The Star 32

"Don't look at me like that. You'd have a lot more to worry about if I wasn't doing what I'm doing now. If you can't trust in me yet, trust in your guardian," Orison said as a bubble of expanding invisible static tingled over their nerves.

To himself, he thought, "Not that he seems to give many sh*ts about you guys right now. A mental shout head's up of 'There's going to be a flood in a quarter hour or so.' only given to me isn't much of a rescue plan."

Silence reigned in ever growing tension for the time that followed.

He suddenly opened his eyes from the effort of concentrating on the globe. "Damn. There's some hollow spaces and tunnels behind your visible structures this can't reach far enough to cover. Is there anything valuable back there that won't survive being underwater?"

Seeing that the matron and Rohn were getting ready to jet along with a few guardsman, he added, "Don't! People rushing around in a panic might cause this activation to fail... There was a reason why I did things this way. I just need to know if there's anything back there worth losing a southern portion of your fields for."

The matron's voice was thick and breaking, "Ancestors forgive me... No."

"Is this a protection of some kind?" Rohn asked.

Orison nodded.

"Is it ready?" the man said a few seconds later.

The young mage nodded again.

"Why aren't you...activating it?" Rohna asked in place of her father.

"I'm not activating it until I feel the rumble. If I activated this early and nothing happened, I'd do a lot of damage to the integrity of your cave for no good reason. Then, you'd all be looking to me for answers and I doubt your guardian would bother standing by my side to help me give th-" he stopped talking as a shudder ran through the cave like the buzz of a barely felt earthquake.

With the sound of a giant bear trap snapping shut, the formations of sun stones overhead flickered in a bright surge before subtly dimming. "Alright, take all the time you need but focus on putting support scaffolding around your buildings. While you're at it, some falling debris protection for your crops wouldn't be a bad idea but not as crucial-

"Are you serious right now!... Sorry. Didn't mean to give you a jump scare... Glaucous just told me where I need to go and I'm a distance from it. Rohn, I need a guide to Moon Cave. We're going to be underwater and potentially surrounded by cannibal mermaids. Sound like a party you want to be invited to or do you want to send one of your guards instead?"

Nervousness disappearing in an instant, a bloodthirsty smile that gave Orison goosebumps appeared on the man's face as he said, "How could I say no to a party? Let me go grab my gear."

The young mage and the matron called out, "Wait!"

While the matron forged ahead to talk her son out of going, Orison tossed him a spear that glowed with a shifting array of red, purple and blue runes. Seeing the weapon that dripped with arcane power, the matron suddenly realized what cautiousness would have cost her son and chose to retract her objection. With a nod of approval and a reassuring smile at the worried mother, Orison handed him the caster model TSSRR suit.

"Isn't this hooded towel going to get in the way?" Rohn asked after being talked through its activation.

"It's a half cape and no. Submerging in water and being exposed to the vacuum of the lesser void causes the suit to change its configuration. The main point is it gives you the ability to breathe underwater. It's actually not that good, armor wise," the young mage said.

Rohn shrugged. "Best defense is swift death to the enemy."

"Let's test that theory," Orison shot back.

Dragging Rohn out of the snow globe, he stowed it away. He tried calling the bookmark's manifestation out but something in the water was interfering with it. Instead, he called out his water elemental impression and let that drag them along.

It was nearly pitch black with little sun stone glimmers peeking through the murk in a way that added confusion rather than helping. That was, until little vibrations of sound went off here and there. Tinged with touches of magic, it was like a sonar screen to Orison. Rohn was able to use it orient himself as well. The problem was the source of that sonar. Carnivorous mermaids were swimming about.

There was a lot that the young mage could have done to help or outright solve problems but he was playing low key. There was a dangerous threat potentially lurking in the background of events and he wanted to seem as harmless as possible until it showed up. Not to mention, he was kind of interested in seeing how Rohn would do. The mystery seer's evaluation of ' faithful friend, relentless rival and fatal foe' was practically a glowing review in comparison to summaries for others.

It didn't look like the man was going to live up to the hype. Within moments of his first encounter, he was nearly fatally wounded. Slapping him with a healing and aiding the suit in mending itself closed, Orison started reevaluating how to handle things.

That's when something clicked for Rohn. On the next pass of the offending creature, the man drew his arms in and made a shallow but powerful and fast thrust. Expecting another slow motion choreography of fail, the mermaid took a spear tip right to the navel. From there, the warrior DID do something in rather slow motion, gut her.

Water sufficiently chummed, three more came barreling their way as Orison urged the water elemental impression to speed their travel. As the new enemies approached, one suddenly veered to tear into her dead sister. The second one paused in indecision long enough to break their formation completely. Alone but thinking herself flanked by allies, the head mermaid rammed in to knock Rohn out of the water elemental impression's area of effect.

Taking a few cuts to his suit and fingers, Rohn shifted the spear to his left hand as he latched onto her lower jaw with the right, through her razor lined mouth and gave a short but violent downward jerk. First dislocated, the jaw quickly became not a part of her face as he finished ripping it off. After a wrist flick, the spear in his left hand did a tricky shift of position. In a sleek 'S' curve slide, the second approaching mermaid had impaled herself on its point, eye to brain.

Orison reached out to snag him as he was tail slapped by 'jawless'. Knocked out of it's wake, the elemental darted to realign itself with its summoner's position and started pulling them along again. With the spear's life and magic sipping quality, the young mage let it handle taking care of Rohn's nicks and scratches. The suit was more than capable of sealing up a few small holes from teeth and nail points.

Distracted by blood and flesh, the responding forces were drawn there first. Granted precious seconds of progress, the two men were drawing fairly near the entrance to the Moon Cave. That's when Orison's spirit sight picked up a strongly magic infused ripple of sound waves rushing at them from the direction they were traveling. There was a mermaid in front and it wasn't a common 'hunter' type.

Although it canceled his summon, he let loose a disjunction to tear through the water in front of him. There was something eerie about the magic pattern that struck him as being dangerous. Hooking an arm with Rohn, which the warrior didn't seem to appreciate too much, he pointed a hand behind him and let loose a shot of magic boosted telekinetic force.

Shooting into and through the misty cloud of disjunction, the young mage drew on some of the power in his scroll armor. As the dolphin tailed mermaid came into view, he propelled the warrior directly at her with magic assisted force. The enchantress mermaid, preparing another blast of will warping magical sound got a mouth full of sharp metal, silencing her song forever.

There was a small voice in the back of Orison's mind that cringed with sorrow as each one of the beautiful but lethal creatures fell. Aside from the one that had been in front of them, he hadn't felt much of a soul or consciousness to reason with, however. For the most part, they were merely aesthetically appealing predators.

There was no doubt in the young mage's mind that the one and only that could have possibly been reasoned with wouldn't have been in the mood to do so. Their two and a half kill streak reaching that point had ended that possibility. If he had been willing to expose greater amounts of his capabilities, that might not have been the case but there was an even more dangerous obstacle that would appear at some point. And the less that threat knew, the greater the chance of avoiding casualties he actually had a reason to care about.

As they swam through the open double doors into a softly glowing cave that held a skylight, Orison sighed in frustration. There were nearly a dozen mermaids of different variants milling around a funneling basin that terminated at a channel leading farther underground. Rohn took the lead, positioning himself in as protective a manner as 720 degrees of access to their position allowed. The young mage would have been touched if he didn't know the warrior's main reason for doing so was a snow globe full of clan members.

Rohn looked at the young mage and pointed past the mermaids to the stygian hole at the back of the cave. Orison nodded. About that time, the band of mermaids decided to acknowledge their presence. Within moments they were being attacked from all sides. Resigned to a death march/swim, Rohn was covering Orison with himself, trying to get the young mage as close to their destination as he could before taking fatal damage.

Figuring that the man had his chance to shine and close enough to their transportation point that a minor use of entanglement power wouldn't be noticed, the young mage reached out. Connecting them to the watery leyline, they were whisked away in a flush of shamanistic feeling old magic and some mysterious principle of mystic alignment he'd only felt so strongly once before. Arriving in a flooded pool of bloody gore, the young mage was diverted from his goal of healing and removing neurotoxins from the warrior by an assault of psionics and magical sound.

Gravat/Glaucous hadn't called them to safety. He'd called Orison for backup. The guy was in trouble.

No longer having attention to spare, the young mage drew out a multipurpose elixir and handed it to Rohn as he flung out an air elemental and fired off two summons worth of burning needles from the grimoire. One was a peppering shrapnel shot meant to cause some instant painful distraction and the other was sent skittering off like dancing dragonflies of death.

Despite dripping slightly luminescent blue ichor from multiple wounds and bombarded by maddening psychic/magic assaults, the half-giant wasn't giving up his defensive position over the corpse of a woman. Three women of varying age appeared to be trying to 'rescue' the corpse of what Orison could only guess was their leader. The magic side artillery that couldn't shapeshift legs was being occupied by Orison and Rohn but Glaucous' refusal to step away from the corpse was letting the three land walking mermaids toy him to death.

Making it look as dainty and unassuming as possible, the young mage called out the focus weapon from the crystal ball. At first glance, it only looked like another burning needle but as soon as it got close to Glaucous, it unfurled into a protective magic circle against will and intent. The second of attention it took to accomplish that, the young mage was hit by an enemy spear that carried enough force to fling and bounce him off the rocky ground like a basketball.

As he rolled and skidded to a stop, he called out to stop Rohn from giving him support. The water portal area needed to be held. Surprise might have earned them the ability to take control of it. But if left unguarded, they would be overrun by more screamers and spear throwers.

The third woman of the powerful mermaid trio was an augmenter type. She was the one who had thrown the cannon ball force spear. It may not have been able to pierce the protective power of the scroll armor but the rolling kinetic force of the strike had shaken and banged up the young mage pretty good.

She was about to barrel off after Orison when Glaucous shouted, "Be my concubine and I'll share your mother's meat with you."

The woman stopped and turned to face him while her 'sisters' shouted insults and rejections.

The warrior mermaid said, "Only wife. We can each have a lover of our choice for other needs. Any more than one b*****d child a century is unforgivable."

"Agreed," Glaucous said through gritted teeth.

The mage sister shouted, "No! How could you do this!?"

The psionic one said, "There is only death or bargains now, sister. We have lost."

Orison piped in. "Neither you nor we are the ones responsible for this today. Your kin with souls, I can remove the control mark. The soulless, I cannot save. Even death of their controller can't save them."

"Little comfort but the gesture of goodwill may be enough for my side," the psionic sister said.

The young mage looked to Rohn. "It's your arena now, clan leader."

While the Delver warrior squared off with the psionic mermaid to hash out temporary negotiations, Orison went to slap some supernatural first aid on the blue half-giant.

"Stow Ephyra away. We will honor her in feast, as she would have wanted," Glaucous said, not without a little sadness.

The young mage obliged, wrapping the corpse in a sheet and placing a preservation spell on it. Alert with spirit sight, he saw the mage sister attempting a movement magic of some kind.

Shooting out a disjunction to stop her, he growled. "I'm at the limit of my ability to be lenient. If you manage to slip away, when you return with Aaron, you will have no family left to 'save'. You will be the last of your kind, regardless of other people's arrangements."

When she locked eyes with him, the sneer froze on her face. It wasn't the spirit essence bleeding eyes or the powerful undulation of will and intent that stopped her. It was the barely perceived, vague shadow of a monstrous and nebulous 'thing' writhing just under the surface of his skin.

Creatures of the sea carried older memories than most. The thing she could barely sense, it caused her instincts to scream in equal parts joy and despair. She slumped numbly to her knees, smiling and shaking in terror. Bowing low, practically flattening herself to the ground, she rejected the influence within that was forcing her against the directives of an older and more primal urge to obey.

Her rejection of the supernatural compulsion she was under in favor of the primal one had swift and deadly results. Her head and chest erupted into shrapnel of gore. Sighing, the young mage sprinted to her and used the magical focus weapon to lay out the healing/mend circle. Utilizing the insights he'd recently gained, his reserves nearly emptied out in a powerful sizzle of arcane might laced with the pitiful amount of eldritch essence he'd garnered over the last half day.

Sacrificing a few material resources to the circle to amplify what his personal reserves alone were too low to accomplish, he resurrected her. She would need to recover for some time but she would be mostly restored, save for a modest degeneration of magical prowess and lifespan. It was an expensive gesture but her odd about-face of loyalty to ancient forces had earned her that much.

The psionic sister approached him with palms flat on her belly in a sign of wary peacemaking. "Gratitude for your mercy, old one. She and I are of a deep sea lineage. You are the first of your kind that she has been exposed to. Such an event is... impactful."

Returning to give aid to Glaucous, he said to her, "I'm under no illusion to what she was paying homage. But since she did, it didn't feel right to leave her for dead. That being said, death is preferable to the fate of any of you who take, what's his name, Aaron's side in this struggle... I won't force you to be an ally but you do not want to be an enemy either."

Grimacing, she spat, "On that you can be assured. It was an unnatural and forced alliance to begin with. He may be a fellow fey being and our father but we of the Mer only have allegiance to school and the deep from which we sprang forth. THAT being said, friendship and mutual benefit are not unknown to us."

Orison acknowledged that he heard and returned to some crude field alchemy for the blue half-giant.

With the more intimate contact for applying medicine, he sent an intent delivered mental message to Glaucous. "I'm not waiting. After I dump the clan in Seaside Cave, I'm claiming the underwater palace your father of this reality built and the astral rift portal that powers the so called 'mana well'. When I make it back to our Greater Existence, should we cross paths again, I'll try my best to hold onto the sentimental stuff in order to give it to you."

Glaucous' eyes sharpened into a glare but quickly died back down. "I'd fight you to the death if there was any purpose to it. I can't take any of it with me into the merge with my other echoes here but see that you do. All my memories in this world are not bad ones. The best of them were made in that palace."