The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 164

Part 24

“We should investigate whether the youths and fools of Serminak are also exploring the new limits of extreme recreation.” Kragorram suggested to Povon. “After this massage, of course, and perhaps after I return the favor. But my thinking is this; while the parents and conservatives of Serminak are unlikely to be offended by any new foolishness among them, the youth and fools there are likely to be even more extreme than those elsewhere, particularly if they start goading and baiting one another about it. I think we should make sure there are no new problems developing. Even with the Healing, there are still the issues of potential property damage, and possibly harmful character development.”

“They don’t have to worry about property damage too much.” Val opined. “My Work spell is like a Healing for inanimate objects. Its Restore and Repair functions can fix almost anything.”

“Good point.” Kragorram admitted as he rolled to the side a bit to give Povon better access. “But there’s still character development to be considered, and of course the possibility of other unexpected problems. With the Sylvan especially, the unexpected is always an issue, and we would be wise to not be complacent.

“We’ve also been delegating and perhaps neglecting some of our duties in Serminak. As Dren said to Mark; first we were in the time-bubble, and since we emerged we’ve been occupied with other matters, mostly military. Life in Serminak has changed more than in any other place since we emerged, due to almost universal compliance with our children’s new training and social systems. I just think we should make sure there aren’t any major and potentially dangerous trends being established among them. Find out what life is like in the streets and homes and barracks and dens of our people.”

“Those are very noble thoughts, my love.” Povon told him with a warm smile as she scratched between his wings. “Of course, that’s why I hired you.”

“I was hired?” he chuckled.

“It was me who asked Mark to make you my second-in-command, remember?” she teased.

“Yes, but hired? I’m getting paid for this?” he teased in return.

She leaned down and murmured in his ear; “Actually no, you’re my slave.”

“Oh I see!” he laughed with a hearty rumble and a big puff of smoky yellow flame from his nostrils.

“You do have the right to draw on the treasury of Serminaki Draconia as you see fit.” she continued in a more normal tone as she resumed his massage. “But you haven’t, and until you do you’re my slave. So we’ll just have to do exactly what you say when we’ve finished this, and investigate the development of the character and culture of Serminak.”

“Of course, that makes perfect sense.” he chuckled.

“Everyone help me cast as much privacy as we can possibly manage.” Fire suddenly ordered. “I have something important to say, and I’m having a hard time with it.”

Without a word, they each cast their strongest psionic shielding around the entire group.

“Thanks.” she thoughtfully nodded. “I hope no one else out there picked up on my thoughts before we did that.

“These military exercises are really useless. Unless there’s an unbelievable absolute worst-case scenario, none of us are going to be actually fighting the demons.

“We’ve all been playing along in so many ways, when none of this really matters. When we get killed in an exercise, we let ourselves stay dead, when in real life Father’s preset Resurrection spells would bring us back to life, and so would the ones we came up with to meet the immortality requirement in the Prerequisites. We totally hold back in the exercises because we don’t want everyone else to feel bad when they realize that they’re completely superfluous. We all do it, and we don’t even talk about it when we’re sharing our thoughts. Maybe we’re afraid to face up to what we’ve become.

“We had all of our fighters go into the tunnels on Dehrla because that was the point of the exercise, when in real life we’ll do all of our fighting with automated self-powered spells. I’ve already come up with one that automatically finds the enemy and casts Tithian’s Gate-to-the-sun attack on all of their exposed surfaces. Nothing could withstand that. And I’m still improving the hunting functions and reducing the effective time.

“It was pretty easy, actually. I did it in an hour. It’s not nearly as complex as Val’s Education spell or even her Work spell. The hardest part was finding a way to cast the output portal in any shape I wanted, rather than a flat plane, so it conforms to the enemy and doesn’t leak any energy.

“Self-powered spells change everything. Right now my power is only limited by the total output of Source and warlock power from the sun. I could cast two collection fields completely around the sun and take all of it. Compared to that, everything the gods and The Triax and everyone else on Kellaran could do all together is just a spit in a hurricane. Father, Six and Val could do the same. And any of you could direct our power to do it through our Link.

“Who knows what you’ll be capable of when you adults become gods? When we do too, because I’m sure we will eventually. I doubt we’ll resist the temptation for more than a few centuries. Maybe we’ll be able to cast collection fields around every star in this section of the galaxy, or even around the core of the galaxy, or even the whole galaxy itself. And if you cast a spherical Gate around a star you can take all of the energy it puts out, of every kind, and put it wherever you wanted. It seems we could do anything.

“Anyway, I could absolutely eliminate that rock full of demons right now, and I don’t see why I don’t. We could let our people get back to a more normal life. Or trying to figure out a new one, actually, since everything has already changed. The nexus is fulfilled, and nothing will ever be remotely the same again.”

There was silence for a moment as they considered what she’d said.

“We’ll have to test it.” Mark thoughtfully stated. “There’s no doubt we’ve been holding back to some extent, because as Pakdag said; the point of the exercises is to train everyone. We just weren’t willing to intentionally lose the last exercise to do so, so we didn’t use most of our combatants on-site.

“The new training they’re talking about will be a different story; the soldiers’ exercises will be run without our power, and only their fighting and our leadership will be tested. Though they might allow us to fight as well if we limited ourselves to a five thousand combat score, but there wouldn’t be much point in that unless it was right at the end of the battle and things were getting close.

“We should be tested to our limits in both the exercises for Strike Wizards, and when we train with the gods. We can show everything we can really do.

“And we should know what we can really do. So we should go to the void on the opposite side of the sun from where the demons are and really test it.

“If we really can cast a collection field around the entire sun, for either Source power or warlocks’ power or both, and really use all that power, then we need to know that.

“If we can, then we can make a very strong case for a decisive first strike on the demons right now. But I’m not willing to do it without the approval of the full Assembly, because frankly, I don’t want to take sole responsibility for it if it goes wrong and leads to an attack on our people before they’re as ready as they could be.

“On the other hand, when I first met the elves and started to take part in world affairs, I often made the mistake of not being fully aware of the true scale of all the forces I was dealing with. Quewanak pointed it out the first time we met him. And I strongly suspect that you’re making the same mistake right now.

“The output of the entire sun is so colossal that I really doubt we could cast a collection field around the whole thing; it’s just too much power to process into usable magic. I think your other idea of being able to cast a spherical Gate portal around the whole thing is actually more practical, because it doesn’t have to transmute all that power into another form of energy, it just has to move it to another place through the Translocation medium.