Chương 172: AF Chapter 171 – Touching the Land

There were dozens of people following me now, looking about in wonder at the rising of the Outer Wall, scarcely able to believe this had been open ground just minutes ago. M onths of labor had been accomplished in scarce any time at all, all the difficulties just passed by and swept aside as if irrelevant to what was being done here.

Widened Sudden Widened Dawnstopped and Theurgically-boosted to the freaking moon Metacap-breaking Shape Stone was pretty damn useful, which was why it was tied off and Renewed every day, rain or shine. Not even Shards compared to how high I could Cast this spell. The +18 Caster Levels for added Divine, Primal, and Heartsong magic was a huge addition, on top of all the Elemental Reserve Kickers, Sublime Chord boosting, Good Domain, and other Buffs going on.

I could move a LOT of stone around, doubled if I pulled it out of one area and didn't rely on the spell to acquire the stone from elsewhere, stacking the work I could do at one time. I'd had it all planned out for months, of course, Architect and Stonemasonry Skill Ranks taken and allocated, fully capable of adding artistic flairs and statues and tiled appearances and multi-cultural mixing of styles and flourishes here, there, and everywhere as needed. There was a lot of work that still had to follow, of course.

I'd left off hanging doors and the like, although the holes for screws and hinges were all in place, and the smiths had been accruing them for months. Some of the people following me were already clutching crates of ironwork to start putting cabinets, doors, windowsills, shutters, and other things into place.

It wasn't a Pyramid by the slightest stretch of the imagination, but I was also plunging stone down into the ley line at the marke d points, and building the conduits that were already starting to pump magic through the stone and make the Wall VERY hard to destroy and easy to repair unless the connection was severed.

The nature of the R une structures were that they ached to be completed, and that closed circuit would actually happen at the end, where I'd have to walk from one end of the Shoreward Wall along the water to the other, completing the circuit through the stone well under my feet.

It was all a level of detail and work that the people watching all this couldn't see and didn't understand, and only a few of the Casters who were directly involved in plotting out where the ley line focus points were had any idea of what was going on. Still, Stone Walks to me were gratifying, casual uses of my time, quite relaxing. After all, I just had to walk, keep my feet on the stone and earth, follow patterns and forms long mapped out, get the sleepy stone to move into its new shape, and then lock it in.

My inspiration for these were naturally the Roads that crisscrossed so much of Eastern Dereth, which had been made in much the same way. The subsurface connections to the ley line network, the R unemarks made on the underside of every single brick that had been laid, and the relentless precision and pattern adhered to were beyond the senses of most people who trod upon them.

Kris had noticed it all with her tremblesense, and I noticed the flow of magic unmistakably, especially with Shaping Stone capable of tweaking them, or even tapping into them if needed. The fact I could mold them so easily would have shocked those spellcasters who had been involved in trying to build similar things, or even making a road that linked up to the existing Roads.

In almost all cases, they looked similar, but they didn't have the same endurance, nor the same ability to defy the environment, unless they were actually built on top of settlements that had existed there since before Isparians came, obviously places meant to be inhabited by… someone. But the old buildings had crumbled with age or were swept away long before Isparians came here, merely becoming confluences of Roads and good places to settle.

Not, as they probably once were, armed camps and barracks housing armies of warriors. Outlook was going to be a true new city and fortress, tapping into the ley line network to endure the ages, just like those old constructions… and further helped out by all the Summon points drawing on the ley line being Shut down and Sealed. Because we were sitting on a gods-damned time bomb.

The day after reaching Nine… It was a random hillside mine in the Linvaks, pulling out lead and iron, not worth fighting over and somewhat played out, worth losing if things went wrong.

I took some pretty elaborate precautions setting up what was normally a relatively freeform spell, something you Cast around a campfire as you sent out a respectful wake-up call to the local portion of the Land's genius loci, established something of a dialogue with it, and were allowed to share its awareness of itself and those upon it. Five layers of Pact Magic cutouts to shield the mind from outside pressures and the awareness of greater powers were NOT normal at all for a Commune with Nature.

Hells, the spell normally wouldn't even work with such things present, as opening yourself to the Land was all part of the spell, entering into mutual harmony with it as you shared the expanded senses and magnificence of the Primal power that was the world we lived upon. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. My memories of such experiences with Aelryinth were profoundly moving and wonderfully inspiring.

Levels and superhuman intellectual ability simply didn't matter when it came to touching the spirit of an island, a peninsula, a continent, a world. The vastness was simply something greater than an ant-like mortal could truly comprehend in its entirety, and yet still a step below the non-finite and divine Awareness that was the realm of the Divine and Titans themselves, and those Entities at similar cosmic levels of being.

Those beings were here and aware of this island, and so Pact, Divine, and Arcane Magic was being very, very repeatedly used to keep them at bay. I'd expanded a room that had once held a lodestone of ore, doubtless making some miner some good money, smoothing it out and working it repeatedly with some alchemically-accented carving to do this right. A Pentafold Summoning diagram, for a spell that literally only required I have my feet on the ground.

It was more than something you'd need to Summon a demon prince, or the avatar of a god! Kris eyed the whole manifold Diagram, parts of it dipping precisely into one another, filling with power that was overlaying and synchronized in ever-tightening, ever-harmonizing circles as the whole thing powered up, Sublime Chord notes having long chased down any disharmonious elements from what I had drawn up here.

"Damn, Ryin, I don't remember ever having seen something like this, ever."

"Aelryinth built a Sevenfold Summoning Diagram in a location a safe distance from any inhabited areas, but he's never used it for anything in my memory. There's a Fourfold Diagram in Pyramid Central, and that could hold an Elemental Prince effortlessly, the one time they Summoned one up. This… isn't that permanent, but in the short term should be stronger."

"Avatar level," Kris nodded. The True Avatar of an actual Divinity could kick an Elemental Prince around like a dog.

"You really aren't taking chances with this."

"I've already seen one Entity of Mythos much too close, and we know a minimum of four are involved with this place, if not more. Lord Mick!" I turned to look at him, leaning against the tunnel in.

"What was my order?"

"If ye say run, then run, ye feckless bastard of a dirt-eating hill-born blackheart!" he embellished with a perfectly straight face. Kris was standing there in the heart of the Diagram, her Null pulled in, effectively not there and not disrupting anything going on. I sank down, touching the floor with the tip of my Boots, actually having Flight active for this to zero my weight if things went south, just in case. There was no true Bardic and Minstrel 'magic', as it were.

Both Traditions drew from older and more established systems of magic, accessing them through the harmony of the Heartsong instead of a true connection to the Land or Elements, or touching the manafield directly. Bardic magic was the older Tradition, and had once been intimately involved with the Druidic faiths, the power of religious leaders, and their connections and rivalries with the nobles, royalty, and clan politics of older and more simpler times.

Bards had worked as lorekeepers, messengers, educators, tellers-of-tales, and courtiers, traveling throughout the lands, seeing what was to be seen, given free right-of-way to pass through all territories. They were lauded as both sources of news and entertainment, appreciated wherever they went, even if it must be into the courts of rivals and the enemies of those they favored.

Thus, the magic of the Druids was open to their Heartsong, as Bards were deeply tied to the land and its people, a link between the knowledge and wonders of civilization, and the traditions and inviolable agency and awareness of the power of Nature.

Accessing the Primal magic through Heartsong, I could then link to Arcane, Divine, Pact, Soul, and Artificing Magic, completing a Sevenfold Theurgy that should not have been at all necessary for something like this, but which I wove into being because I wasn't taking rash chances… even if this was, even by my estimations, probably complete overkill. It took only time and magic, and so I didn't care. I sang out that call, and sent it down, down into the land and the stone, looking for the spirit of the land.

The first thing I noticed was that the ley lines immediately thrummed, as if something had just drawn them taut. The second thing I felt was a wave of raw emotion coming for me.

"Run," I whispered in horror and alarm, staring at it coming. Kris grabbed me by the back of my collar and booked, not the slightest hesitation in her movement. The Mick was barely ahead of her, disbelief slowing his reflexes at just how fast and sudden things had gone south. Just the tiniest bit of my Markdoor opened for them to feel, and any and all confusion and hesitation totally and completely fucking vanished as both of them raced for the way out of the tunnel with everything.

The stone was already starting to hum and shake around us. The ley lines were pulsing and twitching with power draw, and I slammed my palms together, the narrow mining tunnel slamming closed mere inches behind us, and not going to stop even if they stopped running, so don't fucking stop running! The path was not complex after I'd smoothed and straightened it out, and I'd had them run up and down it a few times just to make sure they knew how to get out.

Only this time they both put real, real effort into it, Kris hauling me behind and clawing at the Mick's heels. The magic began to rise behind us, stone slamming together as I closed everything, every hint of a mine tunnel being here, and we could see something B urning behind us, even Kris and the Mick with their eyes in the wrong direction, B urning at reality, reaching and grasping for something, anything there to lock onto and anchor itself… or to just Change.

Kris' Null rose up and back to my wrists, only my extended fingers past it letting me Shape the Stone and close the way in, and close it all I most certainly did.