The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (97 page)

Even with all the other functions, the Gate part uses almost all the power, so the spell is almost completely limited to the size of a Gate we can cast at the distance we have to use it.  Let’s give that a try, shall we?  We’ll cast the two portals of a gate only a hair’s width apart so we don’t risk anything.  We can calculate the difference from the distance component afterwards.

“Fire, the Gate spell?”

They all worked as one, casting both portals of the Gate next to each other with almost no space between, then increasing their area until they reached the limit of their available power.

“About two hundred and seven billion square kilometers of Gate, with the calculation for maximum power.”
Fire announced.

“I have the calculation for the distance component from the surface of the sun to the distance of the demons’ rock.”
Talia volunteered. 
“It’s the same ratio for power over distance as Translocation, luckily enough.  And we get… At that distance, over five million square kilometers of Gate portal at each end.  Even if you disregard all the power that we’d spend to cast it, that amount of sun’s surface sunlight for even a second would be the most powerful spell ever cast.  We only need nine hundred thousand square kilometers to completely cover the demon’s rock with the surface of the sun, so we’d have plenty to spare, even without using independent spells.”

“Like I said when I first spoke up, me or any of you could do it by ourselves, even with the limitations we’ve discovered.”
Fire stated with satisfaction.

“All right, good to know.”
Mark laughed. 
“You were right about that much at least, if not about being able to use the whole sun.

“Let’s go home, Hilia that is.  Since it seems our beach there is now the official location for casual conversation between leaders, and it’s ours, it’ll give us a bit of an advantage while pressing our case for an immediate first strike.”

“Why fool around?”
Six asked.
  “We’ll have to get a consensus, so I say we go directly to The Hall of The Just Alliance and call the Assembly to an emergency meeting.  With luck we can have the entire war won and over with in an hour.”

Mark paused a moment, thought about it, consulted everyone else’s opinion, and nodded. 
“All right, let’s do it.”
he decided, and Translocated them all to the Hall.

 They appeared as a group in the center of the volume of the Hall, twenty-five meters in the air, but tilted from vertical and moving to the side at incredible speed.  Before they could react, they all smashed into the domed ceiling of the Hall about a third of the way from the edge of the room, and with explosive force.

Their Shields held, but they gouged out a huge ragged crater from the three meter thickness of white marble and from the gray bedrock that lay beyond it.

Niziam, a chestnut unicorn goddess who was the custodian of the Hall on active duty, appeared in the air below and beside the devastation.

“You are alive and uninjured.”
she noted with some amazement, then a severe irritation became apparent in her manner as they descended out of the crater.

“Do you mind?!”
she complained as she Restored the damage, then she vanished.

“That was a seriously messed up Translocation.” Fire observed with a giggle.

“Yah, I hurried it, and it was a pretty complex jump.  Sorry.” Mark told them, abashed and contrite.  “At least I got the location, if not the orientation and the trajectory.”

“You got the trajectory of the world around the sun.” Povon mildly scolded him as they flew down to the center of the stage.  “You forgot the trajectory of the Hall as the world turns about it’s axis.”

“Ah.  Oops.  Sorry about that.  I can promise I won’t do it again.” he told her.

“Now I’m glad for all the hours we spent practicing Shields.” Val giggled as they alighted around the Truthstone.

“Anyway, let’s get to it.” Six eagerly encouraged.

Mark nodded, and cast a multiple Speaking. 
“We ask that all ruling members of The Assembly of The Just Alliance join us here at The Hall of The Just Alliance for an urgent meeting, as soon you may.”

“This is going to be good, I can feel it.”
Tithian eagerly told them as she appeared beside them, then she jumped again to take her place with the Senate of her people.

Attendees were appearing rapidly, and within a minute everyone who could come on such short notice was there.  That was almost all of them, including all of the most influential and powerful leaders.

“Fire, you began this.” Mark told her with a smile.  “Would you like to explain our position?”

“Certainly, thank you Father.” Fire smiled in return, and faced the audience.

“As you’ve probably heard, my father, Val, Six, and myself have what appears to be an ability unique to warlocks; we can see and manipulate the fields that collect the Source and transmute it into usable magic, we can re-create them to cast completely self-powering spells, and we can do the same with the warlock’s source.

“Today we tested that ability, and discovered how much total power we could wield.  We experimented further, and tested our ability to cast the most devastating attack spell ever devised; a modified version of the Gate to the surface of the sun that The People of Morning gave us.

“We can cast a Gate between the surface of the sun and a location at the distance that the demons are from us now, with almost five million square kilometers of area.  That is many times more than the entire surface area of the gigantic rock the demons are using as a vessel, and we can cast the portal to completely conform to the surface of the rock.  In short, we can cast the surface of the sun on the entire outside of the rock.  If any within try to escape, they will be instantly Gated to the surface of the sun, and we’ll be watching for them there in case any survive that. 

“That will still take a bit of time to completely destroy the rock and all within it, so we’ll have automated versions of the spell go inside just before we do that and hunt down any demons they can find, and cast the surface of the sun on them too, individually.

“We’ll have more automated versions set loose all over the void around our star out to as far as the demons are, to hunt down any that manage to Translocate out from within a Gate bubble.

“In short, honored members of The Assembly of The Just Alliance, we ask your permission to launch these spells and attack the demons immediately, in a decisively devastating pre-emptive strike.  We’re confident we can do it, and we’re confident that it’ll work.  My Father’s unprecedented and uncharacteristic mistake a moment ago notwithstanding.

“Say yes, and the demons can be destroyed in a few minutes at most.  Then we can all get back to enjoying the peace, or join The Triax in hunting down the demons around other stars, for those who choose that.”

“All those who agree with us making this attack now, say aye!” Mark called, and noted their response.

“Ah.  I see only about half of you agree.  Who would like to speak against the idea?

“Empress Emeroth of Verzaclon.”

She appeared before him, nodded to him, and addressed the gathering.  “We still don’t know what we’re facing.  All that we know is that it’s millions of demons, maybe billions of them, but we have no idea how strong they are or what they’re capable of.  We don’t know if they’re getting more dangerous by the hour, but I don’t think it’s likely, while we know for sure that we
are
getting more dangerous by the hour.  Largely thanks to these fine citizens here, every one of our militaries are becoming vastly more capable with every minute that passes.

“Our biggest worry is that the demons are capable of Translocating to Kellaran already, and that they’re only waiting to attack us to reduce the energy required to do so.  If so, then any attack on them might only prompt them to suddenly appear among us here on Kellaran when we’re not nearly as ready as we could be.  We’ve been holding off from attacking them for just that reason; we’re waiting until we’re as strong as we can be before we have to face them.  We haven’t even done anything to spy out how strong they are, in case they detect us doing so and decide to launch an attack.

“We should at least wait until all our new wizards are trained.  At the very least, until they’re all capable of contributing their power to a Command Link.  Only a quarter of them have even gotten that far.

“Thank you.”

She went back to her place, and Mark announced; “Tithian, of The Senate of The People of Morning.”

“In this case, it is Tithian, seer and oracle, for I speak in that capacity for The Circle of Seers.  We have added many members since this Assembly first met; prescients from every race among us, and we have learned how to join our talents somewhat by Linking.  We are now capable of giving a discerning of the future in only moments, and we have done so.

“The new capabilities that Fire announced are welcome news.

“But we find so far that if we do this attack today, the peak of the nexus will occur in just less than a year and a half, rather than in two years, and it will be more severe.  By that I mean that the magnitude of a nexus is measured by how much change occurs during it, and if we do this thing, there will almost certainly be more change than otherwise, as well as sooner.  We still do not know how much of that change will be beneficial and how much harmful, only that there will be more, sooner.  But our general consensus is that acting now will not be an improvement.  It seems that if we attack the demons today as has been proposed, and it were destined to be successful, then the peak of the nexus, the period of maximum change, would occur today or shortly thereafter.  But as I say, that is not what we see.”

She returned to her place, and another appeared on the stage where she had been.  Everyone there instantly knew who he was, as that was an attribute of the divine, but Mark announced him anyway.

“Glishkerkugthak, Kwetkerthok God of Life.”

The great gray gargoyle god seemed to glower at the gathering for a moment, then spoke.  “There were only one hundred and ninety-six gods on Kellaran when we faced the demons over seven million years ago.  There were only about six hundred million mortals then, only half of whom lived on the surface and fought the demons.

“Now we are many, we are all united, we are far more capable, and we have the assistance of The Triax.  It is easy to think that we could be victorious, particularly if all of us and all of our nations and all of The Triax joined with these young warlocks in launching an overwhelming strike with all of our power simultaneously.  It might seem that we could not fail.

“But there were only about twenty million demons on Kellaran at the most the last time, and only two hundred thousand of them were greater demons, yet with the constant reinforcements they were able to bring through their Gate they were able to hold their own against all of our gods and mortals, and they were gaining the initiative.  Only the destruction of their Gate allowed us to prevail.

“We did not face any of those that The Triax call DemonLords.  And The Triax, in all their war against the demons, have never seen them use a Gate such as they used here.  So the demons that were here were more dangerous in that way than any that The Triax have ever faced.  The rock that the demons are riding here is much larger than the Triax have ever seen them use before.  The Triax assure us that if these demons coming here now are aware of the demons’ defeat on Kellaran seven million years ago, they would only attempt to face us again if they were bringing many times more power to bear against us than they think they will need to exterminate us all.  They have had seven million years to improve their methods.

“Those are some of the many reasons to suppose that the demons might not be easy to defeat, even given the unprecedented power that we can bring to bear against them.

“I was the first god to fight the demons here, those eons ago.  Initially we gods would not fight them directly, for we followed a policy that we would not go to war against any mortal, and despite everything else they were, the demons were certainly mortal.  I was forced to act when I realized that my people might be destroyed to the last.  I found killing the demons to be easy, and the much smaller number of exclusively lesser demons that I faced in those early days of the conflict were defenseless against me.

“Then some of them hid from me, I know not how, and the rest fled back into their Gate.  For two days I stood raging before it, for I could find no way to destroy it.  That entire time they taunted me from within the Gate.  Their cries were wordless, but it was plain that they were mocking me, and I challenged them to come forth and fight with equal spite.

“Then somehow I was pushed toward the Gate by the demons who had hidden on Kellaran, and drawn towards the Gate at the same time by those within it, or perhaps by the Gate itself.  It was so sudden and so powerful that I could not resist it, and at the last I ceased resisting and charged into it, thinking that surely those waiting on the other side were due for woe when I was among them.

“But I did not emerge on the other side of the Gate, instead, I was held in an unknown version of the Translocation medium.  And though it seemed that I was alone there, I was then attacked.  Millions of demons attacked my mind in a way that might be called psionic, though that may not be accurate, or even applicable.  They destroyed my sanity and gave me an eternity of absolute torment.”

He paused again and turned to Mark, meeting his eye before surveying the rest of his family, then speaking directly to him.

“The point has been made that we are improving rapidly, and the demons are unlikely to be doing so.  Is very valid, and very telling.  Wait.  Wait until we are no longer improving, or at least until the date of attack we have previously agreed on.

“The demons are tricky and cunning and unpredictable and cruel beyond all imagining.  It is easy to underestimate them.  Do not make the same mistake that I made.”