Chương 311: AF Chapter 310 – Of Lost Light and Hellfire

I did not look up under the Lord's gaze, but I did move Crown forward and tap him down. I had long ago used Ritual Transformation to crystallize the wood of his construction and begin the transformation to Tempered Laen. Multiple Fabrications had steadily increased his QL, while Name Investment had progressed his strength as a Weapon and Implement.

Hard Gold swirls of Lost Light rose up around him as Force and Fire Reserves ignited around him, and the Smoldering Stone mounted in the noquar below the Orb that capped him turned my Staff into a blazing, glittering length of crystalline flames in my grasp. The Mick slowly drew Bunita, flicking it out to full length.

Blue-black adamantine girt in orange and rainbow edges, the spirals of Lost Light colored the same hues, glimmered with a terrifying level of quality that had even the Fire Elementals flinching to see it. Flames ignited from one of the village's Major Smoldering Stones in its pommel, and flames harder than steel rushed up to replace adamantine, incandescent and hotter, yet more self-contained than my own Staff. -Promises and oaths to the Lost Light, - /repeated the intrigued Primal Lord.

The ring floating there turned slightly. The ten-foot Hellfire, overshadowed in volume, but not in intensity of flames, stepped forward.

"Old oaths sworn with the Lost Light to empower its mortal servants who came to empower their Weapons against the creatures of Darkness and Shadow," it informed its lord. Darkness and Shadow were very real things to Elemental Creatures. -The Dark ones wielding Cold are enemies of the Lost Light as well? - Lord Zyszaeszi asked, his anger at the intrusion of the undead into the Crater bubbling over.

"They are, Incandescent Zyszaeszi," I confirmed to the powerful Elemental.

"That we wield the Lost Light speaks of our own adherence to the codes of our predecessors. We ask the Blessing of the Fires to strengthen the Lost Light!" -That is true. The Lost Light will not live in the grasp of the false, - the Primal Lord /mused aloud, clearly examining our Weapons' spirals of Lost Light. -A Gold, and a Rainbow Aspirant. The Lost Light continues to choose the foolhardy and the defiant as ever, I see. - I could not keep the smile off my lips, nor could the Mick.

-Render unto them what was promised. - The Hellfire stepped forward, stopping above us and bending over to sweep its tendril of a flame-arm across the black basalt in front of us. Globes of molten, white-hot liquid fire were deposited in a line on the ground in front of us, ten of them in total, at which point the Hellfire returned to where it had been standing previously.

"Well, that were easy," the Mick murmured, staring at the globes of Elemental Essence in front of us.

"More followers of the Lost Light will be coming to anoint their Weapons, Mighty Furnace Zyszaeszi," I spoke up, gesturing to bring up a Disk, while Zeks calmly deposited all but two of the globes on the Disk.

"These we shall gift to the Lost Light. As promised before, each bearer of the Lost Light will come individually to earn the White Flame of Esper." -So it was promised, - the Hellfire spoke up, a bit wryly. The Mick glanced at me. No, the extras were not there to give away to the unworthy, supplicants had to come themselves! I chin-nodded, and we both reached out to claim one of the last two globes, placing our Weapons before us.

Together we popped the fiery seals, then slowly and carefully poured the contents up and down the length of Staff and Sword respectively. The incredibly hot flames barely had the chance to touch our fiery Weapons before the spirals of Lost Light converged on the whiteness, flaring brightly as they soaked in the fiery energy.

They rotated into and through our Weapons, which quivered in our grasp as the power was dispersed into and through them, the Flames they were currently made of acquiring a burning white-hot core of solid light underneath them. Radiant or Fire damage boost, I judged, continuing to pour slowly and let the spiral of Lost Light do the work on Crown. I didn't expect it to do too much for Casting, maybe add a Kicker for +1d6… but every boost was a boost, so I wasn't knocking it.

There were also potentially three of the things, plus the Radiant Mana Infusion! When we were finished, I stood up before the Primal Lord Zyszaeszi and bowed formally to him, then the Hellfire of Esper. The Mick smoothly did the same.

"We thank you for your hospitality and care, Elders. May we be dismissed?" -Display for me your mastery of the Fire and the Light, - was the instant /reply from the Elemental noble, holding both measure and curiosity in its thought-burning voice. I half-bowed quickly, not bothering to overthink the challenge.

"How's your Way of Fire, Lord Mick?" I asked him quietly.

"Only at II," he admitted. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Ocean of Fire Way Mastery?"

"Aye, can't use 'em together without it."

"Then show 'em some big, fast streams of fire." I glided away and back from him, giving him room, the movement unconsciously emulated by the surrounding Elementals. The Mick grinned, raised Bunita, and gave them a show of profound swordsmanship. It wasn't the Dragons, but that was fine.

He had Fire Reserves there to accentuate everything, the combination of Ocean and Fire styles with a Firephasing Weapon had him leaving big swathes of flame behind with every movement, and there was no denying at all that he was fast, powerful, and dangerous with Bunita in his hand.

The Elementals pulsed and crackled in their version of applause as he slid and darted all over the place, especially when he used Sharding attacks and arcs of fire slashed into and through the volcanic stone all around, reaching out with vicious speed and power faster than almost any thrown object to strike his targets. Also, his fiery Maelstrom executed twenty feet above the ground was quite the eyecatcher. He settled back to the ground, sheathing Bunita with one hand, and bowed to the Primal Lord again.

Snapping flames popped along the ring of flames that formed the Lord, indicating a good mood. -A fine display of the power and glory of Fire! - the Lord /proclaimed regally. Implicitly dismissed, the Mick retreated from his position. -And you, Magos? What have you to show us? - I glided forwards, Crown in hand.

"Clear those slopes." I pointed to my left and right. A bit startled, the Elementals there, including the Esper Hellfire, moved out of the way. This wasn't something I'd do on a battlefield, but here it was fine. I spread my wings wide, concentrating on my blood and my heart, the places where Ritual and Ceremony had condensed their power, Ice and Fire beating and rising as one. Unlike creatures of Fire, I knew both were one.

My left Wing, celeste starfield bright and alive, seemed to lose all color, the stars within it going white and cold, hard and sharp, whereas the stars in my right Wing lit up and grew brighter in a panoply of colors. I reached out to my left and right, the former with fingers clutched around the Orb that had been atop Crown, the left around Crown himself. I uttered a Note, and the air crackled and froze, plunging three hundred degrees in temperature instantly.

Carbon dioxide fell out of the air, all the water vapor fell as ice, the stone froze solid beneath me. Before the shocked and outraged Elementals could respond, the Note shifted, and the air exploded in flames instantly, simmering with flames that were nearly solid in intensity, the ice and chill gone instantly. Ice. Fire. Ice. Fire.

The air pulsed and hammered back and forth, contained explosions of compression and decompression that had even the Primal Lord drifting back in discomfort, and the nearest Elementals all scrambling away. Around my left arm, a full flight of Greater Shards in Ice format materialized. In my right, an identical flight in Fire. They converged into points in front of Orb and Staff, growing into spheres of incredibly concentrated magical energies opposite one another. Then they fired off.

The hammering of hot and cold winds blew through the Inner Crater, driving the lesser Elementals back and away as a howling cone of cold devoured one side of the crater, swallowing it in liquefying atmosphere and fire-eating chill. And they saw it, all of them.

The Fire, drawn out by the cold, swirling around my Orb, then my arm, shoulder, down my right arm, into Crown, and then out as an eye-popping beam of Fire Primal and Divine, radiant and Holy, that not even Fire Elementals could look directly on without feeling it burn them in ways that simple flames could not. It lasted for only a moment, two Notes of the Sublime Chord harmonizing and holding absolute stillness, absolute fury, and then I let them fade away.

Cold and fire backwashed into one another, currents of icy cold and blazing heat swirled around the Inner Crater, melded into one another, and dispersed and dissipated in rushes of wind and motion. My Wings flickered, and blazing suns and icy moons deflated, fed into one another, and stars and moons filled them both with contrasting, yet complementary colors once again. The Elementals looked to my left, where the entire slope of the inner crater was covered in glittering ice.

Then they looked to the right, where over half of the crater slope had simply melted away before the beam of flame, leaving a V-cut chasm right through the edge of the inner crater, the rock there still molten and flowing with the heat it had absorbed and sloughing off into the outside, where a gouting pillar of steam was notifying everyone that the lake had this, no problem. The Elementals were almost uniform in the still rise and fall of their flames, watching what had happened in some disbelief.

-Using the horror of Ice to take the Fire and feed your Flames. - Lord Zyszaeszi's /voice somehow felt ashen. -Truly a child of the Void Phoenix. -"Stars burn defiant in the cold and dark of emptiness, moons chill and still reflect their dance, and all are connected by the Light!" I bowed to the Elemental Lord. -The Lost Light has gained worthy servants. You may depart. -

"He dinnae seem too happy about yer display, lass," the Mick commented lightly. Cheeky as he was, he went right out through the chasm to the outside I'd melted down, and I just followed him.

"That's because the combination, if both were directed at him, could have killed him dead," I stated evenly.

"Of course, he would have had to sit there and take it all, which would not have happened, but he still he would have died."

"I've seen ye burn down the mixed Elementals o' flame, but it seems that be something o' a surprise to 'im?"

"He's a being of Primal Flame. He was not expecting me to be able to wield the same energy, and furthermore supplement it with Arcane and Divine flames on top. Just Primal flames would have done nothing to him, but all three? There's no way he could withstand that, on top of the level of Coldcasting I just used." The Mick made a show of looking at his burning hands.

"Will this trick be necessary for the future, when the others come?"

"Technically, no. They should be able to just display their Lost Light, wait outside the Inner Crater, and the Hellfire should come forth to give them their Essences. However, it only appears to be able to disperse ten a day, so that's an unwritten limitation as to how many can receive some at any one time."

"And the extras to go to the Font of Lost Light." He thought about that for a moment.

"The Font did seem on the dim side, as I recollect."

"Alone in the dark for thousands of years, I cannot imagine why it would be like that."

"Well, then, being about making it shine seems like a fine thing t' do."