Hlaeth Chapter 59 – Masters of Earth and Fire

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With a groan like iron fingernails across slate, the main doors of the Scholia ahead of me opened up at an unseen command.

“Enter,” two voices, one grinding like stone, the other burning like a bonfire, spoke together.

I looked around, at the prostrate Elementals, and swept out Mortus Dius.

The Wall of Fire was fully Sanctified with the Holy Metas and Vivus, although not Banefire. It filled the circle for forty feet around me, forcing the tieflings to scramble screaming away from me to avoid the touch of its fires, and it swept across the mighty Magma Elemental there, instantly covering it in blazing golden Holy fires and the hungry unwhite of Vivus, snuffing and devouring the Hellfire.

“Embrace the vivus and return to your natural selves. The Land is returning,” I informed the Elementals.

The stones of the plaza blew into white powder and fell apart almost instantly as vivus devoured the Taint in it. The circle of white beneath them spread quickly in all directions, and the prostrated Elementals there just waited for it to reach them.

One by one, the unwhite crept towards them with fingers of bricks falling apart, and one by one vivus and Holy fires stole over them and began to Burn away at them.

They were Elementals, and did not resist the command I had given them. If they had, they would have been Consumed and destroyed by vivus, and so would have fled for the fires and stone of the caldera.

But vivus and Holy Light quelled the Hellfire and Sin inside them, and as the Taint had infiltrated them, so now did the vivus and Holy fires follow, devouring them and restoring what they had been.

I left the Wall of Fire behind, an ingot of gold sacrificed to make it Permanent and bring the power of vivus back to this area. That it would be very uncomfortable for the tieflings here was a given, but it was a problem that was Good to have.

And I hadn’t had to kill anything yet…

Unperturbed by the fact I was walking into a place of power reinforced by Hell-boosted fire and earth magic for centuries, I started forward towards the stairs leading up to those doors. The tieflings could only get out of my way or Burn, and there was no friendliness to the Holy fires igniting on them if they drew too close to me. If they pawed at the threads of magic, they felt them ALL resonating with me and my presence, and they knew, knew my attention was on them, that all the threads led to me, and if they tried anything, well, ALL the magic was Singing with me.

Nobody wanted to test the terrifying amount of power I held over them. Hell’s proclivity to fear and Law meant they knuckled under to me with any kind of appropriate threat display, and not a single one dared to Cast a single spell on me… which would have ended rather badly if they tried to, but that was for them to find out.

That didn’t mean that the more daring and powerful of them couldn’t follow me inside as the doors remained open, and fighting the trembling in the pits of their stomachs, they followed the Light I was emitting as I glide-walked forwards, the stones hissing black smoke and Burning unwhite in a shockingly vivid trail behind me as I did so.

------

The amphitheater was even more Corrupted than the plaza without. I could feel the residual energies of great magical Rituals enacted here, doubtless with the participation of the tiefling survivors helping out. I imagined the defenders pulled out more Elementals from the heart of the world to aid them if the previous ones fell in battle, or re-Summoned the same ones over and over again into this Tainted, restricted space to continue their fighting.

The tyrannical power of Hell would make the repeated Summonings easier and quicker, leashing the same spirits over and over again, and making them stronger and more compliant even as it did so.

But now they were Burning, and even the Elementals outside the Wards were hurrying back, feeling something happening and wanting to be part of it.

Hope thrummed in the Elemental Chords, and the Elementals bowed and partook of it.

The two Masters of the School were waiting on the stage for me. They weren’t tieflings, but undead, things empowered and corrupted by the Hell-taint that had affected the Elements they held close to themselves.

Master Geras, the Fire Drake, looked to have been either dragon-Blooded or a full half-dragon, based on his ghostly skeleton displaying draconican facial features, short horns, and a powerful build with claws and developed fangs, with scale patterns showing artfully dark reds against the near white-hotness of his bones. Flames red and tinged to black filled in for the flesh of his body, hinting at a particularly horrid death by necroic powers, and a following undeath twisted by elemental preparations and Hellfire bending the result.

Master Tu Shor was a full nine feet tall, and looked to be made of obsidian bones carved with some rather eye-daubing Runes to accentuate his geomancy, bound to the very earth and stone of this place. His Staff was more a tetsubo, sized for an ogre, and I was pretty sure he was a half-Stone Giant somewhere along the way, whether natural or magically accomplished was hard to discern.

Heat billowed out and up from the undead pyromancer, and there was a constant rain of glass dust falling around the geomancer from his taut, stony skin, the ground crackling and crunching as it broke and reformed underneath him.

A Greater Firewraith, or Wraithfire King, take your pick. Partnered up with a Boneyard Tomblord. One heck of a combination of undead spellcasters.

Either way, their appellations were quite appropriate.

The way the amphitheater was set up, I could have approached them and stood beneath them, or stayed back and away, like I was showing fear, but remaining on a level with them.

Angel Walking to stay exactly equal to them and approaching to directly thirty feet away did the best of both things, and effortlessly kept me on the same level as their equal.

Both were Archmages of course, both Twenties, at the top of the mortal game. Their power in their own Elements was extreme, at least +6 Spell Power by a combination of Elemental Focus, Elemental Specialization, Bloodlines, and likely an Advanced Class or two.

They could also immediately tell that my base Caster Class in ALL Elements was at least at that level, and probably higher.

Definitely higher, actually, but that was hard to discern without me showing off. The combination of +7 from Master Theurgy, +4 from Good Magic, and +5 Spellpower from Hierophant and Archmage Advanced Classes made my base Sixteen a Thirty-Two as far as they were concerned, with an additional +4 from Snowcasting, +6 from Star Magery, bonuses from Reserves, blah blah blah.

As a result, I could definitely sense their wariness, as it was well-warranted, motivating a rather desperate clutching to the Wards and spelltraps about this place, waiting to be unleashed with a Word to destroy the mage who was standing so arrogantly on the air before them.

The mage who also happened to be wearing the Ruling Ring of the woman who had destroyed them, their School, Tainted the whole area with Hellfire, and brought down the whole of the Empire of Houme in so doing, ushering in the Yellow and bringing potential doom to the whole world.

And now here I was, a mortal servant of Heaven, wearing Stormfire.

They weren’t going to take chances with me at this point. The mere fact I could overcome the woman who had arranged for their mortal deaths meant I was surpassingly dangerous, and did they really have more defenses in place than had she?

Especially with all their Elemental servants bowing to me, and racing to partake of the vivus and be reborn through it?

“Masters of the Scholarium of the Arcane Forge, I am Aelryinth of Heaven, magos. I am here on a Quest of Divine mandate, here to take up the Ruling Rings, restore the Elemental Balance, and shut down the Yellow,” I declared calmly, watching their hands clench.

I was a Ringlord. Their Ruling Rings fairly blazed for my attention, humming with pure Elemental Power that resonated with the Ring on my left little finger. Stormfire’s nascent spirit was a little miffed that aeromancy was distinctly third in my preferences for use, but deliriously happy to be worn by someone with the massive Theurgic power that I had, especially since a Druid of the Four Seasons had ties to ALL the Elements.

Sunfire was a gold Ring inset with a Star Ruby, Earthfire an adamantine Ring inset with a gleaming Diamond. The other two Ruling Rings could also feel my own, and how much mine had submitted to me. They could also feel my Aura, and clearly I was making their current wielders VERY uncomfortable, as both of their Rings wanted to submit to me!

“Arrogant!” rumbled the Stone Titan, Master Tu Shor replied in inhumanly deep, grinding tones and a dialect a thousand years out of date, lifting his Ringed hand to point at me accusingly. “You think to come in here and demand our Rings, as if we would simply cede them to you?!” he ground out at me. “The Rings are the anchors that keep the Wards of this place intact! Without them, they will rapidly fall to the Taint of the Yellow outside and the last of the Scholarium will be wiped away!”

“The Wards in their current form, Master Tu Shor,” I corrected him mildly, making him stiffen. “You have a bastardized Spell Formation you adapted hastily to use Hellfire from its pure Elemental origins, and the only way it stays intact and usable is because of the influence of your Rings constantly correcting for the erosion of Sin upon the impure Formation.

“Remove the Hellfire and Sin currently Tainting what the Formation uses to empower itself, and your Wards would hold for centuries, by what I saw of them. The original work is quite impressive. The follow-up, not so much.”

“Do you think we will just cede our Rings to you?” sneered the firewraith, his voice crackling and snapping.

“I did not come here to bargain, Masters of Ogrenton,” I replied evenly. “I am aware of your compacts with Ifrit and Shaitan, and the students you sold into slavery in the depths of Earth and Fire to learn the secrets of your Elements.” I could hear shocked breaths behind me from the tieflings as this Truth became known. “Doubtless your current students would have followed, were you able to call the genies here still, but the Veil has not allowed such, has it? Perhaps you even thought you could Wish away the Yellow’s perversion of the Land, if only you could reach your Patrons once more…”

“Your statements are baseless accusations,” began the stony voice of Master Tu For.

“They are Truth,” I interrupted him with crystalline clarity, and they screamed.

Everyone screamed, Truth being the unyielding bastard that it was.

Lies exploded into clarity, distractions and allusions obvious now for what they were, tales and stories woven to give them false hope and encouragement.

Especially about their strength and status as tieflings.

Strength derived from Hell was only strength when it stood alone and had nothing to compare itself to. When compared to the spectrum of inheritances, it was definitely lacking in versatility, and compared to the ability to customize and optimize against a foe that humans and other mortals had, it was definitely lacking.

Anything that Hell gave them from their Tainted Bloodlines was something they could have gained themselves without being tied to Hell and innately rejected by the world of their birthplace!

Their masters had accepted the Taint in order to ‘survive’ their transformations, and basically forced or convinced their ancestors to do the same. Lies built on lies, and yet they were still prisoners here!

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