The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (91 page)

“If we really were capable of acting as adults, we would have insisted that you just go in the time-bubble without us.  It would only have been six weeks without you.  Lots of children go on vacations that long without their parents, to visit their grandparents or whatever, and they deal with it.  We’d have had Povon and Kragorram and Sheramiv and all The Atoned and lots of people to keep us company, and we have lots to do.  Real adults could do it easy.

“But I couldn’t even bring myself to suggest it.  The thought of spending six weeks without you was simply unbearable.”

“I’m glad.” Mark chuckled as he hugged the boy.  “I’m glad you’re not done with being our children that way, because we’re sure not done with being your parents that way.  As wonderful as it’s been, I still want the full eighteen years of raising you.  I’d want the fulfillment of it, even if you didn’t need it.”

“Eighteen?!” Alilia exclaimed with mock-alarm.  “I’d feel cheated with only eighteen years!  I don’t care how fast you develop, I’m still an elf, and I need the full thirty-two years of raising my children that every elven parent deserves!”

“Yes Mother!” Val, Fire, and Six all dutifully responded, then giggled together.

“I imagine you’ll need the full eighty years of raising me that all dragon parents deserve?” Karz asked his parents with a grin.

“We’re not sure.” Povon told him with a smile and an affectionate grip on his shoulder.  “Ask us again when you’re seventy-nine.”

Everyone laughed at that a bit before there was a moment of silence, then Fire declared; “In the meantime, I think we should go over the plans for the big joint exercise with The Triax.  I mean for our militaries to be as proficient as any force in it, and I’m sure you all feel the same.  We should make sure we have the plan completely memorized and that we’re completely prepared for it, then make sure that the rest of our forces can say the same, starting with the generals and ending with the privates and support corps.

“I agree.” Mark stated enthusiastically as he retrieved the plan’s charts and Revealings that they’d been given.  “We have less than a week, and I’m sure we’ll find a use for every minute of it.

“Sheramiv?”

She appeared and immediately asked; “Yes, my Prince?”

“Please prepare a status report on the Hilian military’s state of readiness to participate in the Triax Joint Exercise.”

“Yes, My Prince.  I’ll consult with our commanders and have it for you in about eight minutes.”

He nodded as she disappeared.  “Povon, Kragorram, Fire, Alilia, please obtain status reports on your people’s readiness for the exercise.  Then we’ll work on improving it by having a full-scale exercise of our own, or maybe more than one.  We have a week to get ready, after all.”

They simply nodded as they contacted subordinates, and Mark spread the first chart on the paving and held the corners down with Force.

“Now, like the gods have been doing with their training exercises, this one will be held in the void on the opposite side of the sun from where the demons are, to hide what we’re doing from them.  Every nation will deploy one quarter of their forces…”

“You guys go ahead with that.” Val said as she closed her eyes in concentration.  “I’m going to work on automating Hilsith’s Transformation spell and Yzell’s fertility spell.  They’re wasting too much time casting them on everyone.  And I think I can add another level of automation to the ship-building in Serminak.”

“I’ll help you with that, then you can help me review the war preparations of The People of Life.” Alilia suggested.

“Sure.” Val smiled.

And they all settled down to work.

In two days they held a training exercise on the moon Dehrla and in the void close to it involving all the forces of Hilia, The People of Life, and the Sylvan and dragons of Serminak.  Mark had overall command, Relgemit and Talia led Hilia, Alilia led The People of Life, and Povon led Serminak, over Kragorram who led their dragons, and their children who led the Sylvan.

The enemy were some six billion simulated greater and lesser demons and a few dozen DemonLords, all run by four gods and seventeen mortal senior strategists and commanders.

The exercise was held on the side of the moon opposite the distant but quickly approaching demons, to hide it from their detection.

In the exercise’s scenario the enemy were already well dug into the surface of the moon by the time they were discovered, and had excavated an extensive maze of deep bunkers, tunnels, and surface attack ports.  The goals of the exercise were to re-capture the moon and exterminate the enemy, with the exception of ten to twenty-five prisoners who were to be captured for the purpose of interrogation, all within six hours.

At the beginning of the engagement, hundreds of millions of demons had seemingly erupted out of the surface of the moon, and had been countered by a few hundred Strike Wizards, each wielding the power of millions and protected by Shields powered by millions more.  The battle in the void went entirely against the demons, who couldn’t counter the concentration of power and automated spells they were attacked with, not even bolstered by the firepower coming from their many attack ports on the moon.  But once the demons retreated inside their tunnels they gained the advantage.

The vastness of the labyrinthine tunnel network and the exercise’s time limit meant that Mark’s forces had to split up into platoons and check every nook and cranny, and the searching battle was complicated by the fact that most of the demons were capable of at least short-range Translocation.  It was a vicious, chaotic battle that required careful psionic co-ordination via the Command Link to wage successfully, and without being tricked by the demons into attacking their own fighters.

They succeeded, but barely.  Only one in thirty-four of their forces remained active at the end, and everyone in Mark’s family except Fire had been ‘killed’, but all the enemy were eliminated except for eleven prisoners.

They gathered all of their forces on the surface of Dehrla, over four and a half billion strong, and reviewed the exercise together.  Debriefing, analysis, and discussion were all conducted over their Command Link beginning at the platoon level, then proceeding to evaluation of companies and brigades, and finally culminating in the judgment of the entire exercise.

Then they received the evaluation of the gods and strategists who had run the simulated demons.

“Well done.”
Mark told his gathered forces. 
“This exercise was designed to make us fail.  It was expected by the organizers that there would still be almost a billion demons left when all of us were dead, based on your results in training and previous exercises.  Today we fought more effectively than we ever have before, about a third better in fact, and I thank you all for your incredible effort.

“Return to base.”

Each unit Translocated back to their own bases, and Mark’s family went to the patio of the cottage on Hilia.

Talia immediately cast a dome of Weather Protection over the whole yard, since a tremendous rainstorm with gale-force winds was blowing over Hilia at the time.  They’d already been soaked in the second before she cast it, so they all cast to dry themselves.

A moment later they were joined by Pakdag, God of War of the humans of the plains of Debivin, who had led the team that ran the demons in that day’s exercise.  He appeared as a man about two hundred and fifteen centimeters tall with bushy black hair and beard, dark eyes and olive skin, equipped with bronze arms and armor of a very ancient style, and was letting his aura of divinity be obvious.

“I wanted to congratulate you all in person.” he stated in a heavily-accented and gravely voice.  “Your forces fought incredibly well.  They are extremely motivated and superbly well-trained.  Your universal use of The Healing of Valentia has made you all very hard to kill, and before its introduction, we would never have expected you to stand one-on-one with the demons that you faced.  You rooted out an entrenched enemy while facing a numerical disadvantage of four to three.

“But you here now were phenomenal.  Had there not been DemonLords among your enemies, I’m sure none of you would have fallen.  You commanded your forces as well in the void as I’ve seen it done on Kellaran, which is quite impressive since you commanded from the field, in the midst of close battle and personal combat.  In addition, your personal prowess was decisive.  Half of the unexpected improvement in your forces’ performance was due to you nine, and your use of automated, self-replicating attack spells.  You nine have been given a combined combat effectiveness score of six hundred and forty million.

“You realize that such a score means that you nine are judged to be capable of matching six hundred and forty million recently-promoted Smingan Journeyman Battle Wizards.

“Even more impressive is the fact that most of the power of you nine was wielded by Mark and his children.  It seems obvious that only you four are capable of increasing the volume of your magic-collection fields, or of casting such fields in other locations, or of using them to make your automated attack spells self-powering.  It seems it is an ability that is unique to warlocks, as is the nature and intensity of your power.  Each of you have been given scores of over one hundred and fifty million.

“You children were obviously not jesting when you said that you had power to rival the gods.

“I look forward to the joint Hilian-Xervian exercise in two days.”

“Thank you, Pakdag.” Mark said with a grin, speaking for all of them.  “It was very courteous of you to come here and tell us this yourself.”

The war god smiled and said; “Perhaps, but I wanted to meet you, and I’m glad I have.

“Be well and strong.” he finished, and with that he was gone.

“Well, I have been given the lowest score among us.” Talia stated in amazement.  “But at one million, nine hundred and fifty thousand, it seems even mine must surely be an exaggeration!”

“Not at all!” Alilia laughed as she Summoned an armchair and flopped into it.  “We cast an automated self-replicating attack spell, and it goes out and kills demons until it runs out of power, and they’re pretty damn power-efficient.  Meanwhile we turn our attention elsewhere, and it’s easy to not notice how many demons the spell kills while we’re not watching it.  But you killed millions of demons today, my love, and you were still fighting an hour after I was dead, and you fully deserve your score.  You were Magnificent.”

“Thanks, but you only died before me because you were less cautious and more aggressive, and you were targeted by a lot more demons than me.”

Alilia shrugged, then stretched.  “I haven’t led my people in battle in a long time, not even in an exercise, and it felt damn good.  I might have been a bit too fired-up, but I wanted to be inspiring.”

“You were.” Mark assured her.  “And it wasn’t that long ago since you led them at The Battle for Zarkog’s Lair.”

“True, but it seems like it was.” Alilia responded.  “And the last time before that was over seven hundred years ago.”

“I think Fire deserves some extra congratulations.” Povon proudly opined.  “One of the few survivors, and commander of the final stage of the battle and the clean-up.  Well, done, child.”

“Thanks.” Fire nodded, her eyes unfocused as she thought back on it.  “I was just lucky though.  My units were on the verge of being overwhelmed a few times, and we just barely managed to squeak out of it every time.”

“Thanks to your amazing fighting and command skills.” Karz teased.

“And the fierce will of the Sylvan units I was commanding.” Fire nodded.

“Do you think Pakdag was right?” Kragorram asked Mark.  “Do you think only warlocks can manipulate collection fields?”

“He may be.” Povon nodded as Mark shrugged.  “I can do almost everything that they can do, and I can still do a few Draconian things that they can’t, but I can’t manipulate my collection field because I can’t detect it, or anyone else’s either.”

“Same as the rest of us.” Alilia agreed.  “We can’t manipulate what we can’t detect.  We’ve all been Linked with Mark and the kids when they do it; they seem to just shift their focus a bit and there it is, now that they’ve practiced it.  I can see and feel how they do it, but it just doesn’t work for me.”

“Hey Sweets, are you working again already?” Mark asked Val, seeing her expression of concentration and her unfocused gaze.

“Yup.  Now that I’ve automated Yzell’s Fertility and Hilsith’s Transformation, it seems the next problem is the training of the billions of new wizards.  So I’m working on what will be my most complex spell yet; Valentia’s Magic Education.  It’ll train every new wizard up to Journeyman level, as fast as they can learn it, starting with what they need to contribute their power to a Command Link.  I’ll be working on it for a week at least, and if I hadn’t come up with the Spell Compiler it’d be impossible.”

“A week?” Karz asked in surprise.  “And your most complex spell?  Now you’ve got me intrigued.  I mean, I could find a good magic teacher and take a Reading of his entire course to Journeyman level, then distribute it.  It wouldn’t take that long and it wouldn’t be that complex, except for the sheer volume of the information.  So you must really be making something special.”

“Thanks, I am.” Val smiled, closing her eyes to preserve enough concentration to converse without losing her train of thought on the project.  “At the core of it is
my
magic instruction course, and I think I’m a pretty good teacher, at least when the subject is magic.  But it has every
method
of teaching, including direct psionic placement, and it constantly Reads the student and adapts to their individual traits.

“If a student has the required if latent psionic talent, the magic talent, the intelligence, and the mental capacity, the spell will simply Link with them and shove the entire education into their brains in a chunk.  But I did a quick psionic survey among the new wizards, and that level of talent is pretty rare. 

“If they have
no
direct psionic learning capability at all, the spell will provide them with every other form of learning; Readings and Revealings of lectures and demonstrations, Speakings with just the spoken voice so they can just listen while they ride a horse or whatever, parchment scrolls and charts and diagrams.  And every part of the education will be available in all those forms.  Luckily, a complete lack of direct psionic learning capability is also pretty rare among the new wizards, but even those can take a Speaking or a Reading and review it until they’ve learned it. And they’re susceptible to basic psionics to increase their concentration and their motivation, so that’s in there too.