Chương 15: When the Minders go Away...

There was a lot of dangerous shit in places around here. A lot of it was Sealed behind magic both of the Land and not, but there was no one left to monitor those deep, forgotten places. I assumed that losing all your powerful male spellcasters to old age, and not having enough women available to fill their shoes ended with a spiraling case of new folk dying too fast and not enough coming in to replace them.

The senior men would have deduced what was happening soon enough, when none of the younger men could get above Four, and none of them could gain any more Levels at all. The silence of the gods would have destroyed the Churches of Heaven, reduced to only the most minor of spells and unable to compete in power with the Churches who yet remained. They would have been bullied, then exterminated by rivals eager to be done with them.

Leaving no one behind to maintain these secret places and Seals, or protect them from being occupied by some extremely dangerous things. Former churches, consecrations lost, the wild slowly retaking them, but with malevolent creatures Sealed below them, or tragic spirits bound to them. Mines where dark things had entered and laid claim to them, long abandoned in the strife of the Fall and with neither the numbers nor power to take them back.

Distant caves, buried groves where Fey and fell things had taken back what was once theirs, and would kill all who dared their reach again. Spirits of aggressive nature not being held back by the power or wisdom of priest or shaman, moving slowly forward and restricting ever more the areas humans and other mortals dared to tread. Incidentally making it easier for the Vaneyllian Empire to conquer them.

After all, if the lands you can wander through are restricted, it makes it hard to conduct guerrilla resistance operations, and controlling the ground for conquerors and sweeping it becomes much simpler. The free and independent mountain people weren't that free when things in the mountains might wake up and kill them for wandering through their territory, or if they could reach out and do bad things to folk from even inside a prison.

Or they could drag in the gullible and make them servants, as that Greater Shadow somehow had. A powerful servant of Shoul had died in there with grievances large, and the lacking of a god of the dead or death meant his soul had remained behind and grown darker with age. I had not truly thought through the implications of that, and the thousands of undead, most of them incorporeal, clinging to their places or waiting in ghoul-tunnels or undead pits or ancient, unmaintained cemeteries, was impressive.

Thousands of them, in addition to bound Fiends of various kinds, magical Beasts, creeping lethal Fey, magical and malevolent plant life, and other things. The land was ambivalent to negative on almost all of it. It had no preference for Fey, as they were outside the natural order, regardless of what they claimed. Magical Plants were no more natural than magical beings were, and tolerated at best, even the Ents, not a real part of the ecosystem at all, violations and perversions of the natural order.

"Why isn't it angry at the cities, Deuce?" Mother asked in a small voice as she shared the communion with me.

"It's almost like we are leaving scars around on Her…"

"It's because of the scale, and the fact cities and towns develop spirits, too. You can see the distance in depth and power around them, versus the roads and fences and farms, right? The Land can't see the towns and villages because there's already something there, the spirits of those places, and they are different from Her. -But remember, what looks like great damage to you and I, scars upon the land and stuff, is so small and inconsequential to the Land that it just doesn't register at all.

You have to have active malevolence that can grow into something much worse to draw its attention, because it knows such things will grow without something pruning them back… and for some reason, we aren't pruning them back. - Her eyes grew wide.

"We're supposed to be fighting these things, not one another…" she breathed out. -Yes. From the point of the land, those things are diseases, and we are the antibodies, the white blood cells, and the lymph nodes that fight it. Cities and villagers are like little engines of threat-killing that generate the mortals that go out and stop these things. - I eyed the large cemetery beside a small town, maybe a thousand souls in it by the pressure radiating back from it, up the road.

-Only we're not, and the Land can feel that the gods, the powerful spirits, who are supposed to be caring for the dead spirits are not here. -In its own way, it is growing concerned. - The clarity with which it was emphasizing its little boo-boos was that indicator.

"We… should be about killing all of that," she said after a moment, her eyes glittering with sudden comprehension.

"It's a lot of work, right, Deuce? A lot of Karma..." I nodded confirmation to her. -I don't know anything about this area, but yes, it's enough to keep us busy for months. - I trailed off tellingly. -And someone else should be doing this work, and isn't, for one reason or another. Buuuut… that means someone might want to pay us to do some of this work. - The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"And we're going to need goldweight." She seemed to like the term.

"Lots and lots of goldweight!" she said enthusiastically. -Correct. And that means going into some of those towns and villages to see if there's anyone interested in having those cleared… for appropriate remuneration. -"That means good pay, right?" she grinned in anticipation. -It does indeed… -"Good!" There was a moment of pause.

"Uh, Deuce?" I glanced up at her.

"What are lymph nodes, antibodies, and white blood cells?" she asked with a completely blank tone of confusion. Whoops...

The first item I worked on was the Ring for her. My needs were less than hers, and dependent on hers, plus I could just Create Food and Water for us from Ur-spells as needed. It would also take her a week to be attuned to the Sustaining, as it was not an Oathring, even if she was my mother. I could get mine started tomorrow. After that, Naming Karma should take care of most things. First I had to spend the Crafter's Pentad on it.

Rune, Reed, Stone, Iron, and Adamant were Cast upon the Ring, as I had Cast them upon Bull before. She watched with grave interest as I made a preliminary Rune Circle out of Shaped Stone, used Heat Metal to melt the silver for the Runes and Circle in it, Energized the whole mass to Fire and Earth, and thus set it up to make a Floating Forge in due time.

Multiple Fabricates had to be used to get Bull up to the Quality Level to really start being able to take some Enchantments, a process I was going to have to repeat several times over. I was also carving a Staff for myself and a Spear haft for Mother using Shape Wood, so all those things had to be Pentad-treated as well.

All of this fell under Smithing Lore, and I was very happy to show her what and how I was doing things, sharing my awareness of the spells with her and explaining to her the implications of what I was doing as I did so.

She was amazed by the way a Raised Shape Stone could work on unattended metal, and how it allowed her to see into the heart and structure of the metal, all the unseen and otherwise invisible flaws in its construction that would inhibit it from being able to capture the highest levels of magic within it. Mithril steel was the minimum for QL 40, the max level of mortal Crafting, and it would require adamantine for Eternal-Tier effects… which were a long way off, so I wasn't too worried.

Truesteel Energized to Earth or Water or whatever could get at least to a 35. Then it was time to Burn the goldweight to power up the first part of the Ring. Me doing it cost some Karma, but nothing I would miss. It did take time, and I didn't have the room to burn Karma on the accelerators for the process, so it was rep counts or go home. She found it difficult to keep the Investing going, not having any ranks in Spellcraft, so we had a project to work on for that, too, if we both wanted to keep a Forge going.

But we'd sacrifice the Mace to her Axe, gold to the Rings, and do fine for the next few days. Since we'd also looted the bandits' lair of the supplies stashed there, we also didn't really need to go into town… which meant we could make our way to a new encounter location, or dare going into the next souped-up village of this world.

The guards at the gates of the next town were visibly wary as Tiya came wandering up, Deuce strapped on her back. Their bored stances evaporated, they tensed their weapons nervously and glanced at the bows nearby. Still, they were all in breastplates and greaves, with maces at their sides and spears in their grips, watching her narrowly as she approached. Bull was at her hip, her shield was slung opposite Deuce.

She also had eight different spells Cast upon her, and if violence started, these four men were going to get a very rude surprise, indeed, at what they'd started… and that was without Deuce triggering his Contingency spell of Alter Self to instantly join the fight as a brownie and possibly rip a new hole in this town. Thus Tiya felt almost absurdly confident. Her son was the Chosen of the Gods, and wielded magic no male in the world likely did, plus he was physically still an infant.

These men, good for little more than guarding a gate, likely had past experience with warrior women kicking the shit out of them, and thus they weren't automatically belligerent to her, fearing what might happen. She wasn't an Amazon, but she was a tall and obviously well-muscled Northwoman, and she could see and understand the resentment in their gazes as they looked at her, trying to drum up the courage to take action.

"Good morning and well-met!" she called out cheerfully, letting her accent make it plain she was not an Imperial.

"Tiya and my babe to enter your fair town here!" Not that the low walls would have been a huge impediment to an attack, the soldier in her noted immediately, but good enough if you were dealing with random bandits, cave orcs, or something similar. Her bearing was as important as the rest of her, along with the snapped tone of her words. She was used to browbeating soldiers back into line, and she had no problems meeting the eyes of these men, which tended towards dark brown like most southerners.

She was letting them know that her cheerfulness was being polite, and if they wanted trouble, she was ready to give it to them!

"You from the North?" one asked the rhetorical question for all of them suspiciously.

"Frokkinlund, aye," she confirmed, it wasn't some big secret.

"Mustered out of the Ninth Legion pressing to the east with my son, came south as I had some problems with some clans who didn't want me soldiering, wanted me to be a kept wife and not splitting skulls of elves and wild tribes and their warbeasts," she admitted cheerfully, and could almost see them grimace.

"What be the name of this place, and where might I find a meal to spend a night afore I be off in the morn?" Which let them know she didn't plan on sticking around at this point, and they'd know where to find her.

"Any trouble on the road?" the oldest and most weathered of them asked, squinting at her suspiciously and looking for an excuse.