There was an invasion from up above.
Some orcs had managed to find a tunnel that had opened up after one of the minor earth movements that tended to happen down in a volcanically active zone. They’d gotten together some hordes of overly enthusiastic and not too bright humanoids, and all of them had come spilling into the Cavern of Stars thinking they were going to kick skinny elvish arse, eat lots of elf-meat, grab some sweet elven gear and gobs of treasure while they were at it, then go home and talk about how awesome they were for years and years.
That… didn’t happen, of course.
I would have fought in it, but I was unnecessary. The soldiers of the king’s army came out, the priests of Gaebrel’s temple were there, and none of them had any fear, knowing that if they ran away, there’d be no mercy shown by these brutes.
I would have loved to get down there and contribute, but there were too many wild factors, the humanoids had somehow brought along hydras and some other magical beasts, and I didn’t want to risk my disguise.
So, I just watched invisibly from a safe distance, using Eagle Eyes to get a good view.
Elven magic made a huge difference. Being able to Sleep a whole company of humanoids, then the soldiers coup them dead as they were down, was a highly viable tactic. So was Webbing up a whole bunch of them, then either setting them on fire or just filling them full of arrows.
There were a lot of the humanoids, it was true. As a matter of fact, the elves were out-numbered about five to one. The humanoids, however, had basically horde tactics and leadership, no idea of advanced formations, marching, or anything like that, and they didn’t know the ground, or have anything resembling the magic of the elves.
They had strength, toughness, and numbers, and well, it might have been enough, until the High Priestess of Gaebrel let loose.
She set it off in the back middle of the horde, where all the important leaders of the horde were, and it covered an IMMENSE area, eight hundred paces across. The flash of jarringly wrong light, the warped boom of the blast, and then a shockwave rushing across a front as thousands of humanoids flashed into ash and dust in just a moment, while a roiling cloud of smoke rose into a mushroom cloud high overhead.
I looked at it, I looked again as the remnants of the invaders picked themselves up off the ground.
The skinwing riders were already swooping in with bows and lances at the ready, while the lines of soldiers were driving forward, angling in to drive the surviving humanoids back into the blast radius of the explosion.
I Exemplar Surged for Ultravision as an Extra Spell Known, and Slotted it, then Upcast it to IV+1 with the Earth Spell Meta.
Duum was watching, and had his ears down and teeth bared as he stared at where the blast had taken place in the distance.
Ultravision extended vision above the visible light spectrum. It wasn’t widely known that vision went up as much as down, and certainly the electromagnetic spectrum was totally unknown by most here, it being lucky if they understood what the rainbow of the visible spectrum actually meant.
I stared at the seething field of gamma radiation occupying the area of that magic spell blast.
The humanoids were being driven into it. I belatedly noticed it was at a chokepoint, and the fleeing survivors were going to have to pass through it in order to get out of there.
They were going to soak in a completely lethal dose of radiation and be dead within a day or two.
The elves knew it, too, as they drove the orcs, goblins, gnolls, trolls, and ogres back into the radiation zone, but did not set one foot into that area themselves, content to watch the humanoids flee in retreat and dismay. There was some sniping at the monsters and targets of opportunity until they were out of range, but that was all.
I looked at the High Priestess, and noted she had five different spells wound around her that were in the gamma bands, barely visible. Swearing under my breath, I brought up Detect Magic at IV+1, and merged the spells together.
Gamma radiation in the thaumic bands painted the world around me in ghastly, unreal hues my brain really wasn’t wired to understand. What I could see is that the soul crystals on the amulets of the priests of Gaebrel glowed like bizarre suns, carrying concentrated versions of the magical power that the High Priestess had just used. Most of them were wrapped in spells brimming with lower-frequency energy, whose purpose I didn’t know, but the core of which was obviously derived from the soul crystals they wore.
Most of their Soul Crystals were burning strongly in gammathauma, but the High Priestess’s was notably depleted and dull, as if much energy had been pulled from it and used up.
I turned my eye on Dread, but I couldn’t see anything inside the concealing star sapphire my sizable soul crystal was concealed within. Which was good, as it meant I’d done my job very well.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
At least, I couldn’t see anything until I ran some magic through Dread, and suddenly that gammathauma radiation glimmered and gathered to the head of my Staff, excited by the magic moving through it.
The thickness of it was as dense or denser than any of the glows from the Soul Crystals below, indicating that I’d done my job well in picking out a powerful Soul Crystal. I just didn’t know what I could be doing with it.
I did know that I could now filch a certain very inappropriate spell from the faithful of Gaebrel, and that meant I could analyze it and take it apart.
I watched the humanoids stumble and run through the poisoned area that would kill them all, and watched the elves already placing down flags and markers to indicate deadly areas where it was not safe to wander.
The elves didn’t have ultravision or any kind of radiation detection, so they didn’t know what was going on. Prior experience had taught them of the deadliness of the spell effect, especially after it had annihilated the leadership of the enemy army, or at least damaged them so badly they had decided to run anyway… and doubtless would die with the rest of their forces, and badly.
The elves down here had nukes! That was by far the most dangerous spell I had ever discerned a mortal cast, in terms of raw area and damage. The crater it made was huge, virtually scooping out the solid rock there and reducing it all to dust and grit with lethal properties.
That… sounded very much like the two events that had driven the elves underground here. Powerful explosions that had covered the horizon and blackened the skies, forcing them underground to survive world-changing climates and poisonous winds that killed off everything.
And they were USING those kinds of energies?!
Were they fucking insane?! Were they…
Only the most powerful priests of Gaebrel could use a spell like that. It was a clerical VII, and the spells of the clerics only went to VII. You had to be a White Priestess, or the Radiant High Priestess herself, to use that magic.
Mages couldn’t Cast the spell, or at least didn’t know if they could, and they definitely did not know it, because there were some powerful elven Casters here and they definitely had unleashed nothing like it, nor did any of them have soul crystals or gammathauma radiation around them.
All of the Life and Death, Colorless, White, and Radiant-ranked Priests did.
Indeed, as I was watching the priestesses going among the wounded after the fighting, it was plain to me that the soul crystals were necessary for focusing and allowing the priests to unleash the Divine magic coming through, as if they were overcoming or compensating for elven inability to normally channel Divine magic here.
Now, it all made sense, sort of.
To advance in rank, a priest of Gaebrel needed to have a Soul Crystal of sufficient size. If she did not, she could not Cast the higher-level spells. Soul Crystals were integral to basic clerical spellcasting among the shadenelves!
Furthermore, the energy within them was obviously tapped and usable in some form of specialized magical spells, the particulars of which were only known among the most powerful priests.
Without a Soul Crystal, a priest of Gaebrel could not use their clerical spells!
Based on who could use the gammathauma spells, they had to be at least V’s, as that was the highest Valence available to the Life and Death priests, so-called because they were the priests who left deformed children out in the wild, and because they had the most potent healing magic and could restore the dead to life, a power that would certainly be used on several of the officers who had been slain in the fighting, and possibly as many of the normal troops as possible. The White priests, along with Radiant Priestess Prophyriel, could also use Resurrections, although they had limited spell slots to do so.
Amusingly enough, I could probably return more of them from death than the high priestess, simply by stealing the local spells. If the gamma magic was involved, the material costs I was used to with Resurrection on the Matrix side of things, my own tradition, were unneeded.
Also, Ur-Priest Slots went up to IX, not VII, being a Tradition as powerful as arcane magic, if not quite so diverse.
There was just one little detail that needed to be filled in on all this, other than getting some idea of the spells they were Casting, something I’d probably need to see them do personally to emulate.
What did they do with their old Soul Crystals?
Every priest was required to get a new Soul Crystal to advance in rank. That was not an easy thing to do. The Crystals themselves were surpassingly delicate, and my people didn’t have the magical control fine enough to extract them magically, let alone combine them upwards.
They also didn’t inherit ‘old’ crystals from more senior priests, so there were no hand-me-downs, new soul crystals were required… creating a constant, on-going demand for soul crystals, since none were passed on!
They were doing something with the old and any extra soul crystals!
And I was a fucking idiot if I believed that didn’t involve something nuclear!
-Problems, Mistress?- Duum /asked me, seeing me slap my head and my unfavorable expression.
-I think I have to tear down an Immortal and stop a nuclear catastrophe a thousand times greater than what we just saw here, Duum,- I /told my Familiar, whose crimson eyes widened in some alarm.
Frak. Was this why I was sent here in the first place?
Why was I not surprised that something calling itself an Immortal was playing games with elves and fucking around with nuclear magitech?
Damn! Because now I had to wonder if there was any nuclear SCIENCE involved with all of this. That spell had jumped from gammathauma to REAL gamma radiation, lethal stuff. You don’t make that kind of leap unless you know that radiation is there and dangerous!
Fuuuuuuck!
The craziest thing of all was that Aelryinth had gone into nuclear physics and quantum math as one of the pleasant ways of keeping some of his more logic-oriented thoughtstreams occupied, and then taken the Engineering Ranks to actually build that stuff on the side… just because he could!
He could totally make a nuclear bomb with the right materials on hand, and he could MAKE those materials, putting together something more powerful than any bomb that had ever been used on Terra.
Which meant I could.
I just needed another Level, and some more Skills to tap. Not an issue.
And I was going to have to investigate the Temple of Gaebrel, too, much as I didn’t want to. I had to find where a thousand years of soul crystals had gone…