The ground heaved upwards in an eruption of dust and sand and anathemic forces doing battle down below, then settled back down with groans and roars, falling in on itself and forming a long and extended crater atop where the tomb had once been.

  “Well, lass, looks like ye don’t have to fill that one in,” the Mick remarked as I waved my hand and drove the dust clouds back down to the ground, mostly by sweeping up a big fog cloud and making it rain lightly over the area.

  “Pity.” I stared at the flow of magic down there. “The vivus blew through the entire place and took out the aging support magicks down there. It’s eating up the last of the Taint and will clean this out. We’re good to go, and that young man hopefully can pass beyond, now.”

  “Bael’Zharon might not see it that way,” the Mick noted blackly.

  “Optimism gets you everything, Lord Mick. Let us hope that is enough to drive him to appear!” Kris just grinned.

  “I’ll get this to Harlune. He’s going to have such a face when he sees it. I’ll probably be the one doing most of the tests on it, given how few people can channel decently sacred energies.” I lifted the bottle of horrifyingly Corrupted Blood, shaking my head. “And you put this on Swords of Lost Light…”

  The Mick just sighed, not wanting to look at the crap, either. “Aye. Swords o’ Lost Hope were no joke.”

  “Just adding a Render would be an awesome accomplishment, if it can still be done,” Kris noted, her voice neutral but not hopeful. “I’m not sure of the alternates, nor if you’ll have enough blood for all the tests, or to use if you are successful…”

  “This shit is regenerating.” I watched everyone grimace in revulsion-ick. “Yeah, this is some nasty crap. It won’t run out unless we vivify the lot of it.”

  It was the dirty crimson of blood drying out, but never getting there; the rancid yellow of dissolving body fats that were diluting and gathering at the same time; the rotting green of moldering meat; and the slinking black of Shadow’s Taint threading through it, gathering and then breaking apart like a living thing.

  “Nobody mentions this actually exists to anyone. I don’t want any shades to come looking for it in outraged remembrance of their beloved leader.”

  Nobody had any problems promising that. Just to cover ourselves, I Teleported the lot of us directly to Aerlinthe Island. There we joined Briggs and the elites of Stonehold and the main army in slowly clearing any and all Summons points that produced Blighted golums, extinguishing them from Aerlinthe Island… and hunting down the Black Phyntos Wasps and their Hives that had taken up residence there, and just like Freebooter, were ignoring all the Summons.

  Nobody except Briggs and the Royals and Harlune were told we’d taken a short detour, and if the tomb had collapsed and been purified, well, shit happens in a magical world. Let the shades wonder what had really happened...

  =============

  “Master Harlune, your return really has accelerated a whole lot of things,” I told him in admiration. “You are absolutely a machine at this!”

  He smiled slightly at the compliment, but shook his head slightly. “Young lady, you do remember you pointed out at least a dozen contradictions and inefficiencies in every one of those Rune Formations after I began correcting them, do you not?”

  “Master Harlune, I burned shut the roads that weren’t going anywhere, but I didn’t create any new ones. I am very good at cross-referencing matters across and within Traditions, but I didn’t have the depth needed in Empyrean Magic to truly do what we needed.”

  “You converted ten different Slayer Enchantments to Artificer Infusions once I managed to discern the underlying theory and noted the similarities!” he chided me.

  “Once you go over the mountain, heading downhill is much simpler, relatively speaking. Building a road without anywhere to go is a waste of time and effort, and for some reason nobody credits master road-builders much, so thank you for that recognition, at least,” I winked at him, and he snorted before sitting back, appeased.

  I put down the last set of pages, describing the full array of what was needed for Shadow Slaying. They were now in my Visual File and I’d not need to reference them, but they were the original copies and so extremely valuable to all our Artificers and would-be Warfang smiths.

  “Now the sixty-four thousand pyreal question.” He quirked an eyebrow at my choice of terms as I picked the delicate Staff of Clarity off the top of the table. “You actually know the basis for the internal operations of the alloy configurations in this little toy?”

  He held out his hand, and I passed it to him.

  “I have repeatedly gone over the configurations of the Imbues of Elemental Cleaving and Renders in the surviving Weaponry. At the time, I did not question that they worked, and for some reason I never compared them to what I knew of the other Runic Enchantments.

  “Simply put, they do not work at all under Empyrean Magic.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I blinked. I lifted a finger, thought about it, and then put it back down. “That… explains a whole lot all by itself, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. Under Empyrean Magic, no Bludgeon Render or Cleave will work, so does it matter much what form it seems to take?” The look he gave me was heavy with knowing.

  “Well, damn. How are the lugians taking that?”

  “They believe me, but they are also committed to their Task of Failure. They absolutely wish to finish the testing out if at all possible, and so remain fixed on completing the work. They say it will be one of the greatest Failures in their history if they prove it is not possible.” He smiled and shook his head at their fixation.

  “It may not be possible without Legendary Alchemy to fall back on,” I admitted, flicking my fingers and tossing him a little green sphere. “Like those.”

  “Peas?” He frowned, about to say something more, then narrowed his glowing eyes as he stared at the Lead Scarab Pea more closely. “It’s just a Pea… but there were no records of Peas in any of the Empyrean Magic that I know of…” he trailed off. His eyes closed and he took a deep breath as his long fingers closed around the Pea. “More mind-fuckery, as the Lord Mick is most apt at saying…” he hissed in recognition.

  “Yes. The making of Quintessence is not unknown to me.” He gave me an interested look, and I demonstrated the spell to him, slowly conjuring up a small sphere of congealed silvery time an inch across. “It’s a IV Valence, basically a localized stasis field. But as you can see, it radiates the source energy used to gather it. I am told it can also be gathered psionically, if that has any meaning to you.”

  “That Tradition is rumored to exist on worlds other Empyreans have visited in the past,” he nodded, holding out his hand. The small sphere floated across to his palm, and he examined it curiously, comparing it to the Pea in his other hand.

  “Despite the change in hue, this Pea is clearly Quintessence, yet without magic and bearing a… very sophisticated spatial aspect to it. Alchemy, then, and at a level higher than I have ever seen…” He shook his head slowly in disbelief. “This should have attracted all my attention when they first came into being, and yet I ultimately dismissed them. I cannot say I am a Master of Empyrean Alchemy, but I know enough to know that no Master I knew was aware of how to literally collapse a bit of the universe without powerful magic to back them.”

  “So, definitely a IX Valence or higher to do the same thing?”

  “Indeed. If I may?” He held up the silvery dollop of gooey time, and I waved it off as negligible. He quickly stowed it away in a small vial. “As far as the Vulning operations, we can’t employ them in the format they were used in. Incidentally, the same use-activated operations employed in the Royal Runed Weapons don’t work, either.”

  “Color me unsurprised.” The Imperil going off from a Royal Runed Weapon should have triggered on every solid hit or on a crit, at the very least. Instead it went off completely randomly compared to every other effect of the Weapon.

  “Rending and Cleaving are basically ways of restating ‘this attack form does extra damage when you hold this toy’. Once you do that, it is clear how powerful an effect Renders and Cleaves actually are, and why they don’t work as I remember.

  “However, replacing them with a Channeling effect isn’t all that hard to do. The modularity of the Staff of Clarity might be possible with that, giving non-Life Casters access to Vulns with their own mana, or using charges from the device.”

  “The Blackfire Wands proved useful, then!” It was a good thing!

  “Yes, but actually the study of the alchemical vials used by the sling users was actually most helpful in this respect,” he pointed out as the right reference.

  “I really should lay in a supply of those. However, the modified cost of them was simply too prohibitive before we came into the MMD notes.”

  The vials had once been standard tools used by those using throwing weapons or slings. If they hit an opponent, they coated them with a powder, dust, grit, oil, or droplets that mimicked the effect of an Elemental Vuln for a short time. Making them had not been much of an issue back when there was unlimited pyreal and alchemical supplies. Once reality crashed back in with the Fall, use of them was sharply curtailed, both for the cost and the rarity of the supplies.

  As special issue supplies, they were definitely things squads and Fellowships wanted to have in reserve! Alas, the QL of 35 meant once-again you basically had to be an adventurer to get the Karma to be good enough to make the best versions of them!

  “My recommendation is to take the modular Clarity design you proposed as a full Seven-Element Implement that can be altered to Cast the Vuln you want, Channeling your own mana through it. All but the most idiotic of people will have the appropriate amounts of mana to use it at least once or twice. I am unsure if we want to risk charges in the Isparian manner, however…”

  “No, and if we use Staff or Rod mechanics, that will drive the costs up significantly. Channeling Staves are not unknown on the Matrix side of things, effectively allowing you to have more spells in memory than you normally have as a Sorcerer or Wizard. This would be little different.” I nodded, and flicked up a diagram of how such a thing might appear as a Staff.

  Harlune studied the multiple displays of concentric formations and Rune Circles with professional interest. “An interesting and novel display of Theurgy between the two Traditions,” he nodded sharply. “That looks like it would work, and the materials seem sensible.”

  Basically it would take seven different metals and gemstones, Energized to the different Elements. When a gemstone was rotated into primary, its metal would revolve into receiving input and aligning the mana to the desired type, instead of simply transferring and channeling mana into a typeless slurry.

  “I see it as an off-hand Wand,” I admitted, gesturing at Crown. “If it is done right, one might even be able to use it in addition to spellcasting, something like using Dual Wands.”

  “Dual… Wands?” Master Harlune repeated carefully. “I don’t think that ability has been described to me before...”

  “As an Artificer, you know Wands are both an Implement and a storage vessel for charges of spells.” He nodded. It was true for Isparian Magic as well, although there were no particular benefits to enhanced Wands beyond potential damage increases, especially if Vulns weren’t available, and the Weapon Runes didn’t work on Implements like they did Weapons. “There are additional Feats to increase the Caster Level of Wands, other Feats to use Wand charges at your own Caster Level, and the Dual Wield Wands Feat, so you can use two Wands as fast as you use one of them.

  “So, imagine being able to trigger two Blackfire Wands, bam-bam.” I mimed the overhand and down aiming and firing motion of an Isparian Wand, only with both hands each grasping an invisible Wand.

  He blinked. “That could be very useful for a lesser Caster!” he said quickly.

  “And not bad for a senior one, either. There’s supposed to be a Legendary Feat where you can unleash Wands as fast as Weapon attacks, too.”

  Wouldn’t that be a heck of a combo?…

  ============================

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