The cone of Anti-magic swept past through the air, in my Mage-sight making the Manafield go all gray and blank as the magic dimmed and was suppressed. Very safe up in the shadow of a stalactite, and Invisible because Dauntless baby in brownie-form not stupid, I waited calmly as the source of the effect moved slowly across the cavern, high above the ground and not far below my own self.
I was pretty sure I could kill it straight off, my Shards ready to spring up and launch in an instant once the Anti-magic was no longer a threat.
It was one of the Eye or Orbus species of Aberrants, this particular variety called a beholder, based on the bestiaries and journals I’d read from multiple shaden Elf accounts in places I wasn’t supposed to be visiting, especially at the times I had. The things were usually dealt with by popping them with arrows from extreme range. Without ranged attacks to deal with it, it could be an unholy horror, its ten eyes capable of dealing out gaze weapon attacks every six seconds for a variety of magical effects, ranging from lethal slaying attacks to mind-controlling Charm spells to telekinetically hurling you at your buddies and worse.
Aelryinth had never seen one before, although he’d seen other varieties of Orbus and Oculi before in Aberrant landings that had made it past Terra-Luna’s rings and the World-Angel’s cordon.
This particular floating eyeball had a large central glowing eye in its ‘front’, said eye emitting the massive Greyfield Cone in front of it. It had a large maw with sharply pointed and askew teeth below it, like the teeth didn’t know which way to grow, and a fringe of loose, hairy tentacles hanging below it. Atop its spherical form was a ring of ten eyeballs on long and mobile stalks, peering actively in every direction they could bend to, including straight-up, making the thing incredibly hard to surprise. Its hide was thick and scaled, a patchwork of green hide and brown molds hanging from it, old and strong and definitely the master of this territory, given the partial remnants of dozens of petrified beings I’d seen about the place.
It didn’t actually know anything was up, but it likely suspected. The wing of gargoyles it had Charmed and commanded as servants I’d wiped clean. They had been encapsulated by a Sound Bubble, so all the screeching and alarms they’d sent up hadn’t been heard by anything before they were all dead.
The Land registered the thing as Aberrant, something that should not be alive, and there were no problems with me wiping it. Likewise, the wing of gargoyles serving it were not natural in the slightest, and wiping them after they came home from one of their hunts for food, presumably for their masters since gargoyles didn’t need to eat, was a good service to the Land.
The Orbus didn’t move quickly, but it had absolute poise and control, and it was suitably paranoid, peering in all directions for attackers and playing that central eye back and forth to see if anything was trying to be sneaky. It was looking for hiding folk on the ground, not so much near the ceiling, and the arc of its Greyfield rotated away and forward as it moved past me…
Now.
A snap of my will, Shards materialized around me, and lanced on out.
Shards here worked differently than those I knew. Instead of a lesser missile for 2-5 damage every two Caster Levels, it tossed out a slightly larger one for 2-7 damage at every third level. That… was not an improvement, actually a downgrade in damage, and even being a Shardcaster and able to pop up an extra one didn’t help the loss of per-Shard damage bonuses.
Well, whatever. The flip side was that the damage cap of the spell here was an absolute of twenty missiles, and could not go higher with mortal magic. Twenty dice was the restriction.
However, that still allowed per-die or per-missile effects to be added on, which was exactly what I did. Furthermore, weapon specialization bonuses added per Shard if it was fired like an arrow, instead of a touch attack or auto-hit.
Guess who was a Fighter/Sorceress? Shards Weapon Specialization, tyvm...
A winding circle of crimson roses on black stalks swirled into existence behind me as I swung out from behind my cover, Invisibility breaking as I attacked. The razored Thorns launched themselves at the Orbus, trailing countless crimson petals as they did so, the petals randomly sparkling with the silver energies of Force, the cerulean flames of Aberrant Banefire, the golden flames of Divine Holy magic, and Primal Elemental energies of Cold, Fire, and Lightning combined.
Two of the Orbus's eyestalks snapped around to focus on me, but it didn’t have time to get off a ray or spin to face me with the main eye before the Thorn attacks arrived and drove into its back quarter.
My Thorns punched into the Orbus like longbow arrows, drilling in deep and delivering their magic straight to its innards, not the tough hide and outer muscle of the thing.
The eye tyrant managed to gargle out something monstrous in Aklo, and there was a pulse of magic from all ten of its eyes in all directions, lashing out in pure reflex as it was fried, pulped, shocked, and frozen from the inside out across over a dozen holes in its hide. I watched a hanging stalactite twenty feet to my left get hit by a green Disintegration beam and instantly vaporize, while another black ray lashed across several large mushrooms below and instantly turned them black and rotting as it did so.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Yeah, not something I was going to want to fight straight up.
The Orbus wobbled and dropped down out of the sky as it lost its levitation magic, not plummeting, more falling slowly and automatically, picking up speed as its magic dissipated.
Gargoyle horns and claws were worth some goldweight. The eyes, brains, and blood of this thing were also quite valuable as goldweight, while its hide might actually be used for a set of fancy custom mail that could defy gaze attacks, if made up correctly.
Greater Magical Weapon on an adamantine knife would make carving it up a cinch. I could Shape up some containers for the organs and innards… and I still had to follow it back to its lair, where it might even have spawn waiting for it.
Jeeves popped up, my fake skeleton Phantasmal Servant with the roses for eyes keeping watch while I and a Mage Hand got to work on my kill.
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Its lair was a cave complex entered via the ceiling and levitation, effectively keeping out anything that couldn’t fly… and the stuff that could nominally fly, such as bats and cave locusts, made themselves into a convenient lunch.
Detect Evil pinged six different sources inside, all about the same intensity, as I flew up to the place. I tossed up a Wizard Eye, flowery and shadowed in black with an infrared eye, and crept it up through the opening and the twisting cave Disintegrated through the solid bedrock in a disturbingly organic pattern that hinted at underlying mad comprehensions of… something. It went up into a larger chamber where a bunch of coinage was haphazardly piled up, along with what looked to be ornamental armor and clothing that caught the eye, some gemstones, and a collection of scrolls and books being avidly looked over by six miniature Orbi, floating eyeballs only having the main central eye and three lesser stalks.
They were all engrossed with the books and scrolls, whose writings were flickering with their own light in the darkness as the beholder spawnlings stared drooling at them in utter fascination.
Orbus-types had a fascination with Runework and other magical writings, it had been related to Aelryinth. That was good, as they hadn’t heard their parent die because of it.
The Seeking Spell Metamagic allowed spells to bend around corners to their targets as long as I knew the path there. The spawnlings had no alert or alarms as my Thorns came whipping around the corners and smashed into all of them, two per Orbus, and killed them all nigh-instantly, sending scaled bodies bouncing and flying from the impacts as they did so.
My Wizard Eye surveyed the room further, but the Evil presences were gone, so I zipped on up, over, and into the main room there, noting several smaller chambers dug into the walls for the private use of the eyeballs, too.
I’d be checking them all out in time, but for now I was just taking in my loot.
I could almost feel the additional Karmic trickle coming in, helping raise my Halvyr Level and thus my base. I had a bunch of Faux Levels tacking onto everything, especially in Wizard, but I needed to get more than a Seven in Halvyr, advance my Arcane Theurgy and Sorcery Levels, and really up my prowess, until I could Awaken Void Phoenix at Primary Ten.
Not bad for someone only a couple of months old, I reckoned.
I didn’t have the cloth to use Tapestry, quite the pity for the moment, but I could make stone chests, coffers, and barrels as needed, so the coins and things could be heaped up and then Itemized as needed. I began Sifting them and separating them by metal and by gemstone or crystal, while examining everything for magic.
The spellbooks were mostly elven, the basic model used by the shadelves at the lower levels of society, with a handful of basic applicable combat and utility spells. They were of varying age and came from different victims, with about a dozen of them scattered through the hoard. One definitely came from an officer, with a handful of spells at IV Valence.
A scattering of minor magical Weapons and Armor, with a suit of Plate and a Hammer that were definitely not elven, made for a dwarf. A magical Scarab, who knew what it did as yet, a golden Rod of some kind, and astonishingly enough, a full-length magical Mirror with an Elven Cloak thrown over it, gleaming new and polished as if just made.
Huh. Powerful magic on that Mirror, too…
The coins were partially shadelven, some dwarven, and a bunch of cruder work probably done by the humanoid clans that wandered all these caverns constantly, warring and scraping by in barbaric fashion and proclivities handed down from Immortals who were undoubtedly not of the best kind. There were tens of thousands of them in the higher caverns, and the shadelves were always ready for them to attack.
I would Identify the things later in safety, scanning for Curses first and foremost. ‘Never trust the loot’ was a maxim to live by.
And the eyeballs needed to be processed…
------
My base of operations was located directly beneath my mother’s house, because why not? I had to use Teleports, Words of Recall, and Dimension Doors to move around regardless, and excavating a chamber underneath the root cellar took very little effort. The most difficult thing to make was an emergency escape tunnel if magic somehow failed, but that might be a death sentence regardless, because I’d revert back to babyhood again.
I’d just have to take that risk.
The coinage wasn’t for trading in, or mostly even for buying stuff. I had magic items to make, alchemy to work up, components to stockpile, and reserves to establish.
My ‘comfortable’ form was only two feet tall, limits of the Alter Self spell on an infant, but if Enlarged to twice normal height it was enough for me to get around the city without attracting much attention. As long as I turned my hair white and dressed plainly, I was just another kid running around doing errands for their teacher/master/parents, clearly possible when I was trailed by an obvious Disk hauling stuff here and there.
Happily crime was not something to be worried about in most of the city, although the ‘foreign quarter’ where outsiders captured by the shadelves were housed definitely had some questionable businesses attached to it.
I wasn’t worried, however. I was far, far tougher and more observant than I looked, naturally enough, and if anyone decided to try something, well, they wouldn’t even know what happened to them before they were done.
It was nice being an adventurer, with no obligations to speak of. Babyhood was definitely a good disguise and way to duck all sorts of tasks and duties people would want to heap on me. I was enjoying the feeling of liberation and self-improvement, without having to always be at the ready to protect and defend others.
Now, why the Void Phoenix had dropped me here was a completely different matter, but there was no way it would have me working on stuff as an infant, right?