Time of Change (Emerilia Book 7)

by Michael Chatfield

  Dave pulled out an orb from his pocket. It floated above his hand for a second before taking off. It slammed into the Water spirit, stopping in its center and staying there, attaching to the Mana core that sustained the Water spirit.

  Its movements were arrested as it couldn’t find any way to move.

  Dave’s orb was a prototype that came from his work and knowledge of teleport pads and portals. The orb created a sphere of influence where it would hold everything in that area at a fixed point.

  He’d just nailed a Water spirit within the space-time continuum. There was no escape till the power ran out.

  Now the Water spirit had nowhere to go, and the attacks rained in. They hit it until there was nothing but Dave’s orb and the Water Mana core.

  Dave recalled his metal orb as it towed the Mana core back to him.

  He looked around. The other Affinity creatures that had been in the magically coded Affinity pools had been destroyed.

  Those that were within the Earth Affinity pool were having the worst time. There was a small forest filled with valuable materials and resources that they didn’t want to break, even as the spirits were using these same resources to attack them.

  Already other parties had gone to help them.

  “Okay, you got a spare head? ’Cause that is fucking scary.” Lox looked to Steve.

  “Yeah, I got one in here somewhere.” Steve rummaged around in his spatial ring before pulling one out.

  Dave shook his head and got to work, pulling away the old head and putting on the second.

  “Thanks for that save there.” Gurren held up his fist.

  “Couldn’t leave you hanging and I can always get more parts.” Steve grinned. A gear gave way and fell down inside his head as he hit Gurren’s fist with his own.

  “Stop using your face! Damn thing’s a mess already—damn gears are all messed up and falling apart,” Dave complained.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Malsour said, helping Dave out.

  If they were to look up, they would see the fifty Affinity animals that were roving between the Affinity pools and the overhang of the temple that the Affinity shades patrolled.

  Three people had been killed in the attacks, all of them Players. Their gear was collected as they waited out their respawn time. Most of them would rush back to the temple as soon as they respawned.

  Josh called for a rest for everyone to get their stats sorted out. Also there were a number of people who weren’t E-heads. They’d spent nearly two hours in the temple already, nearly forty-five minutes in the real world. Some needed to grab something to eat or deal with some real-life issues.

  They left their bodies in zombie mode as the E-heads looked over the different creatures ahead and harvested the different loot within the pools as well as the cores.

  The guildmasters broke it down per guild. They would hold onto it. Anyone from any of the guilds could buy the items from one another with no tax. This was something that would go on for just the raid. Only two days after the items were looted would the guilds start taxing these transactions between the guilds involved. Anyone who was buying the items from outside of the guilds would have to pay taxes on it.

  With just the Mana cores, they’d made at least five grand soul gems apiece.

  Mana cores were drops that usually came from creatures. They allowed someone to restore their power. They were mostly used by powerful countries in order to power things like their sewer systems, or to make their crops grow faster and more plentiful.

  The higher class the core, the more power they could release. It was also based on the type of creature. With Affinity spirits, their cores were naturally much more pure than say, a hog’s. Meaning that they could last much longer than another core, thus driving their price up. Also Mana core crystals could be used to naturally enhance weapons and armor. If integrated into the smelting of metals, they could create naturally attributed items.

  Dave hadn’t played around with it much because of the incredible cost for the purest of cores and the fact that having a material naturally inclined toward an Affinity would make it weaker to others.

  His weapons and armors were made to be adaptable between situations.

  Deia and Anna, who had been minding the different groups of DCA soldiers who had been training out in Ashal’s wilderness, came back from their patrols and joined up with Party Zero.

  Deia was going to hang back and watch, though with her around, Lox could give up his command and pass it to her.

  “So, any idea of how this place came to be?” Dave asked Anna as Deia sat between his legs, leaning against him as he leaned against what remained of a pillar.

  Anna laughed to herself before she shook her head. “This was the first Affinities Pantheon.”

  Everyone looked at her with interested eyes.

  “Well, you know when Devil’s Crater sent out their scouts? I might have given them a spell that would allow them to detect this place as well as roughly this area where I thought that this place might be.” Anna shrugged.

  “Like father, like daughter,” Malsour said, eating some jerky.

  Anna scratched her head awkwardly. “Well, it was more for interest than anything. When they picked up the portal here, I thought it might be the temple but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think that Josh would turn this into a thing and come to try to take the portal here.”

  “So, Affinities Pantheon…the place where the different gods and goddesses of the Affinities came?” Suzy asked.

  “Yes. At first, it had been a place on Emerilia—people could see it from every direction for miles around. It was meant to be a symbol of power—you know, have people interact with the gods. Come for their blessings. It became clear that having the gods together was a bit problematic.”

  “What made you think that? Was it the fact that they’re fighting one another for more power all the time?” Lox asked.

  “Well, that was part of it, smart ass. Also, Dark started trying to directly siphon power out from their divine wells. After just twenty years of living here, the Affinities Pantheon was split up. They traveled to other parts of Emerilia and set up their own halls and their divine wells. Then they would meet in the new Affinities Pantheon that orbits Emerilia,” Anna said.

  Dave cut his Jukal link, pushing its field around everyone in the party.

  “Okay, so the gods, who are actually humans who have been conditioned to think that they’re all-powerful beings, lived here? So, like Fire, they live on Emerilia? I thought that they might live on the moons or something,” Dave said.

  “Nope, they all live in Emerilia. Light lives somewhere in Markolm. Dark lives in Ashal—well, supposedly. He does move around a lot. Air lives in Heval, kind of. Her hall actually moves around and has the best stealth abilities, so finding it is nearly impossible, even if you had the Jukal orbital sensors. Earth lives in the southern reaches of Gudalo. Though so deep underground that it would take a teleport pad to get there. Water lives with the merpeople in their main underwater city between Ashal and Gudalo,” Anna said.

  “What are these divine wells?” Dave asked.

  “They’re massive power collectors. When people give ‘devotions’ to the gods, they’re giving them Mana and power. This power is siphoned off and fed into the divine wells. These divine wells are the basis of the gods’ and goddesses’ power. They don’t need to pull from their own Mana pool, but can pull from this instead. They’re like the vault-classed soul gems but on a massive scale. Also when they use these power sources, there’s no Mana blowback unlike when we use power from the soul gems to supplement our own. Their interfaces have AIs that will cast the spells for them. They think of something, the AI draws from the divine well and poof! It’s a reality. That’s how you give people the power of gods,” Anna said.

  “So, there’s a way to cast spells from an external power source and not get blowback on ourselves?” Dave’s mind opened with possibilities. What would happen if, with the power of the power facil
ities or the reactors, we could manipulate them at will without any blowback?

  Dave took in a sharp breath. The gods already showed that it was possible; now Dave wanted to find out how.

  “Yes, but it requires changing the implants that lay within your body. The Jukal interface that we’re all using is the most basic. The one that they have is comparable to the system used by planetary governors,” Anna said.

  “So, would the emperor have a stronger interface?” Suzy asked.

  “Undoubtedly, though there is no way to know how much processing power it has as he always communicates through aides and secondaries,” Anna said.

  They fell into silence. The closer they came to learning more about the Jukal and Emerilia, the more complicated and vast it seemed.

  “So, what do you think these spirit beasts are going to be like?” Gurren asked while Dave once again allowed the Jukal link to be established.

  “Tough,” Lox said.

  “They’ve got all of their natural attributes and their bodies have the power of the spirit within them. As the spirit feeds off the animal, the animal feeds off the spirit. The spirit is in control and is by no means smart; for that it would need to be a Free spirit or above. They’re going to have a lot of magical power, and most of the spirits will have taken on creatures that are more inclined toward their Affinity. They might rank as the same level as the Affinity spirits that were in the pools, but they’re going to be at least two or three times the difficulty,” Steve said.

  “Also, you’ve got to remember, they do lose their life-force as they cast spells, but by being inside the other creatures they won’t dissipate when they’ve used all their Mana. And their Mana regeneration speed is going to be impressive,” Anna added.

  “Plus, they’ve got numbers,” Gurren said.

  “Easy to get caught up and surrounded,” Suzy said, as they all looked at their next opponents that were moving around.

  “Well, the good thing is that the mobs in the first two areas haven’t respawned,” Induca said.

  “Yeah, having to fight them again and again would be a pain between moving up higher levels,” Dave agreed.

  “It might be the kind of situation that when we leave that the forces within here start to respawn,” Malsour said.

  “Have you also noticed the different limiting runes laid down everywhere?” Dave asked.

  “Yes. They seem to increase the density of the air above ten meters. I would think this is so that people can’t race ahead, though I don’t see why someone might want to race toward the center. There’s just much more powerful creatures and the man with the Free spirits inside him,” Malsour said, a curious light to his eyes as he tapped his chin in thought.

  “I wonder what his story is,” Deia said.

  “He’s got to be powerful to be at the top of those stairs. Nearly every different group of creatures I’ve seen is two, nearly three levels more powerful than the ones before and all of them have some impressive abilities that would be hell to deal with,” Lox said.

  “All right, everyone group up. We’re moving to deal with the Affinity shades!” Josh said to the raiding party.

  Everyone rose to their feet, excited for the experience, loot, and the possibility to put their name at the top of this portal raid’s leaderboard.

  Chapter 29: Progress

  Traveling back to the Deq’ual system was a lot faster than when Captain Adams had headed for Emerilia.

  As she came out of warp, she flashed her identification codes. She had floated, waiting for anything that might have followed her. After a few days, it was clear that nothing had.

  Her crew breathed a sigh of relief. They had done everything they could come up with to make sure no one could follow them. Even though there was no sign that anyone had. It was a big risk to go and see Emerilia. Since the Deq’ual system had been settled, they had only moved to other systems to make sure that they were truly alone, setting up supply caches if they needed to run away again as well as checking out other systems that they might hide in once again.

  “We have an incoming channel from Commander Sato,” Quinn said.

  “Put him on screen.” Adams tugged on her jacket. It was the cleanest uniform; after spending so long on the ship, everything was getting a bit ripe.

  “Captain Adams, welcome home. You are cleared to connect to asteroid bay three, dock fourteen,” Sato said.

  “Yes, sir,” Adams said. Asteroid bay three? We only have two docking bays, each of them with less than five slips to fit ships. What the hell is going on?

  “See you shortly. Your and your crew’s friends and family will be there to greet you. We’ll leave the political mess till later, Admiral.” A smile crept onto Sato’s face.

  Adams paused, even after hearing it from Sato before she didn’t truly believe she was an Admiral. She quickly closed her mouth before replying. “Thank you, sir. It’s good to be home.”

  Sato’s face disappeared from the main screen.

  “I’ve got the new route,” Quinn said.

  “Take us in, Anders,” Adams said.

  “Yes, Captain,” Anders said.

  Over the weeks, they had become more comfortable with one another, but as they came back home, all of their military etiquette came back. Even if there was no one to see it, they wanted to show that they were the best of the Deq’ual forces.

  They moved through the system, heading into the vast asteroid belts that circled the simple red star in the middle of Deq’ual.

  An asteroid opened up for the ship. Even with the opening ahead of them, their sensors could hardly pick up the hollowed-out asteroid.

  “It looks like someone has been upgrading the stealth technology while we’ve been gone,” Quinn said. “Bringing up visual.”

  The screen changed from the spacescape to the inside of the asteroid.

  Even Adams’s eyes went wide at the sight.

  There had to be twenty different berths within the asteroid. In these berths there were ships being built. Each was nearly two hundred meters long and fifty meters wide. These were not scouts but true battleships.

  The design was similar to what Adams had read out of her historical textbooks. Everywhere she looked, there were ships moving materials and parts, and people working massive robots or working on the ships themselves.

  The ships weren’t far along in their build; most were just superstructures with the main systems attached.

  She knew that the Deq’ual system was going to look into making ships with the completion of her own test-bed. There had even been the beginnings of different docking slips and refineries, though it was all theoretical at that time.

  She never expected that she would come back to having a fleet being made! Or the fact that they hadn’t more docking slips, but in fact added in a whole new bay, complete with shipyard abilities.

  Anders carefully and expertly brought them into their dock.

  They ran through their docking checks, making sure everything was secured, switching from internal power to the asteroid’s.

  The doors leading into the asteroid had already been closed.

  Adams stepped off the ship first. She came out, seeing a small gathering. She brought herself to attention, saluting Earth’s flag, turned and faced Sato, who was off to the side, and saluted him.

  He rose up to his full height, saluting her back.

  She felt pride in what she had done and at the level of respect that Sato seemed to direct toward her.

  The rest of the crew filed off the vessel, which was now the smallest in the asteroid by far.

  Adams smiled and greeted people here and there. She met with her friends, noticing Sato leaving.

  If she was an admiral now, she’d find out just what had happened while she was gone!

  ***

  Two days later, Adams slumped into the couch opposite Sato. Edwards was talking to someone over his interface as Sato sat opposite her.

  “Well, remind me to never leave on a
maiden voyage ever again! I’m pretty sure my arm got disconnected from all of that handshaking,” Adams complained.

  Sato grinned at her annoyance. “Welcome to the higher ranks.” Sato had seen her for a bit at these functions, including when he had pinned the admiral rank to her collar.

  It had been four hundred years since there had been an admiral. Naming her as an admiral was the same as announcing that they were once again walking down the path to war with the Jukal.

  “Thanks,” Adams said dryly, rolling her eyes. “Now, I’m an admiral—what have you lot been up to? I’ve seen a lot’s changed.”

  Thankfully there was no need for Sato to be debriefed; after all, with the Mirror of Communication, they had been able to “meet” nearly every other day.

  “That’s a bit of an understatement.” Sato smiled and looked to Edwards. “Get off that interface!”

  Edwards didn’t seem to hear.

  Sato took a pen out and threw it at Edwards.

  He flinched. Seeing the look in Sato and Adams’s eyes, he quickly finished off the call.

  “I swear, he’s the reason I don’t have any pens left,” Sato complained.

  “Sorry about that. Was talking about the new sensors we’re integrating.” Edwards looked a bit shamefaced.

  “Since you left, we’ve been working with the plans from Dave. He sent us complete designs on fusion power reactors, factories, automated miners, as well as refineries, weapons, armor, and what he calls a Mana well. Now, some people were able to take that and make up rough mock-ups for different systems. We also devoted some resources and time to building these things. The automated mining drills were better than we hoped, so we let some of them start to work on increasing habitat size, as well as hollowing out asteroids for materials and cutting out the foundations we would need for these various facilities that Dave passed information on.”

  “When you confirmed that Emerilia was real, we were able to push a lot of projects through. We already had the basics sorted out. With less testing needed, we were able to pull together systems at an incredible rate. We had all of the knowledge—everything was ready; we just had to put the things together. We ramped everything up. Five massive refineries in a few weeks, coded and good to go. Separating out all manner of materials. Dave had been giving us everything he had plans for. That man must not sleep! With it, we were able to take the mock-ups, things that people had been fantasizing about, and turn them into reality,” Edwards said excitedly, interrupting Sato.