The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (30 page)

Conversation paused as they felt the barrier and contemplated what had been said, then Reggie suddenly flew over to Mark and buried his face in the hollow of Mark’s shoulder.  “I so wish the demons weren’t coming, Father.  It seems like everything in the world is finally almost perfect, and now we have to risk it all in a war.  I love my life, but I sure wish we didn’t have to spend all our time thinking about the war and getting ready for it.”

“I feel the same, Reg.” Mark said as he hugged and consoled his son.  “But most of the recent improvements in the world were triggered by the fact that the demons are coming.  That caused Zarkog to take over Serminak and start the insidious conspiracy, which caused the formation of The Just Alliance, which led to all the big improvements.  It’s almost certain that if it weren’t for the demons, I would never even have met Talia or Alilia, and none of you would be here.  So far, the coming of the demons has led to a lot of good things happening, and we have to do our best to make sure that things keep going the same way.”

“So the world will be a better place after the nexus.” Helemia said as she hugged Talia, sharing her brother’s somber mood.

“That’s right.” Talia nodded as she returned the hug.  “We just have to stay strong, do our best to be ready, and enjoy every second of our lives as much as we possibly can.”

“Will you make us be gods, Father?” Valentia playfully asked as she flew over to Alilia’s back and hung on like she was getting a piggy-back ride, and they started descending.

“If I can possibly do it, I will.” Mark nodded.  “It’s the only thing I can think of that would make us safer than we already are.  I wish I didn’t have to though.  I’d much rather we could all enjoy a few thousand years of mortal life first.  But I’ve got to count my blessings.  I’d rather be a god than have to die before I’m eighty, like most humans have for millions of years, and like I expected I would for most of my life.”

“What will it be like to be a god?” Helemia asked.

“I don’t know.” Mark shrugged.  “One god told me it was easy to just ignore it and feel normal if you wanted to.  Another told me there was as much difference between a mortal and a god as there was between me and a pine tree.  And they’re all different anyway.  We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“We’re halfway down to the ground, this would be a good place to make huge explosions.” Valentia snickered with a nasty grin as she hopped off Alilia’s back and came to a halt in mid-air.

“First make sure that anyone who could be injured is sufficiently Shielded.” Alilia instructed as she cast Battle Shield on herself, and the rest followed her example.  “Cast it far enough from us that we’d be safe even if we weren’t Shielded.  And cast it with the sun at your back, to get the best visual contrast against the sky.”

“Yes Mother.” Valentia said as she gathered herself and brought her arms back over her head.  She made a sudden motion like she was throwing a large rock with both hands and gave a short, barking scream as she cast.

Then she, Reggie, and Helemia all screamed and covered their ears against the shattering report of the explosion.  It lit up a quarter of the sky before fading away with an ominous rumble.

“Guess who didn’t Shield against dangerous noises?” Talia rhetorically asked as she cast a quick diagnostic on the children, but they were already Healing from minor ear damage.  “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’ll be all right.” Valentia said as she rubbed her ears.  “I won’t forget
that
again!”

“That was interesting, like a Concussion and a Fireball being cast on the same place at the same time.” Mark commented.  “I’m sure it’d be very effective in battle. “

“Thank you Father.” Valentia smiled.

  “You should also keep in mind that in a dark place, the light from that spell would hurt your eyes, so you’d have to Shield your eyes against that too.” Mark pointed out.  “If you cast anything brighter than that, you’ll have to block the light even if you’re casting in bright sunlight.

“If you cast a good compound defensive spell-set, like this one; The Wards of The Nine Valleys, it includes all of that and a lot more besides.

“Oooh, that’s nice!” Valentia told him enthusiastically.  “And if you turned it inside out so that the attacking parts attacked stuff inside the Shield instead of what’s outside, you could cast it on someone and it’d hold them inside it while it blasted them with all the attacks!”

“Hey, that’s very creative thinking!” he told her proudly, and reached over to give her a rub on her back.  “Not a very efficient use of power compared to most magic attacks, but very creative!”

“Thanks Father.” Valentia smiled.

“Cast another one of those explosions, Valentia!” Helemia urged.  “It’ll be a lot more fun now that we’re ready for it!”

“Okay!” Valentia agreed, and cast it again.

It was even larger this time; a gigantic reddish-yellow fireball that expanded and dissipated at super-speed.

“Excellent!  Can you do a pink one?” Helemia asked as she clapped in spontaneous enthusiasm.

“A pink one?  I’m not sure…” Valentia responded as she thought about it.

“Remember that when it comes to energy, color is usually dependent on temperature.” Talia told them.  “Red is the coolest and violet is the hottest, in the order of the colors in a rainbow.  The colors in the rainbow are pure colors, but other colors, including pink, can only be made by mixing two pure colors.  To be honest, I’m not sure what two pure colors you’d need to mix to make pink, nor do I know what temperatures you’d need to produce a given pure color.  So you’d need to experiment a bit to get a pink explosion.”

“Okay.” Valentia nodded. “But I don’t know how to make it hotter or colder.”

“Try making a bigger one with the same power to make it colder and redder, and smaller with the same power to make it hotter and bluer.” Reggie suggested.  “If our mothers and Father will let us use enough of their power to keep up with you, we’ll try making the second pure color.”

“Sure.” Mark chuckled, giving the twins access to more power.  Talia and Alilia did the same, and they spent over an hour watching their children making multi-colored explosions a kilometer in the air.  As the sun began to set and the sky to the east darkened , they looked even more beautiful.

Suddenly Povon, Kragorram, and Karzog arrived in the air beside them.

“May we join you?” Povon asked.  “We couldn’t help but notice your fine display, even from home.”

“Certainly you may join us.” Alilia told them.

Karzog asked the children what they were doing, and they explained it.

“I hope we’re not disturbing everyone back there?” Talia inquired.

“No, I doubt anyone heard it except us and the unicorns.” Povon said as the explosions resumed.  She cast a Speaking and continued psionicly. 
“We were the only ones who flew up to take a look, anyway.  Equemev checked psionicly to see what it was, but that was it.  She and Selmiom are both heavily pregnant now, and you know how unicorns are.  Once any of the mares are pregnant enough to be vulnerable, none of the rest of the herd will leave their side until they’ve delivered and the colts are running on their own.

“Quewanak says hi by the way, he’s busy in a project with Yazadril and Hilsith, something to do with the human longevity problem.”

Karzog turned to Kragorram and said a few words in Draconian, Kragorram snarled a reply, and they flew off a few meters from the group and began to experiment with breathing fire of different colors and then mixing their streams to produce a third color.  Between the roar of their fire and the continuing explosions, only quality sound-shielding allowed the noise to be tolerable.

Mark silently spectated while Povon, Talia, and Alilia discussed their unicorn friends’ pregnancies.

After another half an hour, Valentia’s magic endurance was too exhausted to continue casting explosions, and at Mark’s suggestion, the children began to play a game of chase with war darts.  Whoever was being chased flew their war dart by Movement in wildly evasive maneuvers around the group at a safe distance, while the rest tried to hit it with their darts.  Whoever scored a hit became the next person whose dart was chased.  Karzog wasn’t capable of casting magic yet, nor did he have the skill to cast Movement even if his magic had been working already, but Povon quickly devised a way to cast Movement on his dart and psionicly give him control of the spell.  Since he couldn’t use psionics yet either, she had to devote some of her attention to doing that part of it for him as well, but her attention span was so broad that she had no trouble doing all that while Levitating and having a conversation.  She didn’t mind, and it allowed him to have fun with the other children while sharpening his eye and his aim.

That night, as the children were being tucked into bed, Talia caressed Valentia’s face and gave her some instruction.  “Try this, dear heart; without doing anything to cast your power, gather it to you as you would if you were preparing to use it all to cast a spell.  That’s it, just hold it, as much of it as you can.  You don’t need to hold it so hard, just enough to keep it ready, try to relax as much as you can while you’re holding it.  That’s it, relax, just let your body marinate in the power, let it seep deep into your muscles and bones and nerves.

“Starting tomorrow morning, I’d like you to try to do that all the time, if you can.  If it gets uncomfortable, let some of it go very slowly and carefully, just let it flow back into the power field around us without affecting anything.  Good girl, well done, now hold it all again.  Very good.

“Doing this will make every part of you work a little better, but mainly your nerves, and most especially your brain.  It’ll make mental processes quicker and easier, it’ll improve your spell-casting ability, and once your psionics become active, holding your power will improve that ability significantly.  I really don’t know why the practice fell out of favor among wizards, but it’s one of the fundamental practices of magecraft and the other older arts, and it’s helped your father and I a great deal.  Great mages, magicians, and sorcerers get so used to holding their power constantly that it becomes as automatic as breathing, whether they’re awake or asleep.  But you have to be more careful to not cast the power accidentally, or without thinking about it much.  When you first start holding your power like this, if you think about a spell, you might start casting it before you mean to, and we don’t want that.”

“Thank you Talia.” Valentia smiled.  “It feels nice.”

“You’re welcome.  I don’t think you’re ready to try sleeping like that yet, so let it go slowly, and start holding it again first thing in the morning.”

“Can I try?  Doing it when I’m sleeping?” Valentia asked.  “It feels real nice.”

“We can make sure she doesn’t release it suddenly or cast anything in her sleep.” Helemia volunteered.

“Ah, but can you do so when
you’re
asleep?” Talia chuckled as she gave her a little tickle.

“Sure!” Helemia laughed.  “Automated psionics are a wonderful thing.”

“Well all right.” Talia allowed as she gave her a kiss.  “But if anything goes wrong, you’ll have to clean up any mess that gets made.”

“We will.” Reggie assured her. 

After they’d all kissed and hugged and said goodnight and I love you to each other, the adults left the children to sleep.  But they were still too restless from their exciting day and Valentia’s birthday in the morning to sleep.

In the morning, Alilia went in to wake the children.  She knew they were still asleep without thinking about it, since her constant subconscious psionic contact with them kept her informed of their state of mind, and she could feel that they were asleep.

So she was quite surprised, and more than a little irritated, to enter their room and find them wide awake, sitting in a tight little triangle on the bed with their arms and legs wrapped around each other, their foreheads pressed together, and their eyes closed.  On the tiny space of bedspread between them rested the pebble that the twins had been using to test their magic, or rather their lack of it so far.

Upon seeing this scene, Alilia suddenly realized that she had been fed a false psionic trace, disregarded it, and examined the children’s true psionic state.  They had been awake all night.  They had cast upon themselves with Valentia’s power to banish their fatigue and need for sleep, which could be harmful if overdone, but they all seemed to be fine with it so far.

About half an hour after they had been kissed good-night, the twins had succeeded in teaching Valentia what they had been doing to activate her psionics, and she had taken over from them in supplying the tiny part of her brain with the spark of energy it required.  As soon as she had done that, her latent psionic ability truly awoke to full functionality, and she and the twins had Melded.  For a moment they were one mind, each with full access to the thoughts, memories, and sensations of the other two.

Valentia had panicked, but the twins had pushed her out just enough for her to retain a comfortable grip on her own individuality.  For over an hour the three of them had simply communed with one another, lost in the beauty and the joy of the experience.  Then Valentia became determined to return the favor, and since then the three had been working intensely on awakening the twins’ latent magic abilities.

First they had all carefully examined a Reading of Valentia’s memory of her moments of panic during her birth when her magic abilities had awakened.  Then they carefully monitored Valentia’s mind and brain while she held and cast her power.  Then the twins attempted to do what she had done.  Their close psionic Linking meant that they knew exactly what she had done and what it felt like, but it still didn’t work for them.  Then they made a direct comparison between Valentia during her casting and the twins during their failure to cast, while monitoring dozens of physical, psionic, and magical variables, as well as electrical activity, magnetic fields, auras, and other information that Alilia didn’t recognize.  And now the three of them were altering the twins’ minds in order to have them do what Valentia’s did.