There was a crack and a flash as Entelia discreetly moved off to the rear of the orcs while their attention was on the rest of the party, found the perfect angle and happily let loose a Lightning Bolt down the length of the line of the orcs in their cover, sending yellow-blooded bodies exploding and flying violently with thick, snarling lashes of pale blue electricity having a great time.

Screaming in panic, the fur-and-leather clad savage orcs abandoned any pretense of holding their fighting line and ran for the hills… or the Ruge Lowlands, as the lands we were moving through were called.

The wagoners cheered and sent a few arrows after the retreating orcs, not to much effect given the panicked way they were running about and the trees and rocks in the way, but it was the thought that counted.

I eyed the Dart-Skulls I'd flicked up, my eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

The magic was weaker out here. I couldn't apply more than the most basic Metas to my Cantrips, the magic was fighting it and they leaked out of the spell as I was gathering it.

Since the others didn't really use Metas, they hadn't noticed the difference. I hadn't used any of my Shard-derivations in combat in the Shires, so I hadn't noticed it there.

Darkmoor had a rich and somber magic extending from the strange black rock that underlay so much of the area, and it had never had to deal with gammathauma degradation from an archmage becoming a neo-god. Zanzyr was filled with streaming unseen power from the Core of All Magic underneath it, and that radiation spilled out through the Underdark through ley lines and crystalline conduits, too.

I could stack exactly three +1 Metas on my Darts now. If I moved further away, this might even fall further.

It wasn't a major hit, although losing Consecrated Spell for maximum damage against Evil for +2, and Chain Spell for +3, and heck, the Spellwarped version used with Split Ray, meant this really was a hit to my sustained firepower.

I couldn't kill dozens of creatures every volley all day outside of the environs of Zanzyr, or the near portions of the Underdark. I could probably spend Immortal Power or Radiant power inside my soul crystal and get the effect back… but if I was going to do that, it was probably better spending them on Valences, or saving them for extreme danger.

That did indeed put the shoe on the other foot as far as all-day sustained combat went… but I still had a powerful punch, due to Arcane Fist and my Staff, Dread, if nothing else. The first damage die against any target from one of my spells was raised to 3-18, even if it was a d4 Cantrip. The Sacred Spell Meta still made it Good and able to take all +5d6 of Holy Kickers, and Banespell tacked on another +2d6. Add on my Tiara (the rose in my hair) effects for +1d6 Fire and Lightning each, +Vivic flame to finish off the bodies, and yeah, the three orcs I'd targeted had still taken 12d6 damage each and were now turning to ash.

I could still Spellwarp the effect into a Ray and give a single target a nice 14d6 hit at a longer range if I needed to, and as long as they didn't recognize it as a Shard spell, they couldn't counterspell it properly. A basic Shield spell could still stop my Darts, but not my Shards, however, since as a Shardcaster I could plow Shards through the spell.

I would just have to be more careful about getting into fights with lots of opponents. I didn't think my Valenced spells had been impacted much… yet. I wouldn't find out until I had to use them, and probably wouldn't like the surprise if it did.

Ah well. All those rep counts, not working so well outside a stronger magic environment. It only demonstrated the slow wasting that would affect the world if the Core in Zanzyr was allowed to continue existing...

"Kindly remain where you are," I informed the wagoners who were inching our way, ready to meet their rescuers, and they were quick to obey, seeing as how we were all standing on floating Disks and looking quite impressive to men who drove mules for a living. I looked down the road, where Duum had dipped down into the trees and come back up again, this time carrying his Lance.

With the two corpses still impaled on it.

He had no problem hefting the thing, big as he was and his Flight magic handling most of the load, though he had to flap more than he usually did. That was okay, watching the bloody light spill off his dark form for effect was wonderfully intimidating. It only took him a minute to come gliding in, grinning maliciously the whole while, and drive his Lance down into the ground, the two corpses flopping limply upon it, expressions of stunned shock forever frozen into their gaping faces.

"Jorge!" blurted out one of the men fearfully, cowering back like the others from the massive Bat that settled to the ground as if his scarlet-edged wings weren't even needed.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Impaled on the same Lance as the head of the slavers waiting down the road to scoop you all up and sell you off to interested parties, as he was astride his horse talking to the man when my finely-crowned friend here swooped down on them." Black skulls spun into place over two of the men there, cackling and staring down at them, making them jump and cry out, waving their heads trying to fend off the seeming spirits. "Friends of these two, I imagine?" I asked dryly.

The wagon-drivers and soldiers rapidly gave the two men room, hard and thoughtful looks as they stared at the duo.

"Not the first time that Spade, Hims, and Jorge were with a train that lost people to orcs," a portly older fellow spoke up slowly. "Why, I bet they been on a half-dozen such trips in just the past year…"

"We, we ain't done nothing!" the guard of the two shouted out, drawing his sword out and trying to swing at the laughing black skull with roses unfolding from its eyes.

I flicked a Rune into existence to one side, and it glimmered faintly to those who were watching.

"We was only going to make sure the wounded got left behind with the broken wagons when we decided to run!" the weaselly driver protested, not even aware what his lips were babbling. "Most of youz woulda made it to Culm, no problem, sure enough!"

The guard turned on him, utterly shocked. "Are you going to tell them we sabotaged the wheels too, you idiot, Spade!" he blurted out.

"What you saying, Hims? Are you a fool, blurting out what we'd done?" screeched Spade, likewise aghast at what he'd heard. "You think they'll even take a piece of our cut now?"

The faces of the surrounding men were drawn and ugly at the revelations.

"Their compatriots are already dead," I noted professionally, raising my hand lightly. "Does anyone mind?" I asked archly.

Sentence was passed with nobody saying a word.

"No, wait! We don't have anything we can tell you, our lives aren't worth much, and we're untrustworthy as fuck!" Hims blabbered in a panic, Spade looking at him in disbelief, and I brought my hand down in a dismissive wave.

The two Skulls blazed with Banefire the hue of human blood, and descended in a flash, impacting the heads of the two men and turning them pitch-black instantly. Their skulls popped black, crimson, and golden fires, burning out their eyes and mouths instantly. Two corpses tottered and fell, dead before they hit the ground.

Their bodies began to fall to black ash, and thorned black roses grew up from the darkening ground as they did so.

"Hey, the ground!" one of the drivers blurted out, jumping after looking at the muddy soil underneath them.

The ancient road buried under the leavings, dust, muck, and roots of centuries, revealed only here and there by the ancient bricks still clinging together, was rippling as if alive under their feet, for all that nobody actually seemed to be moving.

The dirt, soil, leaves, roots, branches, and shrubbery was sucked down into the earth as lines of bricks flowed up, realigned themselves perfectly, and filled out, drawn together from chipped and shattered remnants, pebbles and shards and chunks of brick or stone, called forth and reformed to once again perform the ancient task for which they'd been made.

Water gushed as mud was drawn into brickwork and the liquid was sent flowing off the new shoulder. The fallen wagons were now sitting on a perfectly-set and orderly brick road, the rest of them even having the mud stripped right off the wheels and completely clean as the road rebuilt itself.

Black Disks unstacked themselves from behind me, scooted over under the fallen wagons, and silently lifted them back upright, then off the ground completely as the men watching all gawked in disbelief.

"You may wish to follow us, gentlemen," I indicated, as we started down the road that was reforming in front of me towards Culm, a Rune on a slate of pure granite shining with power and purpose in my hand as Dread tapped down constantly.

The wagoners scrambled to get their mules and horses back into their traces and themselves mounted again, racing anxiously after us as we continued on.

A forty-foot wide road built a foot deep was about eighty feet long per round for me, which was a decent pace to set. The combination of the Rune of Earth and Primus' Stone Shaping meant I could do most of the heavy lifting of the effect with Primus, which greatly extended the duration of the Rune's effect.

The Rune could handle the power effects of either pushing down or outright shoving the vegetation and roots completely out of the way, or even severing them and burying them completely as needed. That meant trees swayed and creaked as the ground rose up and shoved them back and away from the mostly-buried road as it reformed, and hills and dips that had accumulated over centuries became a smooth and even surface that wagons rattled over without any resistance at all, to the evident and eager pleasure of the mules and horses behind us.

"You four guards. The dead slavers are in the copse. Horses! Follow Us!" I called out to them, and was met was some eager and relieved whinnies in the distance. The horses of the dead men, still saddled, appeared among the trees and eagerly came trotting after us. Two of them were still hooked to the wagon full of chains, and it rattled and clattered as they trotted eagerly after us. "Go loot the dead, and catch up to us."

More than astute enough to realize what the true chain of command was now, the four men rode out in the direction the horses were coming from, sparing the beasts only a glance as they rode by. That a couple of the Disks were trailing after the last of them for them to stack stuff on they didn't miss, either.

----

"It's about another twenty miles to Culm, Lady Edge," the nervous head of the salt caravan asked me, his hat crumpled in callused hands as he addressed me. "We should make a camp and be set up before the light is gone."

Which meant I could be there in an hour, but I couldn't keep making the road at that pace. Nothing said I couldn't keep going while everyone took a rest, however.

"Light will not be an issue, nor shelter." I surveyed the area ahead. "That clearing will do nicely."

A minute later we rolled up into the area, or drifted, as was our case. Duum swooped down to alight upon what looked like a shattered boulder, and had once been some form of waymarker.

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