The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (64 page)

Mark and Alilia chose to help with the spells, Kragorram and Talia helped with the organizing, and Povon split her attention between the projects about equally.

After an hour and a quarter, the two teams melded their efforts and their minds as they matched spell-sets to tasks, then modified one or the other or both in successive waves of innovation.  Occasionally they called others into the Link for a few minutes, from races and places all over Kellaran; Master Healers; administrative specialists, magic users, Master Fishers, Farmers, and Ranchers.  At one point, Mark even called in the commander and the senior instructor of the Finitran Rangers.

Finally they came to the last step; powering it all.  They spent almost half an hour working on it before Val announced into the Link; 
“Hold on, I’m losing concentration from fatigue and complexity overdose.  Let’s store all this in memory spells and take a break.”

“It’s all stored in my bracelet.”
Povon announced as they withdrew from the Link.

“And in this powerstone.” Six added.

“Good.” Val said as she flopped back on the sofa she was sitting on and rubbed her temples.

“Wow.  That was really great.  You grown-ups are really good.”  Fire marveled as she laid down on the carpet she’d been sitting on and started her favorite stretching routine.  “It’s one of those wonderful things that you learn and you know, but every time you experience it you learn it again.  You’re all such great wizards, and that was the best brainstorming Link I’ve ever been in.  I mean, it still seems to me that you do things in really old-fashioned ways, but each of you have at least one really incredible kind of genius.”

“Thanks for saying.” Talia smiled as Mark massaged her shoulders with his left hand while massaging Alilia’s with his right.  “And you’re right, compared to you four, we
are
old fashioned, even though we instituted all the newest cutting-edge techniques just a few weeks ago in real time.  You kids are absolutely breathtaking in your brilliance and creativity.  You use magic in ways that I’d have never considered in a million years.”

“I’m not that damn brilliant.” Val groused.  “I still don’t get how Father did what he did with the power fields at the end of his battle with Zarkog.  It’s making me crazy!  He’s done really minor versions of it since then, like when I was born, but they’re not the same and they don’t scale up evenly.  We’re all Linked with Father, we’re all studying his Reading of what he did, including everything he thought and felt at the time, and still, none of us get it!  Not even him!”

“That was the only time in my life I ever held all the power I could hold.” Mark mused.  “I mean,
all
the power I could hold, of all three kinds; I really pushed myself past any kind of safe limits out of desperation.  And that’s what made the difference.  That’s what we’re not doing now.  It was really shocking how much better and faster I could think when I did that.  You can really see that in the Reading, but without doing the same thing, we can’t understand what we’re seeing.  Not even me, and I’m re-living my own thoughts and experiences.”

“Well then, let’s get as much power as we can hold, and hold it.” Val said as she sat up, stating the obvious with some exasperation.  “It’s still not much past noon at Focus Mountain, and we can get a lot more warlock power by going there than we can get through the power stone.  We can get others to pass us as much wizards’ and sorcerers’ power as we can hold.

“Not only do I want to get this problem solved
now
, but I want to know how to use collection fields for everything I do,
and,
I really want to know what it’ll feel like and what kind of thinking we’ll come up with if we all do this while we’re all deeply Linked.  It might lead to some big breakthroughs.”

“We should ask Equemev and Silaran if they can spare some time to join us in that.” Talia suggested.  “Unicorns always bring a completely different perspective, and I miss their influence and their thoughts.  And I miss their company and friendship too.  It’s too bad that parenting and young unicorn’s instinctive fear of dragons have interrupted our friendship for a while.”

Equemev made her psionic awareness known; the unicorn equivalent of politely clearing her throat, to let them know that she’d been aware of the conversation since her name had been mentioned. 
“We can spare some time today for good friends, in perhaps twenty minutes?”

“That would be fine.” Talia replied with a smile.  “But you’ll need to use some of that time to familiarize yourselves with the project as it stands right now.  I doubt you’ll be able to keep it in mind all at once, I sure can’t, so Povon can give you access to her record of it from her bracelet, and you can store it in something and look it over for parts you’d like to contribute to.

“Right now we’re stuck on understanding Mark’s breakthrough with the power fields.  Since he had it when he was holding his very limit in power, we’re all going to try Linking and working on it while we do that.”

“I see.”
Equemev responded. 
“Then we’ll use the Kejaz reflector; it focuses the Source as the Focus Mountain reflector focuses warlock power, and the two reflectors are relatively close, since Kejaz is in west-central Xervia.  It’ll be easier to participate in the Link over such a distance than to have the power passed to us from another over the same range.”

“I will simply ask for some volunteers among the Serminaki Draconians to pass us all the power that Povon, Karz and I can hold.” Kragorram decided.

“Talia and I and the kids should go to Laylas Valley first, to get charged up on wizard power.” Alilia suggested.  “We’ll bring the wizard’s power stone to get a final top up at Focus Mountain after the Translocation.”

“All right, I might as well come with you.” Mark said, and turned to the Dragons.  “We’ll meet you at Focus mountain in about thirty minutes.”

“Agreed.” Kragorram nodded.  “And we are nine.  It just seems right.”

“Well with Equemev and Silaran, we’ll be eleven.” Mark pointed out.

“True, but they won’t be physically present, so that doesn’t matter.” Kragorram quietly insisted.

“Father, you are such a traditionalist.” Karz chuckled.

“You mean I’m a superstitious old relic?” Kragorram asked with a grin.  “I like to think I’m still a bit young for that.”

“Hey, you said it, I didn’t!” Karz laughed, as Alilia Translocated her family to Laylas Valley.

They arrived high in the air, and as Talia answered the local Sentry’s challenge, Alilia Levitated the children a moment until she was sure they had it themselves, but it turned out to be unnecessary.  Their training ensured that they always cast Flight, Pure Breath, and full automated Battle Shields whenever they detected themselves being Translocated.

They floated in the dark of night, though it was so clear that they seemed surrounded by a dome of stars and moons from horizon to horizon, with the sky bisected by the bright band of the galaxy.

It was bright enough that they could clearly see blue reflections of the stars glinting off the collection stone that floated about twelve meters away from the center of their group, below them and to the west.

“Mmm, this is
so
nice!” Fire commented as they basked in the power and the view, and the others smiled as they shared her response.

After looking around a moment, Val inquired; “Have you tested the efficiency of that collection stone?”

“How do you mean?” Mark asked.

“I take it you haven’t, and I mean conducting some test to determine how much of the wizards’ power that the collection stone intercepts from the valley below and around us actually gets delivered from the power stone in usable form.”

“Uh, all of it, I think.” Mark told her.

“That’s physically impossible.” she stated.  “No transfer or transduction of energy is ever perfect, even the very best spells always lose a tiny bit of energy to heat, and sometimes to light and sound as well.”

“Okay, I knew that.” he nodded.  “But I think it’s pretty close to all of it.”

She Retrieved the power stone from Six’s pocket and considered it, then Translocated a thousand kilometers west for a second, then came back.

“Assuming that the collecting stone has no collecting field of it’s own, and that it only collects the energy that it physically intercepts, my own collecting field is either much larger than the stone, or far more efficient, or both.  I gain charge in wizards’ power over ten times faster just floating here by myself than I can get from the power stone.  But that’s just going by feel, I don’t have any way to quantify it.”

She suddenly descended almost ninety meters, then zoomed back up again.

“Would all of you except Father pack in around me as close as you can?” she asked.  “Try to completely block my access to the power emitted from the valley with your bodies and your collection fields.  There’s no use having Father do it since he doesn’t collect this kind of power anyway.”

With some giggling, they complied with her request.  When Talia, Alilia, Fire, and Six were all hugging her and covering as much of her body with theirs as they could, she waited a moment before she said; “Okay.”  They released her and floated back an arm’s length or two.

“All right, when you did that, my power collection decreased, but only slightly.  Obviously our collection fields aren’t very efficient, and even our bodies only block a small portion of the power, the rest passes right through.

“But when Father fought Zarkog, he cut Zarkog off completely, blocking his access to both the wizards’ power from the stone and the sorcerers’ power from the Source.  So Father not only found a way to make collection fields for two kinds of power that he doesn’t even use, he drastically increased the efficiency and… density, of both fields to the point that no power was getting through.  Or so little power was getting through that Zarkog could no longer maintain any spells, which is practically the same thing.”

“I did more than that, and I didn’t even realize it until now.” Mark mused.

“How so?” Talia asked.

Mark shrugged.  “It’s obvious from the Reading that I not only cast efficient collection fields for wizards’ and sorcerers’ power, but I could hold and store and use that power as easily as I could my own warlocks’ power, or power that I got from you or Equemev.  And I can see in the Reading how I did it, but without holding my limit of all three kinds of power like I did then, it’s like explaining eighth year mathematics to a second year student.  I’m just not getting it, and I can’t really remember exactly what I did to
do
it.”

“When we get to Focus Mountain, you should have Somonik set up a big Link with a bunch of magic users of both types to give us all as much of all three kinds of power as we can hold, like you were doing then.” Fire suggested.  “We all know how to hold and cast each other’s power, so we should all hold as much of all three kinds as we can, to increase our chances of success.”

“I agree, and I am recruiting volunteers to lend power as we speak.”
Somonik told them from the far side of the world. 
“Tithian, Yazadril, and the other researchers think that this may be the most important experiment ever conducted, and they will be passively following the process through Equemev.”

“All right, but try to keep it on a need-to-know basis until it’s done.”
Mark requested. 
“We don’t want any curious minds sneaking in and disrupting things.  And we don’t want the public’s attention on it until it’s all over, in case it blows up in our faces.  If it does they’ll need to be told, but they won’t need to see it.”

“Agreed.”
The ancient white dragon stated, then psionicly withdrew.

A few minutes passed, as they floated and thought on what they were about to do.

“I think I’m about full.” Six announced.  “Of wizards’ power, that is, or very close to it.  I’m starting to sweat.”

“Me too, but I think Mother still needs to marinate for a few more minutes.” Val agreed.  “Let’s go down and see the chapel.”

“I’m still not done.” Fire told them.  “We’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

Val and Six nodded and disappeared, appearing a meter above the center of the dais, in the center of the most revered place in Elven culture: The Laylas Valley Site of Joining, or Wedding Chapel.  They gently alighted on the broad, tiered marble dais and looked around at the huge dim circular clearing.  It was floored with deep, firm moss, and ringed by the tallest trees in the world; the colossal Laylas Redwoods.  Over a third of all elven weddings in the entire history of that race had been performed here, and it had become highly charged with the magic of their many loving vows.

Six gave Val a sudden spontaneous hug, and opened a Link with her. 
“There’s something I know about you that you don’t know, and that’s not fair.  I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you, and this is it; the right time, in the right place.

“I know that it’s not yet the right time for us to act on this, but you should know it.”

He gave her his memory of being the first to contact her psionicly, when she was still in Alilia’s womb, and when he had subsequently had the prophesy that he and she were destined lovers, and what her name would be.

She gave him no response for what seemed like many long moments.

“Excuse me, I need a little privacy while I think about this.” she murmured, and gently but firmly closed the Link.  But she kept the hug.

He had to bolster his resolve to remain patient before she spoke again.

“I suppose you predicted Fire and Karz too?!” she quietly asserted with a soft giggle.

“Wow, that was some stealthy Reading!” he marveled.  “I thought I could keep that private from anyone.  I only hid it because it wasn’t my secret to reveal.”

“Aha, now you’ve confirmed it!” she laughed.  “Not only that they’re a couple, but that you predicted it!  I didn’t Read it off you, I just guessed.  I got the idea that they were sneaking off to be together a while ago, but I never tried to find out for sure.”