The Power of Ten

I considered what I’d sensed. “You used your Celestial power to bless them all in the womb. They are all going to be holy children of Sylune.” The Empyreal Bloodline had been impossible to miss at that range, little bundles of living sacredness carried around inside them.

They clapped all six hands in delight... softly. “Very good, Master Aelryinth! Yes, this was very acceptable to them, over the vagaries of a haror Bloodline. Service to the Silver Queen will be very natural, and is quite acceptable to the Brothers.”

I tilted my head slightly. “You are avoiding the powerful Bloodlines. You could have a half-celestial, half-fiend, half-fey, or even a half-draconic child if you wished, yes?”

“We considered all of that, and unless that is directly requested by a higher Power, we do not consider it a good idea. Blessing a Bloodline is as far as we wish to take it at this time.”

I concurred, sitting down on a Sieged Disk myself where I could watch the little girls racing through the maze to the fountains in the middle. I could see the subtle magic underlying the maze, changing its configuration each time and making a new course for them to puzzle out.

“The duties of a Warlock Grandmaster can be time-consuming. The Mark link is a godsend for staying in touch with family, but there are limits.”

“It is possible to speak to a person in the Pits from Terra here through a Mark, but there are distances, and there are distances. Is there some manner of interference?” they asked. “A Mark cannot pierce the Shroud, either.”

“Temporal distortions obviate communication as well. Unless two realms share harmonic timestreams, the Marks won’t link, either,” I informed them of my discoveries. “Ah, yes, you have a Mark? I request a link-up with your Markspace.” I exposed the silver Tat on my left triceps.

“Ah, of course.” One of her fuzzy tails turned serpentine and draconic, glowing with a dangerous scarlet light on the bulb above a hooked stinger. It flicked out, stretching a good ten feet farther than it should have, and gently touched my shoulder.

I felt the Branding go off, a potentially hostile form of Mark-conferment that could form a conduit for enchantments and enslavement of the mind or will. It lost its hold instantly, dissipating as it did nothing more than harmonize with the other Marks also linked to its wielder.

Another door joined those now dimmed in my head, and I opened it up and stepped through.

Ho, this is pretty big...

I tamped down my Presence, not wanting to draw attention. There were literally millions of minds in contact in here, a combination of Marks, Tats, and Allegiance communication at work, some overlapping, some not, but I was given unlimited access to see all of it.

They even had a complete Allegiance of Evil people in here, who seemed to be getting along with the mostly Good people here with, eh, dark humor. Plenty of Neutrals in various functions, showing the attachments of Bannersworn, and a metric arseload of Warlocks, severely bent towards Good, with what had to be most of the planet’s load of Heavenbound.

I noted the various tiers of people, totally standard, and the groups of Allegiances, Marked, and Sworn, Monarchs and truly powerful individuals standing out like bright stars among clouds of dust even though distances here were in perception and belief, not measured in feet. Craploads of lower-end people with the new Racial Class Levels allowing them to progress further and faster than they had ever believed possible were here, too.

At the top of the stack were the highest Levels, which were normally the Monarchs, as well as independents with lots of Levels, and the Kings and Queens of the world.

Huh. Looked like all the Continental Royals were in here, and some smaller areas – parts of Africa and South America? – as well.

There was a really tricked-out Astral Deva in here, too, who all the Heavenbound Oaths basically led back to. There were also no less than twenty different Uplifted shoggoth, their ‘artificial’ intelligences standing out as they continually evolved and shifted. They seemed to have planted themselves near most of the active centers of power, especially the Monarchs, and were enjoying the flow of information.

Very notably, another Warlock Grandmaster, one with a Primary Hellpact of all things, was basically the head of all those nasty sinister souls down there, keeping them in check, and thus had her own little woven Allegiance doing Bad Shit down there in the dark, presumably for Good Purposes on the overall scale, judging by the play of Sin and Virtue about them bleeding everything Clear and Brown around them...

At the top of the stack were a Briggs, a Sama Rantha, a powerful halvyri Magos, a Blooded Blood Mage, a Paladin, and a diffuse light that led to nowhere, feeling quite familiar to me.

Legion themself looked quite unique, with thousands of tiny souls swirling around larger ones in the center, wrapped by the Words of multiple Pure Pacts burning in all the hues, but dominated by a Heaven Pact. They also stood among those at the top of the place, and given the conjoined powers of all those souls, that was totally unsurprising to me.

In terms of Character Level alone, I was the highest Level in the place, and that earned me instant attention from those at the top of the stack, who were naturally the foundation this whole thing was built upon.

-An outsider Heavenbound!- the deva was the first to /speak up, his spirit shining with at least Fifteen Levels of Clerical ability, which was extraordinarily powerful for a being of his Station in the Heavenly Hosts. If he had developed that all himself, he was ripe for promotion to Planetar or something of similar status.

-Elder!- I /greeted him cordially, with a mental bow. -I was just admitted by Grandmaster Legion. I am Aelryinth of Heaven, Ringlord and Magos. Just dropped into the Pyramid on one of my skipping-stone hops on my way home.-

-Ho ha!- One of the Sama-thoughtstreams turned to round on me, most of her attention elsewhere. -Question, are you a Lord of Pyramids?- she /asked me, directly skipping any pleasantries.

I lifted an eyebrow. -Indeed I am,- I /confirmed. -Do you need one or two made before I depart?-

She /flicked her eyeball sight to me, and I looked out her eyes into the world.

I noted that she saw more colors than I did by default, and had both True Sight and Arcane Sight naturally, as well as infra and ultravision. No Aural Sight, and she was relying on her Mask for magnification forwards, her view jumping around smoothly and controlled, yet with a speed that would have had a slower mind unable to comprehend what was going on.

There were about forty ziggurat Pyramids floating above Rio de Janeiro, confirmed by the layout of the city. I felt a clenching in my gut as an unbidden feeling of the deaths of millions of people washed up out of my memory from the flooding of the world, and the Dead March that had resulted from them.

Their Christ the Redeemer statue here was still there, and had not been changed into a skeletal horror emblematic of a Dead March. So surreal...

Necromantic and Conjuration magic were involved in those ziggurats. They were holding to a pattern, magic was building between them... looked like they were attempting to open a Gate or Portal to somewhere.

A bunch of the Kings and Queens of the world had come here with some forces to deal with the bastards. Amazonia’s people couldn’t do it by themselves, and Legion had relayed permission for them to intervene, although I had the distinct impression Briggs could go anywhere he wanted to on the planet and the Mother Lands weren’t going to say anything.

The hum in the air was panicking the population, while the arrived forces were totally unaffected, wrapped up in a Trembling melody I knew very well, indeed, and Warlord bonuses against fear.

-Who are those idiots?- I had to /ask, and her eyes shifted sideways, to the side of one of the Pyramids a few thousand feet above her and a mile or two away.

That looked like a very inhuman skeleton some fifty feet tall, clad in an ornate baroque approximation of armor and a spikey version of an overdone crown, with negative-Elemental energies writhing all over it. I eyed the patterns on its raiment, sorted through a lot of information sources, and snorted.

-Tzizmitl? Didn’t you people break a Shroud? Are they freaking crazy?- I had to /ask. The uncaring Undead Space Gods named by the Aztecs were literally asking for trouble, going after a planet that had wiped a Shroud!

-There’s a collection of them sitting on our moon. They just had to come down and pay a visit. They are trying to open a Gate to there, and we’re sort of standing around here Not Letting Them,- Sama /smirked.

-I have no knowledge of a Pyramid Lord’s abilities, but if they are the classic style, you can shut them down, or control any Pyramid you are faced with?- Emperor Briggs /spoke up grimly. There was immense, literally world-wide Prestige behind him.

-I absolutely can,- I /confirmed. -But I have to be present.-

-Oh, the kids would absolutely love to see you in action!- Legion /smiled with twenty different superimposed images.

I glanced that way, and all of the little girls were absolutely sitting down and staring at Markspace intently.

“Right,” I said aloud, getting to my feet. This was an Earth analogue, so I only needed a Detect Location coordinates-point, and I could calculate where to go, but Sama stomped on the ground and made a Teleport Focus instantly thereby.

Legion walked up next to me, and again took my hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Well, comrade Heavenbound, I supposed it was.

I oriented on the horizon, and Rode the Light waaay past it.

For a moment, we were up in orbit, punching right by the Interdiction about the house and materializing far above the planet, thousands of miles away.

Neither of us were discomfited by the vacuum, the radiation, or the sight of the planet far below. I looked right through the gloomy clouds that had gathered above my target area, and turned my head to take a glance at the moon on the opposite side of the planet.

Yeah, that big dark smear of gleaming lights was definitely a city of some kind...

The Teleport Focus glowed in 4D-space, and I Rode the Light straight down to it, Legion tagging along.

---

The flash of light actually turned that oversized skeleton’s head as it came down. I stepped off the Focus Sama had heel-stomped into the cement as it de-Energized, turning my shaded gaze to meet that of that thing.

Our gazes met across the miles, and it paused in surprise.

The forces ready to attack the invaders were scattered all over the place, divided between many of the Pyramids hovering above them. Sama was here, Briggs was located closer to that king, and a lot of Tens and a few post-Tens were scattered about and ready to go.

There were some massive Interdiction effects in play, keeping the dimensions here locked down hard. The undead idiot over there didn’t seem to realize where they were coming from, and was trying to brute-force a rip in Reality open that just wasn’t going to happen.

The new blonde with the familiar heavens-blue eyes, scarred blue-black Hag Brand, golden mane down to her calves, and no chest, her Sword cycling through a slow and ominous Melody that was all raring to pick up the pace, just glanced at me once, quirked a hard smile of recognition, and looked back at the thing. “You look just like the game,” she informed me, “although your hair is longer.”

“It’s not hair, it’s a Sign,” I replied. A strand of her locks flicked over, ran across my bare skull, and confirmed that. “You look a little different from your sisters.”

She half-grinned again, double canines gleaming on one side. “There are more of us on other worlds? Haha! Trav said there was one of us on the original homeworld, and a Briggs, too?”

“Yes. You ready to fight, and how much do you want me to do?”

“Huh.” There was a buzz of psychic communication on an Alliance /channel. “If you can bring them down, that’ll be huge, and we can probably do the rest. Does that thing recognize you? It’s looking right at you.”

“It can see my effect on the manasphere.” No need to hide that. “Notice how they are powering down the attempt at the Gate.”

She flickered her gaze across the Formation up above. “Confirmed. Don’t tell me you are chasing them away, just by showing up? They can see Azaia, too, and she’s no slouch.”

I glanced at the young halvyri about a mile away. I didn’t actually have line of sight to her, but I could feel her on the ley lines. “She’s not resonating with all their Pyramids like I am. They have ALL noticed my arrival.”

“Oh, so they ARE preparing to run away!” Sama was definitely amused at the idea that just my arrival was making them flee.