The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (65 page)

“Oh.” he said, for want of a better response.

Finally she relieved his anxiety.

“As for us being destined lovers…  Well, it’s a big, big surprise, that’s for sure.  But it’s a nice thought.  It feels nice.  Except when I think about what everyone else in the world is gonna say about it.”

“When the time comes, we’ll keep it secret, same as Fire and Karz.” he assured her.  “Though we should tell them about us; Karz that is, Fire already knows.  And now you know about them, and he doesn’t know about us, and they don’t know you know about them.  I don’t know if he knows that I know about them.  Fire knows I know, of course, but I don’t know if she’s let him know that I know.  And they don’t know that you know about us.”

“You’re right, we obviously have to tell them.” she laughed.  “The present state can’t be allowed to continue!  It’s too confusing to deal with!”

He grinned.  “Our parents know about us, but they don’t know about Fire and Karz yet.  They know she’s destined to love someone, and that she got upset when she learned about it, but that’s it.  Povon and Kragorram don’t know about any of this, as far as I know.  And by the way, I’m pretty sure I’m blocking this conversation from everyone.”

“Me too.” she nodded emphatically.  “Let’s just… just hug till they call us.”

“All right.”

High above them, Fire approached her limit in holding wizard’s power.  Rather than leave or move away from the diffuse focus of the valley, she cast a tiny flame to vent the excess she was gathering.  It slowly grew to an intense fireball over two meters wide, then stabilized at that size.

“That’s exactly how much energy my wizard’s power collecting field gathers here.” she stated.  “I’m putting everything I’m getting into this, except a little bit for my Levitation and a few maintenance and monitoring things.  I’m at my maximum, so I can’t absorb any more without sustaining some damage.  But wow, does it ever feel great!  I can’t wait to see what it’ll feel like when I’m charged up on warlock’s power too!”

Though it was very late at night by the local time, a few curious elven onlookers flew up to within a couple of hundred meters of them to observe, while politely playing a game of mid-air catch to lend some discretion to their observation.  No one was fooled into thinking that they just happened to decide to play catch over a kilometer in the air in the middle of the night while coincidentally close to visiting celebrities, but it was a matter of elven decorum for them to behave as though this was so.

Fire cast an air-tight Shield around her Fireball, (it needed no air to burn, since it wasn’t really fire) and with the wind thus blocked from it, she took off flying at high speed going straight north and level.  She took careful measurements of the diminishing size of the Fireball as she flew.  When she passed over the rim of the valley she flew straight up until she was twice as high above the valley floor as she’d been when she started.

“I’m graphing the power availability of the valley in three dimensions.”
she explained as she flew down and across the valley at forty-five degrees from vertical.  She continued criss-crossing the valley at various angles with the blazing Fireball held before her, and a few of the local elves tried to keep up with her, but lacked the speed.

“I’m full.” Talia stated as she floated, turning in place to watch her daughter’s blazing flight.  “Alilia, are you close?”

“No.  I’ve never tried to find my limits that way, so I don’t know what they are.” Alilia responded with a shrug.  “I found them by accident when I was young of course, when I developed fevers that could only be cured by casting the excess power, one way or another.  But I haven’t let that happen for millennia, and I’ve never tried to measure it in any way.”

“I may as well pass you my excess then.” Talia told her as she started passing power to her trio-mate with a Push spell.

“This may take a very long time, even with what you’re giving me.” Alilia frowned.  “And I’m running out of patience.”

She cast a Speaking to Smogin; Prince-Regent of The People of Life, and had him arrange for a few hundred volunteers from her people to pass her some of their spare power.  He had them ready in a moment, and she cast a Pull spell to draw the energy.

“Ahh, that’s nice.  I’ll be ready in a minute.” she reported.

“We’re almost ready.”
Talia announced to the children. 
“When we are, gather here and I’ll cast the Translocation with power I’ve got stored in items.  That way we’ll be fully charged when we get there, and we’ll be sure that we can get enough power from the wizard’s power stone to run our Levitations and Pure Breath and what-not, and keep us topped up.  I’d rather we didn’t have to take power from others for this; I think that might be a dangerous complication.”

The children sent the psionic equivalent of a nod, and Fire hurried to complete her survey.

Soon Alilia wiped her brow and stated;
“All right, that’s it.”

The children rejoined them in a blink, and Talia Translocated the six of them with a quick farewell to the local Sentries.

They emerged over the immense blue glass bowl of the Focus Mountain reflector.  It was a windy day, but the only clouds visible were hovering above distant volcanoes.

Povon, Kragorram, and Karz had already arrived, and were hovering beside the research facility on the north rim of the crater, where Povon and Kragorram were conversing through a huge open window with some of the researchers who were gathered there.

They could all hear the occasional distant thumps, roars, and various other sounds of huge destructive spells being tested on the weapons range in the valley beyond the north rim, but Alilia quickly became irritated by it and blocked the noise from coming past the rim.

Mark cast the spell that allowed him to see the reflected warlock’s power directly, and his children copied him a moment later, then they all followed him as he flew toward a location about six meters above the focus.

The reflected power looked like two blue cones of light that met at their points, one pointing up and the other pointing down.  The upper, down-pointing cone was blocked by Mark’s warlock-power collecting stone, which floated two meters above the focus, until Mark Moved the stone a few meters to the side.  Then the upper cone shone up into the sky until it faded into invisibility about a kilometer above them.  The cones were a bit asymmetrical, since it was almost two hours after noon here.  The focus itself; where the two points met, was so bright that it was difficult to look at directly.

“You don’t want to be right in the actual focus.” Mark explained as he flew.  “It’s way too intense there.  But if you stay at the right distance from it, you should really enjoy this.”

They entered the upper cone of blue light, and it was like stepping into a perfectly warm shower after being chilled by a cold day, only even more pleasurable.  Mark found he was a bit too low, and rose thirty centimeters to decrease the intensity.

“Ahh, this
is
really nice!” Val cooed as she closed her eyes to concentrate on the sensation.

Six slowly dropped down a two meters or so until the intensity of the power was uncomfortable, then rose back up thirty centimeters.  Val and Fire imitated his motions, with Fire coming to rest with her head about fifteen centimeters higher than his, and Val about thirty centimeters higher than that.

“Apparently, the less warlock power you can use, the greater the intensity of it you can comfortably absorb.” Six commented.  “Our relative heights above the focus are close to corresponding to how much warlock power we were able to cast on Hiliani.”

“If we all reach capacity at close to the same time, then our lesser warlock casting ability may only be due to a less efficient collecting field for warlock power.” Fire speculated.  “By absorbing power at a greater intensity for the same amount of time, or at the same intensity for a greater time, we may all be able to cast warlock power with the same strength as Father.”

“We’ll test it after the Linking experiment.” Mark smiled with his eyes closed, reveling in the pleasure of the power.  Talia and Alilia floated beside him just outside the cone, Linked with him and smiling as they shared the pleasure.

Val cast a Link among the nine of them, and Talia extended it to Equemev and Silaran, while Alilia extended it to Somonik, Grakonexikaldoron, Yazadril and Nemia, who were among those observing from the research facility, having interrupted their planned activities to do so.

“You’re right, Fire.”
Val announced. 
“Insofar as we appear to be approaching capacity at very close to the same rate, at these distances from the focus.  We’ll be done soon.”

“I’m already noticing my thinking improving.”
Mark announced.

“Me too, and I noticed it with the wizard power as well.”
Fire agreed.

Their three dragon friends flew over from the north rim.

“We’re holding our limit in power, and being constantly replenished from Somonik’s Link to cover our output on flying and whatnot.”
Povon announced. 
“We’ve never done this before, since it’s not a common practice in any of the Draconian styles of spell-casting.  But we’re definitely noticing an improvement in our thinking, and in many other characteristics as well.”

“You five should have Father show you how to hold warlock power.”
Six suggested to Talia, Alilia, Povon, Kragorram, and Karz. 
“Once we’re full, we’ll start passing you our excess, and start charging up on what we don’t naturally have; Source power for us three, and Source and Wizard’s power for Father.”

“Povon, Kragorram, and I already learned how to hold and cast Mark’s power during our training with Quewanak.”
Talia told him. 
“So did Equemev and Silaran.  Only Alilia and Karz need to learn that.”

Mark cast a quick teaching Link with Alilia and Karz and gave them the techniques, and they both grasped it right away.  Then he and his children began passing warlock power to the rest.

“Once we’re all fully charged, and before we really start working on the problems, we should form a circle above the geometric center of the bowl.”
Kragorram suggested. 
“And we should intersperse ourselves as evenly as possible.  I know it’s only Draconian tradition, but it would feel right to me.”

The rest agreed without a word.  When all the active participants were holding as much power of all three kinds as they could comfortably hold, they moved to their positions with the center of their heads in a perfect circle about thirty meters wide at the height of the focus, all of them well clear of the cones of power from the reflector.  Povon chose the north position, and clockwise from her were Talia, Fire, Kragorram, Alilia, Six, Karz, Mark, and Val.  A few hundred kilometers east of southeast from them, Equemev and Silaran were trotting in the air in a tight circle in the more-diffuse focus of the Kejaz reflector.

“Somonik, please make sure that the air above us remains clear.”
Fire requested as they finalized their positions. 
“I’ll be releasing power a few hundred meters up.  The sun’s pretty bright at this altitude and location, and the wizard’s rock around here is pretty good quality too.  I’m still absorbing a lot of power, even with being outside the cones, so I’ll need to vent it to avoid overloading.  If anyone else needs to vent some, you might as well do the same.”

“Understood.”
Somonik acknowledged.

High above them, a magic Fire began burning, and was joined by another of a different color, then another, then four more.  Six used his excess power for Movement as he set the flames and the air around them to swirling and turning, while Val used some of hers to contain it all and direct it upward when the heat radiating from it became apparent to them, hundreds of meters below.

There was a moment thick with anticipation from both the participants and the observers, then Mark deepened their Link and called up his Reading of the end of his fight with Zarkog.

“Sweet gods this is beautiful…” Alilia quietly exclaimed, then they all fell silent and still for minutes.

“Damn it, I’ve almost got it…” Mark muttered, and drew more power until he was sweating freely and having to strain to hold it all.  The other participants did the same.

He had just started to think;
“That’s it, I’ve got it!  I understand what I did to Zarkog with the collection fields!”
when Val, Six, and Fire had the same realization.

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” Val said to herself, and a minute later she announced. 
“All right, I understand what I wanted to know about the collection fields.  But there’s still a lot of things I want to figure out, and we’re not getting it.  Most importantly, how to prevent us from losing this understanding and comprehension when we’re not holding all this power.”

“Try this:”
Fire suggested as she carefully cast a cooling spell on herself, concentrating on monitoring and maintaining the temperature of her brain, and adding the excess heat to what she was venting above them.  Then she drew and held even more power; almost half again as much.

“And this:”
Six said as he showed what he’d done while Fire was casting the cooling spell; he’d cast a constant Healing and monitoring spell on his own nervous system, then drawn and held almost twice the power, trusting the spell to fix any damage this caused as it happened.

A blink later they’d copied each other’s techniques, adding them to their own, and Val and Karz had copied both spells.

“I’m not doing that!”
Talia declared. 
“It’s too dangerous!”

“I will.”
Mark decided, and did so.

None of the others joined him.  Soon they were being left behind, and could no longer keep up with the psionic conversation.

A couple of minutes after that it became obvious that while Mark and Karz could keep up with the three young warlocks, they were only following the thoughts of the three, while Val, Six, and Fire led the process with a continuous series of incredible breakthroughs.