No Need For A Core?-355: Repercussions, Again
Power calls to power in many ways.
Sometimes, this means that building one's own power awakens the power of one's bloodlines and ancestry.
Sometimes, this means that displays of power draw attention from other beings of power.
Upon the day that Dimitri died and Moriko was reborn, far to the east, beyond the horizon and deep in the woods, an old woman was puttering around her home while muttering to herself about the ungrateful girl that she'd had to boot out and send on her way to start her own life.
Then she remembered where she had sent that girl, and the old woman cackled gleefully. "Oh, what I would have given to see that old dragon's face when my little protege showed up next to his pet project. Oh, pet, now there's a good idea. Her stupid crow familiar came out in rainbow colors. Maybe she can pick up a rainbow dragon-girl as a pet."
She continued rambling on to herself as she ground away with her mortar and pestle, preparing the next ingredient for her stew. It kept her thoughts away from the noisy kids throwing some party out west; way too many of them gathered together over there. Up to no good, that's what they were.
Her rambling cut off and her head snapped up, her cloudy eyes suddenly clear and focused as Mordecai burst out from the top of a tunnel Svetlana's territory. Despite being on the other side of the horizon from these events, she saw the dragon racing through the sky just fine, though simultaneously she also saw him as a young man running as fast as he could, cradling a precious piece of his heart in his arms.
Oho, maybe that noisy party had something interesting going on after all. "Come on, wake up ya old feather brain! Get a movin', that one's going to be coming back before long, I wager. I want to get some place where I can get in on the fun." She stomped as she rushed over to the bubbling cauldron to pour out a small king's ransom of rare materials from her pestle and into the stew, then smacked the creature trying to form out of the bubbling liquid on its head, not even bothering to look as it popped and changed color before mixing back in to the rest of the liquid.
The hut made annoyed noises as it started shifting itself about, working its way up until it was standing on a pair of giant chicken legs. It hopped in place a couple of times as the old woman yelled at it some more, then it raced off to the west to find a good place for its mistress to get a better look at the 'party' in question.
"Oh, look at that, she suddenly grew up nice and big. Did that boy break off the girl's chain? Oh, yes, he did, I'm going to have to watch that show later. Where did he get off to anyway? Hah, he was in a hurry to make that set of jumps. Desperate even. Look at all those kids running about like a disturbed ant nest. This is going to be fun."
The shaking and bouncing of the hut bothered Baba Yaga not at all as she grinned at the images flashing in her crystal ball.
Meanwhile, over on the Other Side, Queen Sylphine gasped, bolting upright from where she'd been lounging while a favored selection of artists had competed to make the best paintings and sculptures of her that they could. "What was that‽" She snarled out as she gestured, swiping through the air to create a vision.
The disturbance that caught her attention was on the outskirts of the faerie realms, touching on the borders of the realms that were bound by the mortal realm's void between worlds. She did not immediately recognize the strange dragon that had burst out from the ancient obsidian mirror, but a mortal's desperation and passion were clear to her, the sort of burning light that always drew faeries to mortals.
She did, however, recognize the twisted creatures that were flocking and swarming in the wake of the dragon. Sylphine pondered the matter for a moment as she regained her composure and took a little bit of time to analyze the dragon's aura and trace his passage from the mortal side of reality.
Oh, that was Mordecai? What was he doing out there?
Now she had to figure out whether or not to interfere despite the difficulty in directly affecting events so far away — they were, after all, loosely allied, especially with her daughter now being his adopted daughter. That thought made Sylphine scoff in a mix of annoyance and amusement. The least that the fool girl could have done was land herself in the same bed as him and his wives.
Of course, that would have left her competing for the position of consort with Satsuki, so perhaps things had worked out for the best.
While she was trying to decide what magics she could reasonably use from this distance upon Mordecai's pursuers, something else that resided on the edges of Faerie stirred, and Queen Sylphine soon decided that her intervention would not be required.
In a section of dark forest that crossed the edge of faerie and the strange realms beyond, a monstrous fox the size of a small dragon had been sleeping. She raised her head in annoyance at the sudden disturbance this close to the lands she had claimed.
The energy of the event wasn't particularly notable, but it had been accomplished hastily and with little attention to subtlety or efficiency, making it a particularly irritating 'noise' to those sensitive to such things.
At first, she simply thought that the not-dragon she sensed was fleeing the dark creatures swarming out from the half-ruined citadel they had claimed, but then she realized that the noise had been the not-dragon's entry into this realm. It had already been hurrying, racing against some unknown time limit.
And it carried faint echoes of familiar auras.
Curiosity stirred, just enough to make the fox take action. She appeared in the middle of the swarm with a burst of fox fire that incinerated half the swarm, and the small storm of exploding fox fire she created after that destroyed or scattered the rest, barring a few that had been far enough ahead to be still pursuing their 'prey', though she doubted that those few were enough to truly be a bother to it now.
She looked toward the not-dragon, who had not even noticed her arrival or the disruption of the swarm behind him. He had been headed out into the lands beyond faerie, and now he was slipping sideways back into the mortal realms.
Odd. Most avoided the void.
She shifted her gaze to look across the barrier between realms and watched as the not-dragon blithely let the air be ripped from its lungs. It was truly in a hurry, burning mana both to forge a smoother path through the air below and to accelerate itself even faster than gravity was doing.
A glance allowed her to focus along his path, bringing her attention to a great crystal world tree that spanned the realms. Now, that was very interesting, but the fox was also still sleepy, and the mortal realm could be a very tiresome place to deal with. So for the moment, she returned to her forest to continue her sleep, though her dreams were more restless now than they had been before.
In the mortal world, Princess Imara Eithriell Luthriel, heir-apparent of the elven queendom of Danuana, awoke with a shout to a series of alarms blaring directly into her mind. By the time she'd managed to form coherent thoughts, the princess found herself holding a pair of mithral blades aimed at the throats of the two men who had been sharing her bed; a twin pair of blond elven blade dancers whose performance she had enjoyed the night before, both before and after she invited them to join her.
Shaking her head, she unsummoned her bound blades and waved her hand at the bedroom door. "Go, I have matters to attend to." Imara grabbed a robe to shrug on as she mentally connected to the network whose alarms had awoken her.
"
What is going on... oh, I see
." Usually, anything that tripped the wards was taken care of in a routine manner, and even those that required attention from her mother or herself were not so urgent. In this case, the incandescent fireball streaking in from the void beyond the world represented a potential danger to everyone in the queendom, even if it did not directly strike their lands, and there was no mistaking the pulsing magic that was tracking the object and preparing to possibly attack it.
Information flowed from both automated magical constructs and mages who were actively casting additional spells to gain more specific data. The most important piece of information was that the object was clearly guided and appeared to have a specific goal; this meant that they needed to obtain more information before they acted.
While the queen worked on breaking through the overwhelming energy to scry on whatever was in the center of that inferno, Imara followed the projected trajectory into the kingdom of Kuiccihan. No, it was aimed just south of Kuiccihan.
"
I want to see its destination,
" she sent into the network, and moments later, a mage had one of their scrying foci skimming along the mountains, stretching the limits of its range outside of their borders while carefully staying clear of Kuiccihan's borders. They couldn't focus the view as far as Princess Imara would like, but it was enough to make out that there was a large cloud of flying creatures forming near the crystal tree that dominated the Azeria Nexus.
"
Mother, I think you should see this. Their arrival appears to be anticipated
."
"
I see. A moment
,
" the queen said, and Imara felt her mother's presence become more distant as she connected to a segment of the network that Imara had not been aware of before, and which she had no authority to connect to. That was annoying, but she'd ask about it later.
Several seconds later, her mother's attention focused back on the main network. "
Quiet the alarms, observe and analyze the target, but do not interfere.
"
Interesting. It seemed that this was indeed related to the Azeria Nexus. Imara found herself quite curious as to what would prompt such a hasty entrance.
While the elven queendom relaxed its defenses, one of Kuiccihan's avatars paced nervously. She had detected the flare of light as soon as it had fallen across her territory, and by the time she had moved this avatar to the edge of her territory with Azeria, there had been an inhabitant already racing to the border to pass a note along to her.
Unfortunately, there was little she could do right now but watch the wheeling cone of flying inhabitants who were hastily constructing a giant spell.
Technically, the spell form would be considered crude, but it represented rapid and precise choices of priorities. Subtly, efficiency, and precise calibration were all discarded in favor of speedy assembly and raw power.
Aided by Krystraeliv's power, the spell reached up into the sky, beyond the normal limits of the nexus's territory, to catch and funnel the massive shockwave that traced Mordecai's path across the sky. Mordecai flashed down through that gathered cone so quickly that even Kuiccihan's senses were barely able to spot it happening.
The entire formation was briefly lit from within as magic vied with the massive swell of heat and energy, and then a beam of intense power shot back out along Mordecai's path, reflecting the energy it had collected into a more coherent form.
This created a second shockwave as the atmosphere overheated inside of that torrential flow of energy in a stream. The handful of otherworldly pursues ceased being biology as they were converted into physics.
Kuiccihan estimate that a direct hit by that beam might have even knocked Gil down for a day or two.
She absorbed most of the energy of the shockwave that reached her borders to avoid startling people more than needed. The low-atmosphere portion of the shockwave had been absorbed and diverted by Azeria's spell formation, which left the noise and light of the higher altitude portion of the shockwave to diffuse through the atmosphere before it reached the ground, by which point it should no longer be harmful but could still startle or scare most creatures.
A moment later, the usagisune on the other side of the border with Azeria sagged with relief, then he smiled and waved at her. Good, Moriko was safe, though Kuiccihan still didn't have the details on what could have made this rapid return necessary.
Hmm.
As Kuiccihan watched the usagisune man turn and leave, it occurred to her that most of her nexus territory was hidden beneath Ekuilance, and there were very few people who were allowed to know enough to properly delve those zones. If she were to create a direct underground access tunnel, it would be possible for her to invite Azeria's leaders and inhabitants to come visit and delve, as she couldn't leave.
There were all sorts of happy thoughts that followed from there, some of them involving potential usagisune visitors. Kuiccihan had been avoiding getting personally involved with most people in the kingdom for quite a while; it had become an odd mixture of dull spiked with predictable pain. But many of these visitors would be starting as nigh-strangers, and they would not have such limited life spans. Plus, that usagisune messenger had a cute butt, and Kuiccihan found that she was rather enjoying watching him walk away.
Change could be a very good thing sometimes.
.
!
355: Repercussions, Again
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