Blue Core, page 68
part #1 of Blue Core Series
To that end I have dispatched a certain force to regain control of it. If you wish to cede control of the core without issue I will certainly not pursue the point. Unfortunately, if you do wish to contest control of the Meil core I have ensured this force is well-equipped to guarantee our success.
If you are reading this it is entirely likely you have disposed of the messenger. I admit that is not unreasonable; it was supposed to take certain reconnaissance of the city, which is something you would prefer not to allow. I do not have significant hopes that this monster will manage it, however, given the capabilities demonstrated by your agent.
It was signed Tor Kot, the writing neat and precise.
"Can’t catch a break, it seems." Iniri passed the letter onto to Shayma. "At least we have the Fortress, though I don’t think we intended on using it here."
"It’s my fault." Shayma grimaced. "If I hadn’t given away all of that to Tor Kot…" Iniri intervened before she could blame herself further. Frankly the whole mission had been done on a wing and a prayer since they couldn’t get any information or take the time to investigate. The fact that it had gone as well as it had was amazing.
"We would have had a few more months, at best, but not much would be different." It wasn’t much of a shock at this point. She’d already suffered enough kicking from the mage-kings that one more thing wasn’t going to make a difference. Besides, between Blue and the Fortress they actually had a chance at fending the monsters off. It wasn’t like Blue hadn’t destroyed an massive number of monsters before. "But I’m going to have to start with divinations now if he’s actually sending an army."
"Speaking of divinations." Shayma pulled another face. "It’s not that urgent considering all this, but Haerlish is still putting together some sort of strike team. Apparently they’re not planning on trying to take Blue over, just sit around and extort a bunch of materials from him for a bit. Well, from me."
"Mmm. I don’t know how much more strongly I can put my diplomatic protests, considering I don’t exactly have much standing to work with." Not to mention Haerlish was only one future point of trouble. The rumblings coming out of Nivir were not much better than Haerlish, though it wasn’t surprising that the nearby kingdoms would look to be a bit expansionist under the circumstances. She would be, if Nivir collapsed into anarchy.
"You can tell them Blue is not amused and if they come they’ll probably all die," Shayma said bluntly. "Though it’s looking like they mostly think I’m the one in charge of things."
"The trouble is that Blue isn’t really known yet," Iniri sighed. "Kingdoms – or empires – are founded by fifth-tiers, who are pretty famous by the time they get there, and whose abilities are not in question. I don’t know what happens with new Powers but I doubt anyone just takes their word for it that they can do things. I expect right now people like The Hurricane view you as part of Tarnil, and in the state we’re in we can’t do much to fend off that sort of mercenary behavior."
"I don’t know, we might have to," Shayma said, speaking to Blue. "He suggested that I go to Haerlish and let him sink the palace into the sea."
Iniri nearly choked. Keel made some sort of strangled noise before cutting himself off. Cheya just sighed, and Iniri exchanged a look with both her advisors before responding.
"That’s a bit extreme. Well, perhaps not," she amended. "I shouldn’t be telling Blue his business. Can it wait until after we deal with Tor Kot?"
"Probably," Shayma admitted, ears flicking. "They’re still going through rounds of meetings and waiting on people to free up schedules and such."
"For once, bureaucracy works in our favor," Iniri murmured. "I’m going to start the divination then. Keel, get Joce and meet me in the ritual room."
"Your Majesty," Keel said, bowing before he hurried out of the room.
"Blue’s curious what exactly the divining ritual will tell you," Shayma reported.
"What we want is to be able to directly scry the area. That’s not likely; it doesn’t take much mana flux at all to disrupt that kind of direct viewing. Barring that, find concentrations of monsters or spikes of mana, or area where there’s a particularly strong opposition to the scry. Blue’s [Warding] is strange, by the way, because it just suppresses the ability of a divination to find an anchor point. I’d like to figure out how that works, especially since Tor Kot might be using the same thing." Shayma listened intently, nodding at intervals
"If I get divination from you maybe I can learn to do it too," she said, startling Iniri. Despite the fact that Shayma had mentioned Skill transcribing more than once, she hadn’t ever thought of it as such an immediate thing. It didn’t seem entirely fair, either, considering how much time Iniri had spent on Divination to get a Skill that wasn’t part of her primary Affinity. One of the benefits of dealing with Powers.
A benefit she had access to, even if she’d dismissed it earlier. Or would soon enough, assuming Blue was willing to offer her the service when she made the next Companion level. Whenever and however that happened.
"Maybe so," Iniri agreed. "The ritual room is across the hall." Since it was mostly used for divination rituals, it didn’t need the reinforcements that most people put in when dealing with more explosive Affinities.
Shayma looked around the room curiously, though she’d seen Iniri deal in rituals before, and moved herself out of the way. Joce and Keel arrived bare moments after they did, bowing to her before taking up positions on the other side of the runes set in the floor. She’d carved them herself, days ago, when she’d been trying to get into contact with whatever towns and villages were still intact and nearby.
"Ready, gentlemen?" At their assent she poured mana into [Lesser Divination], using her [Ritual Leadership] to run the Affinity through the runes, allowing Joce and Keel to add their own mana and Affinities to the spell. While she only had [Lesser Divination], the ritual working boosted the potency enough that she could cover most of Tarnil with it, at least for the simplest sort of search. She didn’t need quite that scope at the moment, narrowing it down to the band below Meil and sweeping south toward the border with Tor Kot.
Most of it was sparsely settled the depredations by Vok Nal, but there were still pockets of people similar to the first one Shayma had found. Most of those of which were in nominal contact with Meil by that point. Tor Kot’s land was, by contrast, far more populated and far better kept, but even with the very vague sweep she was doing she could tell there were a good number of monsters mixed in with the humans and demihumans. From Cheya’s description of Duenn, Tor Kot had inserted his monsters into everyday life, so that sort of thing was to be expected.
Not far from the border due north of Duenn, the Divination returned something a little different than the usual small specks of life, monster or otherwise. In fact, it was barely on their side of the border, in the lands that Vok Nal used to claim. She frowned and focused on the area, finding the usual sort of interference that came with potent monsters or Classers gathered together, only the scale of it…
Joce and Keel caught her intentions as she shifted the divination, helping her adjust the mana flowing through the runework. Instead of vague impressions, the divination sharpened to give concrete information. There didn’t seem to be any particular protections against the scry, but she almost wished there were when she got the impression of thousands of monsters. Tens of thousands, and none of them seemed to be under level twenty.
She flipped her hand, making a construct of light over the runework and letting the divination spell filter into it. What resulted was a swarm of pinprick lights covering the solid plane of the ground, with even more specks flitting about above it. Keel whistled.
"That’s a lot of monsters," he said.
"Here I thought Vok Nal’s army was big," Joce added.
"How did he get so many monsters that close to us so quickly?" Iniri wondered aloud, then shook her head. "Of course. If Blue can do ridiculous teleporting, I’m sure Tor Kot can too. I suppose the question is why he didn’t decide to move a giant army even closer than that."
"Blue had trouble doing dungeon things close to Duenn," Shayma said. "Tor Kot would probably have issues close to Blue, though it may just be that he can’t reach much further. He had all sorts of spellwork along the roads, but it did stop right at the border."
"At least that means he can’t completely overrun us without warning. Though this is bad enough. I’m not sure how fast they’re moving but we probably only have a few days." Iniri took a deep breath, rubbing her temples as she stared at the divination. "I suppose we’ll have to try the Fortress sooner than we expected, unless Blue thinks he can handle this. I know our Classers can’t."
"Um, he could probably take care of a lot of them but he doubts that Tor Kot’s army is going to be as easy to deal with as Vok Nal’s. How many are there?"
"It’s difficult to say, but I think at least forty thousand on the ground," Keel answered. "Something over five thousand in the air but some of them keep going down and others come up."
"That is a lot." Shayma looked daunted, which was slightly underwhelming compared to the slow horror creeping up Iniri’s spine. The size of the army was beyond absurd; even if they were easy to kill, which she doubted, the sheer numbers were enough to overwhelm her kingdom even at its peak. Even Blue’s sheer ground-scouring weaponry would have issues making a dent in a force like that.
"We’re going to have to find a good defensive point between here and there, otherwise they can just go around the Fortress," Iniri said.
"How does the Fortress work?" Shayma asked. "If they’re coming to Meil anyway, can we just put it right on top?"
"I suppose that’s possible, but I’d want to evacuate the city if we do." Clearly she’d been working herself too hard if that possibility didn’t occur to her first. Not that evacuating was a simple matter. If nothing else they needed somewhere to evacuate to, and the only option for that…
Everything came back to Blue. He had such enormous power, both to project force and to support logistics, that nothing she could summon from the remaining scraps around her compared. In many ways he was the only power she had, given how few Classers she had left and how tattered the governance structure was. Considering it, she should really be more grateful that he had been so helpful.
"Blue says it’d probably be easier to just relocate the city."
"Easier. To relocate the city." She blinked at Shayma.
"Because it’s part of him," Shayma confirmed. "Mostly he doesn’t want to have to worry about rebuilding it again, but it would probably be faster, too. He can put it back when we’re done."
"Right, then." Iniri nodded at the light constructs. "Joce, get anyone with travel Skills and start evacuating everyone who’s in the path of that. Pull them all back to Meil. Keel, get everyone with any transport Skills to start pulling in stockpiles. If Blue’s going to sequester the city we ought to be ready for it.
The two of them let the ritual drop, bowing before they hurried out the door. She dissolved the light construct, cutting off the mana to the [Lesser Divination]. An in-depth analysis of movements could come later, hopefully after she’d scrounged up someone with a talent at tactics and strategy.
"Under the circumstances, Blue is willing to provide the mana infrastructure for the Fortress without recompense, though he’ll have to discuss moving Meil. He does want to leave it at some point, after all."
"If we ever make it past the current crisis," Iniri sighed. "That doesn’t seem very likely, sometimes, and I don’t blame him for wanting out." Even if they managed to hold against Tor Kot’s army, they had to deal with the mage-king himself somehow. This could drag on for years more, and she was selfishly grateful that Blue had become himself an enemy of the mage-kings. If it weren’t for that, she didn’t imagine he’d want to stick around.
"Before he starts trying to shift the whole city, is it possible to see what the Fortress is like? Or is it something that you can only deploy once and then wait until it decides to turn back into cubes?"
"I actually don’t know," Iniri admitted. "I need to activate it with [Shield of Tarnil] first, and I really don’t want to do that inside. Best case, I’d probably take off the top of the manor."
"Blue says you should try it out on his land, so he can watch himself and determine the best way to supply mana when you deploy it against Tor Kot."
Iniri hummed, considering it. Even if they couldn’t move the Fortress afterward, which she didn’t think would be the case since it was supposed to be mobile, if Blue hid away Meil it’d still be the only point the army could assault. In fact, considering that Blue was the real target they wanted, even if they didn’t know it, something that protected him directly was absolutely worth it.
"Let me take care of things here and we’ll go." Despite all the emergencies, she still needed to take care of some things so they wouldn’t have food shortages and people didn’t riot. There was even a death order to sign for a pair of low level Classers who thought they could get away with some casual rape and theft while out on the Queen’s business. One reason she didn’t like to use anyone under level forty for official business was to keep out the riffraff, but she didn’t have the luxury at the moment.
"Sure! I’ll go and visit mom and dad until then." Iniri nodded, pursing her lips at the reminder. She didn’t know the Ells very well; before Shayma had appeared at her doorstep she hadn’t heard of them at all. Not unusual, considering they were apparently only in the upper second tier when hostilities broke out, but she thought someone would have brought a void Affinity user to her attention. Now that they were in or near the third tier, and considering the impression they made, she would have no qualms deputizing them.
Assuming Blue didn’t get to them first. She was sure Blue would trust Shayma’s parents well enough and it wasn’t like Shayma would recommend against working for Blue. Considering the gifts he could give out in terms of Sources and material, it probably wouldn’t take much convincing either. So far he was lacking any source of void Affinity for Sienne, though upon consideration that might be for the best. A Power that could generate seemingly infinite mana having access to void Affinity was a terrifying thing to consider.
Shayma disappeared out the door again, and Iniri shook her head. She probably didn’t realize it herself, but the girl had completely lost all her awe at Iniri’s rank. Or anyone else’s rank, for that matter. She was guilty of starting the process herself, of course, but Blue had finished it quite decisively.
Iniri crossed over to her office and got back to work. She’d have to send a few runners to make sure everyone knew about today’s emergency, but if nothing else she was looking forward to seeing how the Adamant Fortress worked. If she was really honest, she was most looking forward to a few hours in the hot spring, hidden away from the world.
Day 130 - Blue
I felt a bit sorry for Iniri, frazzled as she looked when I teleported her into my audience hall along with the cubes and a pair of guards, but she was the Queen. It wasn’t like anyone else was going to do her job. She gawked for a moment at the colorful architecture, which pleased me since hardly anyone had been around to see it so far. That’d change eventually, probably, but for now it was underappreciated.
"Just set it up out front," I suggested. "I made a big flat area to try it in." A full square kilometer, actually, though it was possible it’d need more area. I had a thought to try a spatial expansion without any borders other than the ground to really give the Fortress room, but without testing it first that wasn’t the best idea.
Overall a single square kilometer wasn’t much area, but considering the five cubes were fairly small I didn’t imagine that the fortress itself would be so immense that it’d crush the mountain and flatten the foothills. Besides, it was a mobile fortress so there had to be some attempt to conform to the local terrain. If worst came to worst, it wasn’t like there was anything too valuable in the way of any potential devastation. Everything expensive was below ground level or very far into the mountain.
Shayma guided Iniri out of the audience chamber, through the entrance hall to the grassy meadow beyond. Just under it I’d reproduced a mini-dynamo, which was about as much mana as I was prepared to feed the Fortress today. If nothing else I’d be able to get an idea of how much I’d need to keep the thing active during battle.
I was already hollowing out space below Meil to set up the dynamos. Since I knew that Iniri would take me up on my offer to move the city, I had also set up a spatially expanded chamber large enough to hold Meil; walls, buildings, and all. By my experiments with [Relocate] it’d take hours, even helping it along by burning mana, but that was impressive speed for something the size of a city. I thought so, at least.
I had them stop above the center of the dynamo, in the middle of the grass, and told Shayma that Iniri could kick it off anytime. She beckoned to her guards, who’d had the task of actually hauling around the Artifact pieces along with some metal stands, and they set them up on the grass. It didn’t seem that they needed any great precision, just a sort of close-enough plus-shaped structure with the outlying cubes half a meter from the central one.
Iniri waved everyone back as she stepped up to put her hand on the central cube, eyes half-closing as she concentrated. I focused on the mana as closely as I could; it was clear Iniri was invoking her mana, but she was stopping short of actually pushing it into full manifestation. What was fascinating to me was that it came, to some extent, pre-shaped. It was light Affinity, of Iniri’s particular flavor, but it wasn’t the smooth, almost liquid form mine took. There was some deep and subtle structure, which had to be the Skill. I only wished I had better resolution in my mana sense, because I was pretty sure I couldn’t see most of it. Not that I really understood what I did see.
