. Double-cheating by being Halvyr. Still, if Aelryinth could pull it off, just being ‘efficient’ with his Theurgic choices would pop him from Fifteen to Faux Nineteen... and he still wouldn’t miss all the Karma he’d shaved off, since he wouldn’t be paying Ten prices for all those Levels.

It wasn’t Twenty-One and being able to take Eternal Feats like Legion could, but that was something for the far future. Regardless, there was a massive amount of Karma required to actually break that Final Ceiling, Faux Levels or not, and I didn’t have it.

I did, however, have access to an unlimited source of the stuff. My long-term prospects for Levels were quite good, if totally tedious and monotonous in their source.

“Stick to the schedules,” I half-laughed, half-chided them, and Legion growled, but released me nonetheless, furry caress here, razor never-cut touch there... There was just too much work for us to do. “When are you going after the fake Kali?”

“There is no hurry, and there are certain forces that have gone into motion since the Autumn Court is now out of play.” The brutal and bloody fighting that had accompanied the revelation that the elves had been snookered had thoroughly crushed the power of the Autumn Court in the current paradigm... and the elves were urgently undoing the work the Fey had done here, as both Autumn and Winter were eying Ælfheim covetously now.

Shvaughn and Legion were in turn eying them, and the Fey were aware of it. It didn’t take much poking to note there were erlkings active in northern Canada and the Amazon, either, or find out the names of the other active hamadryads or other Fey royalty.

The Court of Winter didn’t have hamadryads, after all...

It was a nice interlude, but we both had things to get back to... and in Legion’s case, to flit off to find my family and make them some offers they wouldn’t refuse. The lads were going to feel left out again...

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Ten thousand miles a day. Riding on the Water, Parting the Water, Controlling the Winds for no air resistance and getting rid of anything minor airborne in front of us.

A swathe ninety miles in radius. It could extend from the top to the bottom of the world’s oceans, rolling day by day across the breadth of the Atlantic now, and as it did, the secret map of the Shrouded Earth was laid bare to me and my people as it had never been to any other being alive.

For up to ninety miles from the surface, the secrets of the Felldeep, the massive underrealm of linked caves, caverns, tunnels, rifts, chasms, and canyons, flues and sunken seas, long-buried realms and subterranean kingdoms, was exposed before me.

I saw countless Nodes of elemental power passing by, and endless veins of ores metallic and gemstone, waiting to be pried out of the land by those needing goldweight. Unending sources of life came and went, only the mightiest and the most magical receiving any individual distinction, but cities carved and erected upon the Land and teeming with intelligent creatures stood out like black blots in a lighted room, their City Spirits definitely hostile to Land and me alike.

A good number of those were down deep on the sea floor. They were dutifully logged and sent off to certain governments who were starting to move assets into place.

I worked on Infusing while I rode, tracking the world about me with one thoughtstream for surprises, monitoring the Commune with another, doing research through my techies with another two, answering Allegiance questions and monitoring the various conflict situations my people were in scattered across the globe, and welcoming the dozens to hundreds of new Vassals coming in by the hour, and the hundreds to thousands of Bannersworn doing the same.

There were probably a lot of people who would not be happy to learn that I had basically bloodlessly conquered Ælfheim, but those same people wouldn’t be happy to know that Heavenbound Hall was mostly subservient to me, and more and more people from the Heavenly Churches were also swearing under me and the grand purpose of The Jet and the Silver. Major swathes of the dwarven, gnome, and hyn communities were under my Banner, both active and passive, let alone the halvyr, dhatun, urukhar, and ogryn, who were all finding a greater cause and ambition under my Banner.

I would never be a Queen here, but there was no doubt I was the most powerful Monarch in the world for now.

Part of that responsibility was taking a long step back and letting the people do more and more of the work, as momentum built and the fighting at Shroudzones around the world continued.

Internecine warfare in Africa had begun to tail off sharply after my visit. Some of the idiots were looking forward to being Goblin warlords and thinking they could gaff the Goblin gods. They were going to be horribly disappointed, as religions under the Shroud were not the same as religions when gods were actually paying attention.

Some of them were looking for a better way forward. We could help them find it, but it would be up to them to grab it.

I had not been to the Middle East, and the absolute mess of clan politics and favor-currying going on between all the different factions there. I wasn’t planning on going, either. The Heavenly Churches had a presence, and I was certainly known there, as despite all the resistance of various overly proud peoples, The Human Tongue had swept through them and replaced their various competing ancestral languages and dialects with the same one.

They whined and bitched and moaned and complained about their glorious lost heritage, but they could now chat freely with anyone around the world, and understand every other human. If they wanted to relearn their old tongue, it was mainly to translate old works of literature and art into current forms.

The world would need conflict zones, where the games of the Alignments played out. If you didn’t provide them, machinations would happen that would create them for you. Evil wanted to bring out its knives. Neutrality wanted to ignore everyone else or play everyone off. Good wanted the arseholes away from their people, just maintaining enough contact to uplift who they could.

Africa and the Middle East were vigorously volunteering themselves to be such zones, although Central America wasn’t far behind. South America was taking some big steps to get away from such things, which was really heartening to see, starting with the waves begun in Ecuador... but there were other forces pushing back hard, so, maybe not...