The Power of Ten

“You have not had an extra thousand years to establish a Level advantage on the other races. You only had a very slightly higher Limit, and that was truly minor.

“You need to take a step away from whatever the Fey are whispering to you, and the tales and flights of fancy of those glorifying your magic and your beauty, and take a good, hard factual look at yourselves and your people.

“You are very minor species of magic-wielders allowed to settle in a magical forest and land of your own because you engage with the rest of the world and share that magic with others, wrapping yourselves in mystery and wonder and inspiring others to be like you.

“Do you think that if you closed your borders and repelled all who sought to interact with you that Ælfheim would even exist now?” I frowned deeply. “The Scandinavians are a warrior people, and the return of magic has brought that out again. Good neighbors don’t hide, while dark neighbors hide themselves and what they are doing.

“There is absolutely no way they can possibly allow you to isolate yourselves in this magical world. The threat is far too great. Some fruitcake will get the idea of covering the world in faerie forests to chase out dirty humans and ugly orcs and nasty goblins and crude dwarves and create more living room for elves.”

“Lebensraum,” Master Tolkien quoted tellingly into the silence following my words, and the elves winced.

I inclined my head in acknowledgement. “Thus, telling you of Elves of other worlds has the massive problem that you are not them. Your numbers are not enough, your Levels are not high enough, and the other species around you are not your barbaric lessers.

“You also have a problem that those elves do not, because of their gods... or, perhaps it is to say, they can gloss over it.” My gaze returned to the Countess.

“The Mother Land,” she blurted out despite herself. “You claimed that the boundaries set upon them by humans would draw their ire!”

“Boundaries set by mortals,” I corrected her sharply, and she flushed again. “You think that because you are a Druid, you are not merely another dust mite who is engaged in mutation of the Land’s creatures, and drawing lines upon Her that do not exist?” I let my eyes drift to the window showing dazzling snowflakes drifting past it. “Some of the pines outside have snow flowers. There are fish in the lake with unnaturally vivid colors. I saw at least six gardens of ice-blooms on the way in, and I don’t even have to talk about your winged cats and curly-tailed dogs.

“You have been engaged in Fey-led mutation of the Green and the Brown. If you think the Land isn’t going to respond to any entities meddling in that shit, let alone such a big obvious target as yourselves, you are fools.

“Oh, you might have been expecting the Fey to soothe things over. They can do that... if they take these lands as their own, effectively removing them from the purview of the Land.”

The elves looked sharply at one another, eyes going wide with shock.

“I believe I just heard another shoe drop. Tell me, what worth is your claim on this land when it all gets taken away by the Fey as their eager foothold and Portal to the mortal realm?”

The Countess looked shaken to her bones. “You... they, they would not dare do such a thing...”

“Are you telling the Courts of the Seasons what they can and cannot do?” I asked her archly. “Are you a god?”

Her lips clamped shut.

“Another thing you are lacking is experience and Divine instruction. Elves in other lands received a great deal of education from their gods and Divine servants thereof. I daresay you have been led around by the nose with spritely tales of faerie realms you could be a part of, and simply didn’t think through the implications for the rest of the world... another subtle extension of racist thinking.”

They all flushed hotly again.

“A Portal Realm for the Fey.” I tilted my head slightly. “My apologies, but I’ll see Ælfheim burned to the ground before I let the Fey have an open Portal to this world. The disaster that would result from that fully justifies me killing every single sapient creature in this country.”

They swallowed in unison. The vids were out there. They knew I could do it, and I would do it.

They had fucked up really, really bad, and then they had let me in here to let me see how badly they had done so.

“Did you know that there are 97 centers of Fey Influence within ninety miles of here?” I asked them, and watched them pale further, getting close to Cultivator skin now. My Commune covered a huge chunk of this ‘enchanted forest realm’ of theirs. “Did you know they are erecting Henges? Did you know they’ve assembled eighty percent of the Formation required for a Grand Conjugation? They are probably only a few months from completing it. When they do, and the Shroud goes, guess what happens to your dear Ælfheim?”

All of them had rather sickly blue or green accenting their fair complexions now, and their eyes all turned on the Countess.

“There is a Hamadryad Queen holding court in the northern forest!” Ilivia blurted out, a horrified expression on her face, and the faces of the others all changed colors again.

“Yes,” I confirmed for her, and she swallowed very softly as she realized I Already Knew. “She is looking in this direction, trying to see who I am, who dares to spy on her and her Court.”

The room suddenly got very quiet, indeed. I took a long, deep breath.

“Did you ever ask that Fey Queen what Season she belonged to?”

The weight of my question descended on all of them, and they all suddenly had the impression something had gone very, very wrong.

“She, she is of Summer...” the Countess spoke up in a small voice.

“That is not what I asked you.” The warm and cozy temperature in the room dropped to below freezing instantly as I fixed my eyes on her.

She couldn’t even swallow as I pinned her, her eyes twitching as she tried to recall the truth of the matter... and failed. I slowly moved my eyes to the others, who had certainly had interactions with the Fey, and they managed to shake their heads.

“She is coming.” I rose from my seat and headed for the door. Needless to say, this conference had just been pre-empted. The shocked elves jerked as if released from paralysis, and hurried out after me and the bone-chilling cold I was coating the hallways with.

I sort of skated along without actually moving my feet, and they had to run to catch up with me. The guards saw the hallways riming with ice, and hurriedly opened the door for me as I headed outside.

Sleipner came around the side of the Sea Palace calmly, having vacated the forest as soon as I informed him of hostile Fey presences, and him not being an idiot.

She had Transported via Plants, coming through just outside the Interdiction Ward around the Sea Palace. The trees were groaning and creaking as they drew away to make her and her entourage a path down to the lakeshore. The frosted grass and the roots below all smoothed out and formed an unbroken carpet down to the lakeshore, heralding her arrival and displaying her casual mastery of the forest all at the same time.

I stepped down onto the water, casually Dispelled the warming effect keeping it unfrozen, and equally casually started the freezing process.

From my drifting feet forwards, the water crystallized with sharp pings, metallic in sound as they cracked and protested and resettled, spreading faster than someone could run from my point of presence, racing out in front of me, to the sides, and around the entirety of the Sea Palace as the surface of the lake froze solid and chased the colorful mutated fish down below away.

The ice was jet and silver.

With a thought, I released the curling ram’s-like horns, now balanced to jet with silver highlights, and my wings, demonic black and bat-like, but also with silver highlights, and gleaming with sacred silver Runework and maybe some celeste sparkly-star effects. My nine Tails flowed out as I glided along, ruffling artfully in my wake.

None of this had any real effect save the wings, which were considered a Binder bonus. I didn’t have the Racial Levels to use any of them, and even the lilithi stingers in the Tails were just cosmetic, as I didn’t have the actual coordination with them to use them as weapons effectively... unless I reached back with my hand or TK and whipped them around.

Still, if you knew what you were looking at, it indicated that I was even more dangerous than I seemed.

Sleipner rolled along beside me, his unicorn spirit fading into visibility in the backwash of my magic, especially as I began to Hum and the whole manafield began to chime along with me.

I saw her coming along the path, while the elven nobles behind me finally resorted to Flight spells and flew after me to keep up. They all had unsightly expressions at the level of power being shown here by both me and the incoming hamadryad, but I was frowning at the fact they could fly. I glanced up, and frowned minutely further.

I didn’t go up on the shore, and the coming Fey didn’t step onto the black and silvered ice. Imagine that.

They were a collection of satyrs and dryads, fully armored in bronze for former and livewood for the latter, goat-men and tree-women who were actually two sides of the same Fey species. I noted the colors of green and gold they were showing, and my eyes narrowed further as their queen, drifting along the ground in an ornate green dress that no leaf or ice dared despoil, a picture of Fey natural beauty, advanced with regal dignity between them.

Hamadryads are the usual regional queens of local Fey Courts, beneath the High Kings Mab, Titania, Oberon, and Robin Goodfellow, who represent the Courts of the Seasons. Hamadryads are full Fey Twenties, which make them powerful Casters, but not combat machines. Going up against Soulborn in combat, or most warrior races, Fey generally get their asses handed to them.

However, against most mortals, being a Twenty was just fine, thank you.

Golden hair, lightly tanned skin, emeralds aplenty over a green dress of spider-silk, great emerald eyes, the ice flowing out of her path as she brought life and vitality with her...

The edge of her influence reached the edge of the water... and stopped there. The jet and silver ice did not give way in the slightest, the metaphorical equivalent of a breeze blowing against a brick wall.

There were twenty paces between me and the shore. If they wanted to truly confront me, they would have to come out onto the ice... into my domain.

The domain they couldn’t melt.

She came up to the shore slowly, while I clasped my hands behind my back and simply waited. Was she making me wait for her to arrive, or was I accepting a supplicant?

Magic thrummed in the air, and if she kept her face a mask, I could feel her tensing and pushing at the threads there, feeling their response to me.

Those threads were basically not moving at all. It didn’t mean she couldn’t use them, but she couldn’t affect my Will upon them.

It meant I was a much stronger Caster than she was, and she knew it.

And naturally enough, I knew who she was. Our knowledge of Pact-granting Patrons had been expanding considerably of late, this particular one having staying secluded in some transient realm while magic was low, before being captured and thrust into the main world after the arrival of the Shroud.

There was a protocol to these things, and statements of power were part of it. Whether she liked it or not, she was now in my domain, in my power, and she could not ignore it.

I waited to see how she would approach this. She in turn, was studying me with some trepidation, having no idea whatsoever on how to accurately assess me.

She decided on a rather poor tactic, looking behind me. “Queen Huellia, will you not introduce Us to your guest?”

My wing snapped over to bar the queen in a gesture that could not be mistaken. At the same time, there was a pulse, and Einz pulled harshly.

There was a scream as he suddenly became visible and was wrenched savagely out of the sky a hundred feet overhead. His plummeting body, raven’s wings beating uselessly at the air, fell diagonally as he came down, smashing face-first down on the ice directly in front of his queen, the jetsilver surface fragmenting with snapping metallic pings all around him, his wooden sword burying itself hilt-deep there and his wooden armor fragmenting from the impact.

My wing came back smoothly. “Yes, introduce us to them.”