Master Harlune was silent for a time, regarding me. I knew he was wary and suspicious, doubtless lulled by honeyed tongues in the past who wanted to learn the secrets he knew, and who then abused them without shame or restriction.

  “You… bring the undead back to life, Lady Ryin,” he finally spoke up. “That… is something even the Life Magic I know cannot do.”

  “To be absolute fair, Master Harlune, it is not by my will that such things occur. Resurrection magic is totally and completely the realm of the Divine. They take my power, add the right and Will of the Divine, and in doing so can return a soul from the hereafter to life. I provide them the energy on this mortal plane to do so, so they need not spend their own. But without their will, aid, and permission, I could not do so.

  “They give me all three, and I pass on their will to those deserving of it. Master Ben Ten and his fellow Cursed Dead are eminently worthy of it.”

  “You have not sought power nor remuneration for that service, however,” he pointed out to me.

  “They cannot afford to pay me what that service is actually worth, nor their families, or anyone else. It is a situation I am certain you are familiar with.”

  He nodded slowly. “Those most worthy of the blessings of magic are often those who cannot afford its benefits or its graces,” he admitted.

  “Neutrals trying to assign a value of secular pricing to everything is the most insidious force that Good people have to fight against over time,” was my reply in return.

  He grunted again. “I am willing to become your teacher in matters of Empyrean Magic, Lady Magos.”

  I inclined my head again. “I am also willing to become your teacher in matters of Matrix Magic, Master Harlune.”

  He blinked at me in shock, and then burst out laughing as he realized that he was all too willing to learn things from me, too! “I see. How shall we coordinate our lesson plans then, Lady Magos?” he asked, his glowing eyes now actually glittering slightly.

  “I thought lessons on Slayer Effects and Bane Infusions traded back and forth and compared at multiple Valences would be an excellent place to start.” Runeforms, Seals, and Sigils rose around me in multiple complex formations. “Let’s see what Empyrean Magic has to say about what we’ve deduced so far, and I’ll explain how much of it transfers over and between Matrix magic.”

  His smile was wide as he scooted up to the wide table of force that popped up between us. “Excellent. There are principles of anathema and opposition that are integral to the intersection of Life and Item Magic once you get past the Incantor Level of magic that are referenced when working such specific alterations to the enchantments…”

  =========

  Weeks pass…

  Aphus Lassel was secured. Master Harlune’s island in the north was basically gutted and abandoned, filled in completely so as to give the Freebooters nothing to come back to but blank stone. With no residents above sensed psychically or by scent, the olthoi lost all interest in it.

  Of the lesser islands around Dereth, the two most obvious targets left were the initial island settled by the tumerok races, Marae Lassel, and down in the south, the Moarsman Island off the southern coast.

  ML, as the adventurers called it, had a long-term olthoi and virindi problem, and a Deru Tree that had its own problems as a result. The Aun had mostly withdrawn from the island during the Fall, slowly evacuated by Master Oswald in small groups, reinforcing their kinfolk in the Kingdom of Freehold slowly and unseen, leaving the Hea to deal with the constant pressure from the great insects they called Wharu… the olthoi.

  There was debate back and forth on which to pursue. ML would open up some more land for resettlement, but the hostile Hea would be a problem that had to be dealt with, as the tribes there were still knuckling under to the mutant strains dominated by the virindi.

  Not wanting to engage in a war of kinfolk quite yet, it was determined to see what the Aun could accomplish on their own before trying anything.

  When they came to me, I said simply, “If you want to clear Moarsman Island, it is useless without fully clearing Freebooter and the Vesayans of every last trace of T’Thuun. It’s become quite apparent the island and its pyramid-temple is the heart and soul of the Entity’s power on Dereth, and if you want to break T’Thuun, you need to break all of its centers of power, including the scattered shrines on Dereth, before taking out the Island.”

  So, that’s what the energetic soldiers, adventurers, scouts, and knights concentrated on for the moment.

  There were five shrines to the creature around Dereth, and those were cleansed energetically, washed in a lot of blood, violence, and vivus, populated by hundreds of Blighted and Tainted creatures defending their tentacled Patron-thing from beyond the stars.

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  I wasn’t much involved in those efforts, instead raising a Pyramid for Bobo the Tusker King over Aphus Lassel, then raising three more down the length of the southern landbridge and over Candeth Keep. This created a very secure path to the direlands and really cemented our control over the southern reaches of the Direlands.

  The return of Master Harlune meant rapid breakthroughs on Four-System Smithing and Artificing in particular, bringing together elements of different magical Systems into a greater whole that really expanded everyone’s views of what was possible and how it could happen.

  Master Harlune’s slow but steady progress through Matrix Classes and his private quest didn’t stop, either. He had long stayed away from Summoning Magic and was not an expert on it through the Empyrean System, but Summoning and Binding Magic had some very serious support on the Matrix side, especially the whole Binding aspect.

  -------

  The last crystalline irregularity fell away, and I eyed the wedge of perfectly cut Sunsands Silica Diamond in front of me. The sputtering elemental energies within it coalesced, stratified, and transformed into a burning, shimmering core of restrained latent power.

  Tink. Tink.

  The wedge of crystal fell apart into three identical Sunsands Silica Diamond Scarabs, the first intact ones that had ever been made on Dereth.

  They glimmered inside with fractals of prismatic light, undulating across the Thaumaspectrum.

  Blackfire Diamonds were not the Incantor Scarab source, these were!

  Which was a pretty nice thing, because we didn’t have any sources of Blackfire Diamonds. Caul Island was still getting shot up by shades and virindi who didn’t truly die, and we weren’t testing out Aerlinthe Island yet.

  We still had to go to Mount Lethe and get our next set of Infusions there, too.

  “Well done,” Master Harlune complimented me as I sat back, rubbing my head and looking at the results of Shape Stone at VII+1. “Pure magic and without a tool. Extraordinary, Ryin.”

  “Thank you, Master Harlune.” He was still a few centuries my senior, so I still gave him an honorific, as our relationship was purely professional. We’d talked enough that he was comfortable addressing me as an equal, regardless.

  I watched him pick the first Scarab up, turning it over and analyzing the shape, the Runecraft, and the workmanship, shaking his head. “This is extraordinarily difficult work, is it not?” he asked me, lifting a dark eyebrow.

  “It’s a 40,” I agreed, which he understood as reaching the mortal limit of skill, and at the edge of what he could craft as well. Briggs and Princess Kristie could go higher, but they were proto-Eternal schmucks, so, eh.

  He wove a spell of Mana Renewal VIII expertly as he held the Scarab in his hand, and the magic came to him swiftly and easily, swirling around me and popping my natural Renewal rate by +145%, or about two and a half times.

  I eyed the pile of Burning Sands Golum Hearts off to the side. Since the return of Neftet, there had been the opportunity to fight Burning Sands Golems on the dangerous Spawn Points surrounding the formerly hidden city. The native A’nekshay had no cares about fighting them or the other Summons in their territories, especially once the more irritating Summon points were shut down and the areas seeing spawns could be controlled.

  As a result, the most powerful Golum Hearts known, the Burning Sands Golum Hearts, were trickling in and being acquired. They’d had no known value, but after this knowledge was spread, the demand for them was going to explode, and with them their price.

  There were only a few active teams who could reliably take down one of the Golums without injury, and the drop rate on a properly congealed heart was 1/10 or less.

  The demand for carving them was going to be equally high, as the number of people who could actually do so reliably I could count on one hand, namely me, Master Harlune, Briggs, and Kris. The Mick was a maybe, as this was gemcutting, not a carving skill based off his Lockpicking ability.

  There were a smattering of paramounts who had carving skills, but most of them had left civilian activities to their supporters and hangers-on, preferring to be combat specialists raking in the money and paying their attendants, cohorts, and followers to do mundane tasks.

  As a result, if one of us didn’t want to carve you some of these Scarabs, it didn’t matter how many Hearts you’d collected. Our normal compensation was basically going to be 2:1, so half the Scarabs we made we’d decide where they went.

  It wasn’t that different from the Elemental Fields, which over the last few months had settled down to regular teams making excursions out there. The gem carvers were only getting better and faster at their craft, and the teams faster and better at clearing out the Elementals.

  Best of all, the mixed Elementals meant the Karma was good for both Matrix and Isparian advancement. Prismatic Stones were becoming more and more common as a result.

  “They will keep you busy all day and all night with their demands if you let them,” Master Harlune laughed, following my gaze. “You are far more active in the field than I, so I will take over the cutting of these Hearts, if that is alright with you. Will that Fabrication magic you know help?”

  “Yes, but it’s a V, and the gods know how much I need more obligations to Cast V’s. Still…” I shook my head, and began to weave the best and fastest Crafting spell known, one that did eight hours of work in but a minute, drawing off the Caster’s own skills to do so.

  If you had the right tools, and Shape Stone VII+1 was always the right tool here, then carving a Golum Heart wasn’t that hard. Adamantine would suffice on the physical level for non-Casters. Doing it RIGHT, however, was more difficult, and its sale value completely eclipsed its goldweight value, of course, simply due to current rarity and demand.

  There were hissing sounds as the extraneous parts of the Hearts began to crumble away, one after another, sliced off by magic guided by other magic. Master Harlune watched with great interest as the Hearts were chipped down one by one at great speed, until the final wedge was glittering there, and then tink, tink! It fell apart into three identical Scarabs glittering with internal radiance and manaflows.

  Ten Hearts fell apart before the spell was done, which was a fair display of how long it would have actually taken to carve them apart with Shape Stone.

  “I think that may be the first V I ever learn,” Master Harlune swore, watching all that work get done so quickly and smoothly.

  ============================

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