BECMI Chapter 283 – Existential Edifice
Nobody spoke about the fact we’d looted Pearl’s hoard, and those of her entourages. That was fine, because there was so much hoard-loot coming out of the Dragonfangs that those incredible hoards were basically all lost in the clutter.
Our researchers and Artificers had field weeks just identifying all the magical items in the hoards, and the historians had, eh, treasure troves of historical information about lands and peoples barely known, their wealth and valuables plundered by dragons and preserved across the ages as testaments to their egos, and those of their successors.
I even brought in a couple of the older Sims to help catalog all the stuff. They had the wider world-view, beyond even Briggs and Sama, to identify the stuff and help suss out where and who it had come from on the continent, and when how old it was.
The perky little pheasant riding around on Briggs’ shoulder attracted attention, given the strange coloration and the sheer range of sounds it could make spontaneously. Be they to get attention or to reflect the mood, they were noted upon.
It did not look like an insanely valuable Artifact made to woo an Immortal of love, nopers.
Me, I had something else to do.
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“This is the Lady Edge, speaking to you all through a Mass Sending.
“You know who I am, all who are receiving this have met me before as I stopped and spoke with tribes across the north of Eislas. I direct you to spread this message to your family, friends, and allies.
“A Wolf Winter is coming, one that has not been seen in over a century. The recent fight with dragons you are no doubt hearing news of was a precursor. In four weeks, the first blizzard is going to hit the north of Eislas and come barreling down. This winter is going to last for a full six months of time, and it is going to be COLD.”
I paused a moment in the Sending to let that sink in.
“I will be beginning the establishment of my Dominion just to the south of the Twin Lakes, between the lands of the Silverpine and the Patchneedle elven tribes. The centerpoint of my Dominion will be a Pyramid.
“This will be a structure of power, and within its Domain, the effects of the Wolf Winter will be reduced. It will greatly lessen, but not eliminate, the bitter cold and the raging snows.
“It will not be easy, but it will be survivable. If you care to emigrate to these lands to ride out the winter, they will be open to you.
“As the winter continues, I will be raising more and more Pyramids and extending the Domain to keep it back. I intend to ward all the lands of tribes of elves who have Lumina Trees, and with the approval of the Masters of the Shires of Loha, I will extend this protection to them.
“The Frost Jotuns will be coming down from Joklhjem to raid and to plunder as they’ve not been able for much too long, in their opinion. Likewise, the Fire Jotuns who dwell in the Arch of Fire and lands beyond have their eyes set on the softer lands, ready to march forth in heated hordes who can melt their way through wind and snow to reach Aetla, plundering all in between.
“Prepare! You must harvest now, or not at all! The snows come for everyone, and the wolves will follow! Make ready as your forefathers did before, for the Wolf Winter is upon you!”
It was time for me to start getting serious, and putting some of my own ambitions into the works.
I had warned Brucall that attempting to open any dominions for would-be nobles across the Eisen Bay from him would be running straight into my own plans, and my plans did not in any way consider subjugating myself to Delpha or to a human king appointed by them.
He was more than prudent enough to realize that getting in my way would be very self-defeating, and trying to take me on militarily would be disastrous. Asking for magical aid from his mother was tacitly admitting he was unqualified to handle his position, and he had joined our Alliance to build something grand, not be yet another unworthy son of Delpha who was not a spellcaster.
Dani had been drubbing some common sense into him. The fact she was an alien from a civilization older than recorded history on this planet, one that had no magic but this wondrous technology stuff, was a thrilling thing. The prince turned king who’d spent his entire life doing little more than learning how to fight had dove into the wonders of technology with both fists.
Their wedding was set for the spring. The former computer technician, director of the Moor Corporation, economics advisor, and deadshot with a las-pistol from off-world now had smooth olive skin instead of a green tint, but kept the bright green eyes with her brown hair. The Queen’s Guard had some eclectic arms and armaments to them that definitely had not been issued to the rote army as yet, along with some special operators who were getting some fearsome reputations among their own. That was in addition to the King’s Guard getting lessons from Briggs down in Eisfall down to the south, many of whom had gotten in on the Breaking of the Fangs, as it was now called.
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I was sitting at the apex of elven power on the world, one of the most individually powerful people on the planet. I wasn’t pursuing the path of the Paragon directly, and my rise was meteoric in any fashion you cared to name… if you didn’t know I time-traveled and actually did have over a century behind me now.
Time to make a true stand in the world.
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This wasn’t the first Pyramid I’d built, of course. There was a twenty-stepper in Erendyl, hidden back among the towering hlatal trees in Zanzyr, extending its Domain out quietly and subtly to the trees and the magic there.
In Erendyl, the Radiance quietly Burned, and brought forth greater magic: the magic needed to characterize an Elven Homeland, and not just a settlement with a Lumina Tree.
We had learned a lot in making that Pyramid and how it interacted with Lumina Trees. The trees themselves also absorbed a lot of magic, and bent it to the benefit of the surrounding forest and natural life, making it verdant and prosperous. Hlatal and vreithmuir trees both required magical support to live, grow, and thrive, and the Lumina Tree provided that energy.
It did NOT do so for the likes of farms and fields, however. So, the inner woods of Belle’s Principality were magical and mystical, and the great trees could grow here and there outside of that area, but the normal farms and fields earned no great benefits from the Tree itself.
Not so a Pyramid.
First, the Pyramid’s Domain specifically had to exclude the area of the Lumina Tree. It was far more powerful and grander, of refined magical and elemental energy that was at odds with the Primal power the Tree relied upon.
Two, if it bent the ley lines too much, the Lumina Tree would start to sicken and die. The Treespeakers of the Clan had panicked and been ready to start a pitched fight once they realized it, and considering they were Belle’s mother and aunts, that had been a bit of a dicey situation there… for them.
My reaction had been something like, “Really, that vulnerable? I’ll just plan around it, then,” and I’d altered some specs on the fly as I ignored all their calls of doom and unnatural magic and Belle just told them to trust me, I knew what I was doing.
And I did. When the first Ritual of Plant Growth was undertaken at the top of the Pyramid by a very reluctant Treespeaker Crysallana, even the suspicious and very conservative matriarch of the clan had nearly been overcome as she felt the forests and hills for forty miles around responding to the magic.
Of course, that was larger than the Principality and the lands marked out by the elves. The actual benefits of the spell flowed through to the areas prepared to receive it, which were basically Erendyl and its directly subordinate and adjacent Duchy of Highwall.
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Treespeaker Crysallana looked like a classic Sidhe beauty, golden-haired and sapphire-eyed, appearing more like an older sister to Brittabelle than her mother. Truthfully that was what such relationships tended to mature into among the elves, especially as the centuries went by.
However, Belle had eclipsed her mother in power by a great deal, and even being a Treespeaker didn’t address the vast discrepancy in power between the two. Treespeaker Crysallana was revered, it was true, but Belle was now a true Queen of the Sidhe, and the ardor of her clan was firmly behind her.
Regardless, I had just finished detailing the facts behind the Radiance, the gammathaumic radiation that permeated Zanzyr, what it came from, the history of the Nucleus of the Spheres, Darkmoor, the Barhund, and what effect the Radiance was having on the field of magic. It turned out that elves could be swayed by a magical warrior-queen as much as anyone, and the Lumina Tree conversely looked far less important to them than the power and direction Belle was providing them.
Also, I had designed the White Pyramid of Erendyl specifically to feed on the Radiance and transform it back into Primal magic that nourished the land, and by extension the Lumina Tree. It would not be long before the magic that pervaded the Principality would equal or exceed that of the Relarin forest of Sidheduiche… but it was not limited to the forests!
“I am aware that you do not value the farms and villages of the humans and hyn and other races, mother,” Brittabelle said calmly, facing her mother across my Hexar-table as we sat and enjoyed claermist up on the tenth level of the Pyramid. “However, you cannot be ignorant of the value of such to others.
“We will have the finest farms, vineyards, and fields in all of Zanzyr, and beyond. They will be as prosperous as the finest years of other noble holdings, all the time.
“The wealth that will come with such plenty will extend our power and our influence, and show others that we are pursuing a path to plenty that does not involve one-upsmanship between noble families of power-hungry wizards.”
The Treespeaker looked between us, her gaze on me filled with trepidation. My influence on her daughter was extreme and unshakable, her quiet and repeated warnings to Belle brushed off as the paranoia and xenophobia they were at their heart. Crysallana would not have been a Treespeaker if she were not a very conservative elfin at heart, but the changes to Erendyl over the past five years had upended many of her beliefs, not the least among them the explosively successful Ranger program.
She had not believed the Lumina Tree would sponsor humans to elven magic so readily, and the Tree’s almost eager willingness to do so had forced the revision of many of her beliefs in the elven way!
“I did not know the Radiance held such dire secrets behind it,” she admitted warily, glancing at me. “And the Shaden have been using it for how long in this manner, Lady Edge?”
“A good thousand years and more, Treespeaker,” I informed her calmly. “They naturally had to discover all the many uses of it, and such magic is only available to the priests of Gaebrel. It took them many years to deduce and work out the secrets of the Radiance, but unlike the wizards of Zanzyr, it is Gaebrel who decides who gets to wield the magic, each spell does not need to be laboriously and secretly researched over and over again by each new practitioner.”