My Rose only hovered in place before Master Harlune for a moment before zipping back to my hand and onto my finger. I promptly Assayed it.

  ===

  The Rose in Full Bloom of the Lady Magos

  Burden: 5

  Spells: Legendary Combat Medication, Night Voyager, Legendary Healing Prowess, Legendary Flame Ward, Legendary Blood Ward, Legendary Void Ward, Legendary Arcane Lore Prowess, Protection from Fire VII; Regeneration VII

  Wield Level: 200 (Bonded)

  Arcane Lore Required: 340

  ---------

  Wizardry I-V, CL: 15, Ringlord’s Bonded Ring.

  =======

  Upgrades to Fire Protection and Regeneration, the Fast Healing Life Magic effect, plus two brand new Wards, against Blood and Void Magic!

  “Why you clever old shyster, you,” I murmured, staring at the Ring as many interested eyes watched. “She exposed so much of the Blood and Void Magic to you, you worked out a way to Ward against it!”

  Impressed eyes turned his way, and he smiled thinly. “I figured out how to Protect against it, too, but I am afraid that will be my secret for now.” I raised an eyebrow at his admission, as did Kris, although the assessing glance he gave Kris indicated hers was much more intimidating than mine. “If the Protection gets out, it will take Nuhmudira very little time to work out the Vulnerability by reversing the structure of the spell. That cannot be done with a Ward.”

  A few glances around, and everyone understood. Few people practiced Void Magic, but the lack of Vulnerability effects tied to it meant it couldn’t deal the raw unleashed killing power that pure War Magic could. Those spells getting out would only benefit Void Magic wielders, and anything to delay that was a good idea. At best, getting the Void Protections would only get those strong enough to Cast them back to par, and hurt basically everyone else.

  “I will ask that you write the spell down and remit a copy to King Borelean and Master Ben Ten. At their discretion, they will release and distribute a copy of it for wider public use as they deem necessary.”

  He measured me with his glowing eyes for a moment, then slowly sighed and nodded agreement. “Very well. It is a wise precaution.”

  “We have a Teleport Focus Seal set up right next to the Ring Case inside your little olthoi trap up north,” Princess Kristie spoke up firmly. “One Ring a day is being harvested from it as they are being made. They are then being updated through the mine, and brought to Master Ulgrim to make his contribution.” She, the Mick, Briggs, and the Roaches and Skeeters all raised their hands, where the Roses gleamed on fingers under removed gloves and gauntlets. “If you can upgrade them all, we would be most obliged, Master Harlune.”

  He sighed again heavily, but not in exasperation. “I seem to have made more work for myself,” he admitted dryly. “I will need a couple days to fully Renew my mana, Your Highness. But when it is restored, I will naturally upgrade the Rings I created, as was my intent all along. Come visit me in a couple days, at least, and give me some time to recover and re-situate myself. I have lost a great amount of my resources and reserves, and have much to rebuild.”

  “Well, wealth is one thing you needn’t be worried about, Master Harlune,” Briggs said gruffly. “At least, when it comes to raw pyreal. Ryin, I trust it would be okay for the Master to use your personal lab?”

  I inclined my head. “He would have more assistants to help him in the Royal Academy, but I understand he may want his privacy, and mine is up to my standards.”

  “Then the first thing he’s going to be learning is the Infusing method and beginning the process of remaking his Gear. If you’ve orders for any special materials or tools, you can reach out to Ryin and she will be able to get you satisfied shortly, Master Harlune. Although I believe you are soon going to be neck-deep in the Matrix Artificer and Alchemy lines of study,” Briggs went on calmly.

  The Yalain’s eyes gleamed brighter at the mention of magic. “How suitable is this new method of yours on Summoning Magic?” he asked with an iron edge to his voice.

  “Impressive in its own way, but different from the Empyrean. You wish to recover your wife’s soul, I trust?” My tone did not indicate disapproval, and everyone around stirred and straightened.

  He looked us all over, judging the moment. “It is the height of foolishness. The thing Nuhmudira deals with is extremely powerful, with a mind and power beyond that of mortals,” he warned us.

  “But ye’ll try regardless of that, because she deserves no less,” the Mick said softly. The Yalain’s face hardened as he heard that, and he lowered his gaze to his empty hands.

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  “I could not save her then. I do not know if I can save her now, or if there is anything TO save. But I must try…” he trailed off, ashamed and defiant at the same time.

  “A true Elder God of Mythos is not something I have the power to Bind, let alone Compel, Master Harlune, and nor do you. I do not think that what it might demand of you to restore your wife to you will satisfy anyone. We all know how such things usually end up,” I said quietly into the silence of his resolve.

  “Yes. I am not a fool. But her suffering for my weakness is not something I can tolerate, either.”

  I just nodded. “Then we will definitely be looking into what needs to be done, Master Harlune, but we will do it slowly, properly, and when it comes time, Nuhmudira and her daughter are going to pay the price for the things they’ve done. Shall we be as grimly ironic as possible when it comes to pass?”

  His smile was grim and brittle, but completely determined and nobody was going to talk him out of it. “That sounds like a wonderful idea, Lady Magos…”

  ---------

  I actually didn’t involve Tim in my next endeavor. Plans change, and he wouldn’t be necessary.

  We forgot we were dealing with animals, not truly intelligent and canny creatures.

  Kris’s muscle had gone in and cleared out the island fortress of Corcima, and then I buried the whole complex in Shaped stone after it was all cleaned out with vivus. Once done, I departed for my own special project.

  The reclamation of the Hlaetian Isles was going to take a while, and certainly wouldn’t be done in any conventional manner. The main way of doing so was going to be using the Eater hordes cyclically, killing them off and using the vivus generated by their corpses to restore the landscape. It was going to have to be done in sections, each walled and separated from the others so the Eaters wouldn’t come in during the interim and eat it down.

  But killing the Red Bull and the Thunder Cow, that would take some preplanning, but it could be done in any area that we desired.

  I chose the scoured land just north of Sanamar, for reasons.

  Getting the Red Bull and Thunder Cow into position wasn’t all that hard, either. They tended to wander north, then come back to the south to bullyrag the walls of the beleaguered former capitol city on a regular loop, eating the Eaters who tried to nibble on their hooves after cooking them with great storms of fire and lightning.

  Getting their attention wasn’t hard. I just started Sharding them to my heart’s content, knowing I probably didn’t have enough mana to actually kill either one of them, but I had plenty enough to annoy the heck out of them, and it hurt, something they definitely weren’t too used to feeling.

  They were five miles north of Sanamar when I found them, whipped up the default cheap flights of basic Shards that cost me only a mana apiece to get off eight of them with all the fun Kickers, and I started to pound on them.

  Strictly speaking, I should have used Split Shardrays if I wanted to go for damage, but the damage was immaterial, and getting pricked 5+3 times by a Shardcaster’s bees was better for that than being stung twice by a killer hornet.

  The Thunder Cow bellowed in anger when I lit up her arse, purple lightning crackling up around her horns as she turned to look at me, and promptly filled the air with lightning heading my way.

  Lightning Rod on my first Hexar Shield, floating at my side and definitely not in contact with me, sucked the Lightning blast, equivalent to an IX spell at the least, down and away harmlessly, exactly as it was designed to do.

  Then I gave her millions-Health Qi-boosted face another bunch of stings to the jowls. She bellowed her annoyance and rounded on me, while the Red Bull issued his own roaring challenge and started my way, leading the way with his own blasts of Fire.

  Multiple balls of Flame came streaking my way, and then bent abruptly aside and went down the gullet of the Heat Sink on Hexar Shield #2.

  My Wings were popped and I was gliding backwards at full speed as both of the whale-sized bovines rumbled after me. They couldn’t do the full out-and-out charge of actual bulls, being far too heavy for that, but both of them were basically hundreds of tons of meat and power in motion, and they were definitely coming for me and not going to let up until they chased me out into the ocean and well away from the island.

  I made sure to keep both of them nice and fixated on me with constant fusillades of Shards, the Kickers rupturing over them and coating them in Ice and Acid that seared and ate at them before crackles of Fire and Lightning burned them away in expended Health Qi.

  Their spell attacks were constant and unceasing, their mana supplies near as enormous as their Health Qi, and obviously not going to be exhausted just from focusing their attention on me.

  It wasn’t the power of my attacks which was doing the job, it was the fact every single spell was hitting and hurting, and I was happy to aim for sensitive areas. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the throat, even the genitals if they looked hesitant, and oh boy, was that enough to keep their attention.

  Rock scoured clean of all but the toughest mosses and scraps of greenery and small craters scattered about where tree roots had been dug from the soil zipped by underneath me as I retreated swiftly and constantly, unconcerned about the two massive magical aurochs raging after me from only two hundred feet away. If they caught up to me, one hoof from above or one hook from a twenty-foot horn and that was basically all she wrote, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  If they were truly intelligent and not something so driven by frazzled magic and irritated by a painful gadfly, they would simply have realized I couldn’t actually do any lasting harm to them and simply broken things off until I ran out of mana.

  That didn’t happen, either. They both had violent tempers, weren’t too stable at the best of times, and I was really trying hard to piss them off… so I was pissing them off.

  We came within easy sight of the walls of Sanamar. The horns had long been sounded, the people within were taking cover yet again, but there were still quite a few people on the walls watching as I and the magical cows closed in on them.

  I was pretty sure the walls could take it even if one of the cows crashed into them at full speed and knocked themselves silly, but that wasn’t what I was trying to do. I was also certain that they’d seen the big beasts were tossing spells at someone, someone who was NOT from Sanamar, and were probably thinking I was leading the big beasts here to annoy the fuck out of them again, or maybe use them to breach the walls and start a massacre, which would most assuredly happen if the Aurochs got within.

  But no, that wasn’t why I was there.

  Thus, I imagined that when the ground opened up and my massive bovine pursuers tumbled down and out of sight with bellows of surprise, the Viamontians on the walls were plenty astonished.

  ============================

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