Emerilia Series Box Set 4

by Michael Chatfield

  ***

  Dave, Malsour, and Steve were all at the first southern citadel around Goblin Mountain. They were in the central castle underneath the main tower that extended into the sky.

  None of them were talking as they worked. The rest of Party Zero was off acting as a reactive force: they would rush through teleport pads and onos, laying down massive damage to give the defenders or the attackers trying to take citadels some relief and hopefully allow them to hold on or enter the citadels to capture them.

  It was madness, with the dozens of battlefields changing constantly. The Alliance had lost some citadels and gained others. Some were simply watching to see what the enemy would do, or were stuck in a chaotic battle for survival.

  The Pandora’s Box crew didn’t pay attention to the outside world. A number of craftspeople stood around them, ready and waiting to get whatever they needed.

  Dave once again went into the Mirror of Communication. He quickly shared out his problem to his class of coders. Creating a coding think tank focused on the problem. Nearly three hundred people were here, from all across Emerilia. Some were part of the Alliance; others worked in Grahslagg Corporation and others were simply helping out. Among those helping out there were hidden figures of people from the Deq’ual system.

  Dave would simply go in, share a problem he was getting stuck on and leave once again, or pass out a simulation to run. He’d also drop off Malsour and Steve’s questions and work.

  This sped up the process of working on the citadels’ new systems immensely. They never stopped working, always turning from one roadblock to another question that they could solve.

  Malsour turned from their work and looked to the forty or so Blood Kin that were off to the side and back to Dave. They might need blood in order to display their power, but they weren’t bad people. With a large supply of blood crystals coming in, they were stronger than ever, allowing them to become a small but incredibly powerful building force.

  “It’s time.” Dave nodded, seeing the question in Malsour’s eyes.

  Malsour stood, cleared his throat and moved to the Blood Kin. “All right, listen up because time is of the essence. We’re going to form the basis of the new system that will be running through this citadel. Here are the plans,” Malsour said as a person ran up with a bag to the Blood Kin.

  The haughty Blood Kin glanced over the plans. Their normally indifferent faces turned alarmed at the plans while one of them took the bag and opened the top.

  “These...” the one who had taken the bag said, looking into the bag.

  “There should be a few hundred blood essence crystals in there. I have someone who is working on making something more Mana-potent than these simple crystals. Now get them in you and let’s get to work!” Malsour said.

  The Blood Kin pulled on their masks and their hoods. Blood essence crystals were distributed to them all as they moved out into the citadel. They quickly moved to the various cardinal points.

  The citadel that they were in was no longer a simple Level 1 citadel. As it had been under the Terra Alliance’s control for so long, it had actually progressed to a Level 3 citadel and was about a week away from making it to Level 4.

  Level 2 had taken the simple outer wall and inner citadel with a large town in the middle of it and expanded everything. The wall had expanded outward, becoming taller and thicker. The inner citadel had risen up as well, its walls becoming thicker and adding two new floors so that it looked out over the outer walls. Four small towers at the cardinal points had grown from the inner citadel and reached upward. In the center, the main tower had doubled in size and also grown four more stories. A second outer wall had risen around the first, increasing the depth of the defenses.

  With the third change, the second outer wall became as thick and strong as the first wall in the second stage and moved outward. From it, eight small towers had appeared at the eight combined cardinal and inter-cardinal points.

  The biggest change was the original castle and walls. The walls became thicker as the ground rose up, creating a hill underneath the walls and the castle.

  Now, instead of being flat, the different layers of defense were stacked. The inner castle didn’t grow outward but instead in places the stone was covered in sections of metal to defend against possible attack and shore up weak positions.

  The towers became more refined and actually held their own Mana barriers instead of just the Mana barriers created by the soul gem construct.

  Soul gem constructs were still growing. The area was so large and power was at a premium that the Alliance hadn’t wanted to spend much of it on the citadel to begin with.

  Now they needed something to help turn these battles.

  Pandora’s Box had been secretly supplementing the power needed for the project, running their reactors to charge vault soul gems.

  Bob was overlooking the soul gem factories while he worked on his own projects. There simply weren’t enough vault soul gems to keep everything powered continuously. They had to be dumped into the soul gem construct and whisked back to a recharge point.

  Still, the growth had been immense.

  Within the inner castle, there were multiple storage crates that had been dropped off by the automated carts for the next part of what was needed for the citadel.

  Malsour stayed in a hidden room within the center of the citadel, trying to clear his mind of all distractions. He changed into his Dragon form as much as possible. Power surged through him as he sensed the ground underneath him, overlaying the ground with the plan that Pandora’s Box and their coding helpers had come up with.

  “This is going to be difficult,” Malsour said to himself, feeling the Blood Kin reach the various positions across the citadel and its defenses.

  They all took a few moments to get into a comfortable position, consume their blood essences and submerge themselves into the ground under their feet.

  “Open the resource chests,” Malsour said across the support party chat.

  Around the citadel, resource chests were tipped. Mounds of resources fell out of them as automatons and people started to let the resources out.

  “Begin,” Malsour said as he gained control over these resources.

  The material piles seemed to melt, disappearing from sight. They were being pulled on by the Blood Kin and Malsour into the ground.

  Malsour pulled down tons of resources. As they moved through the ground, he formed them into various threads. They encompassed the foundations of the citadel and spread out over the surrounding area. The Blood Kin also made their own metal plates.

  These metal plates came together to form a single sheet underneath the citadel. From this, metal supports twisted down from the edge of the metal sheet, creating a cone that pointed down into the ground.

  As the Blood Kin made these different strands, working together so that their magic was impossible to tell apart, Malsour formed a massive magical coded formation on the underside of the massive metal sheet. Thick, coded lines moved from the formation to the supports, following them downward.

  From these supports, it seemed as if metallic roots sprouted from them and spread out through the surrounding dirt and rock.

  A thick column from the center of the steel plate started to form, covered in the geometric lines of magical code that was being formed on this ten-meter-wide pillar that extended all the way down to where the other one hundred or so supports met up in a point.

  Time lost meaning as this work went on.

  The Blood Kin would constantly consume their blood essence crystals. They were in awe of the power and control that Malsour showed with his work, increasing their own depth of knowledge and abilities in manipulating Dark Mana.

  The main supports were finally finished as the roots continued to spread out through the rock that lay within the supporting beams and around them.

  To someone who knew the human body, it might look like the circulatory system. The main beams were the arteries; the roots were the c
apillaries that stretched out to reach into the surrounding material, becoming thinner and thinner as it reached out to all of the ground around.

  Malsour breathed heavily, his body covered in sweat and his head woozy from the power expenditure. It had taken nearly nine days for them to work together and bring this about. To the Blood Kin and Malsour, it felt as if it had been as short as hours but as long as years.

  Malsour turned his attention to the metal plate. The roots had not simply grown down but they had also spread up and into the citadel, its towers and surrounding walls.

  The soul gem construct that covered the citadel welcomed these roots and actually spread them throughout the Citadel.

  If only we could hook up a fusion reactor to the citadel, we could change this all in a matter of days instead of weeks. Malsour sighed to himself.

  Malsour finally opened his eyes, his face pale, he coughed his entire body shaking as he continued to cough, his original paleness turning a fierce red as he tried to fight the coughing. He got some water from his bag of holding, quickly drinking it to relieve his parched throat. He was hungry and tired as hell but instead of resting, he slowly got to his feet. His half-draconic form disappeared as he returned to his human state. He drank Stamina potions, although they didn’t have much effect as he’d been using them nearly constantly for a week and a half straight. He didn’t even touch the Mana regeneration potions; they had little effect on him now. He had used them so many times in a row that they barely helped to regenerate his Mana any more.

  What he needed was rest to recover his Mana and get back to his peak condition.

  With his senses, he looked out over the city. While he and the Blood Kin had been making changes underground and through the city walls, Dave and Steve had been making a lot of changes to the soul gem construct that was spread out over the massive defensive works.

  Dave looked up from where he had been working. It didn’t look as if he had taken a break either. “Looks like you’re just in time for the fourth change,” Dave said.

  “I hope that the metal plate is enough,” Malsour said.

  “Just reached one hundred percent,” Steve said. The ground shook as a faint glow of power spread out over the citadel and its defensive walls.

  The citadel shook as stone changed to metal in places, condensing and giving greater support. It grew higher and the curtain wall gained strength. Casting balconies and archery positions appeared; positions for ballistae and trebuchets formed on the roof of the citadel.

  The towers didn’t move but instead gained more metal reinforcement. The outer wall became eight meters thick and twenty high; the ground behind it also rose. The eight towers dotted around it also grew in size and prominence, overlooking those pristine, smooth gray walls.

  The secondary inner walls started to gain metal sections in places as the ground inside also reached higher, with the inner castle on top.

  The defenses looked much like a birthday cake instead of being on top of a hill now. Instead of the gentle elevations, the defenses were laid out with painstaking detail, altering the world around it to give greater defensive abilities.

  This was a castle with defensive walls no more—this was a true citadel.

  On the roof of the central tower, a large magical formation could be seen forming in the air before it slammed down into the stone and metal of the rooftop.

  A blast of magical power rippled outward as magical formations appeared on the roofs of the already large towers around the main castle. As they finished, four smaller pulses spread outward. On the eight towers around the outer wall, more magical formations appeared.

  As these finished, a magical pulse went out; as it touched upon the inner magical formations, they lit up the formations once again. A phantom image appeared above the outer towers, then the inner towers and finally the central tower.

  Mana poured out of these formations in a stream, creating a cone shaped Mana Barrier around the citadel.

  “You ready with that power coding?” Dave asked.

  Malsour sent his senses downward through the structures below his feet. “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Dave stood. The central area under the tower was still massive, with the first two floors open for anyone to look at; above, large lights illuminated the space in the center of the floor with the ono in it.

  “Could you bury the construct and Mana well?” Dave moved toward one of the towers that was a part of the inner citadel.

  “Can do.” Malsour looked to the soul gem pillar that held the Mana well. Power descended through the thick coded lines that surrounded the Mana well.

  A hole appeared under the Mana well that disappeared underground. The floor sealed up as the soul gem around expanded over where the Mana well had been. He watched the Mana well and the core of the soul gem construct descend until it was right above the massive metal plate under the citadel, above the metal pillar that stretched down to the base of the support cone.

  Threads spread out from the soul gem construct, across the metal plate and reaching up and into the citadel, connecting to the soul gem that pervaded the structure above the ground. The threads came up and connected to the soul gem constructs that had spread over the towers around the inner castle.

  Malsour was tired but he wanted to see what Dave did next. This was the culmination of all their work over the last couple of weeks.

  Dave made it into a tower; around the inner castle, instead of going upward, he went downward. Steve and Malsour followed him. They went to an inconspicuous-looking doorway. Dave opened it up and they found themselves in a closet.

  “I’m not as powerful as you, but I can do this,” Dave said. Dark Mana surged around him as the floor beneath them started to drop down and then moved on a slant.

  They reached a point directly underneath the center of the tower in the citadel and above the center of the metal plate where the soul gem construct and Mana well were.

  Dave pushed his hands outward. The open area they were in expanded into a horseshoe.

  “Looks a bit Enterprise-y,” Steve commented, looking at the different consoles that formed the horseshoe.

  “The Enterprise has the open side of the horseshoe pointed at the screens—we’ve got the closed end,” Dave said.

  “By Fire, can we stop talking about your damn television and just see if this all works?” Malsour asked.

  “Someone’s grumpy.” Steve chuckled, his eyes flashed for a moment. “I’m connecting to the soul gem construct and sending a thread back up to us to connect into the consoles.”

  “Good.” Dave commanded the ground to create chairs and areas where consoles would be, as he smoothed out the floor and walls. He threw out mage lights, illuminating the space fully so that not only people with a mastery of night vision could see.

  A sprout of soul gem cracked through the floor, forming into a console at the rear of the command room, which was raised a bit higher to see the other consoles. It was clear that the commander of this room would sit here.

  The soul gem construct finished forming the console and spread across the room to create the floors and reach out to where the other consoles would be before it stopped.

  “We’re going to need a hell of a lot more power. That’s all I can do right now without more juice,” Steve said.

  Dave closed his eyes and checked his senses. He opened a nearby chat, encompassing all of the modified citadel. “Do not step outside the walls of the citadel, or come within five kilometers of the citadel. If you are leaving, please do so through the ono. Tell everyone who enters these rules. If not, you or they could die,” Dave said.

  “Nice. Really uplifting. You should do speeches for your day job,” Steve said.

  “Ass,” Dave said, unable to fully suppress the smile that rose to his lips.

  “Well, I hope this new power system of yours works,” Malsour said.

  “You and me both.” Dave pressed different controls on the console as well as using his own interface to chan
ge settings and prime a program.

  Runic lines across the citadel walls and the supports, pillar, and the roots that came off them, running deep into the ground, all lit up.

  At first nothing happened, and then Dave started to feel that the area around the citadel was cooling. In his senses, he could feel all of the heat energy around the city being pulled inward by the various runes, converted into Mana and poured into the soul gem construct that started to slowly grow more.

  The temperature outside started to drop, faster and faster, going from a hot, sunny day to a crisp autumn day.

  “Okay, so the heat exchangers are working.” Malsour used his own senses and feeds to the Aleph automatons to see what was going on outside of the city.

  “I just hope the cold exchangers do as well,” Steve said.

  The soul gem construct that weaved through this massive structure both underground and above it grew faster and faster, strengthening its ties to the different parts of the citadel and connecting to more and more of the supports. The more supports they attached themselves to, the faster power was pulled into the citadel as it wasn’t lost in transferring it through the supports’ runes.

  The metal supports were good with the runes but the soul gem construct was many times more powerful. Because they gathered power faster, they were also a better material to code. As they seeped into the metal runes, they had the effect of making them much more powerful, making the temperature around the citadel drop faster and faster.

  “Welcome to a winter wilderness.” Dave sensed that the ground around the citadel was actually freezing over.

  “Readying the cold exchanger,” Steve said.

  The ground temperature around the citadel reached minus five centigrade before the power they were getting was diminishing returns.

  “Switch,” Dave said.

  “Cold exchangers are active,” Steve said. This was one of the projects that had been giving the three of them and the other coders a headache for a while. Turning heat into power was pretty easy, and spells could be made from Mana to create something cold. So if there were runes that could convert heat into Mana, then there had to be runes that could convert cold into Mana. At least, that was their running theory and hope. If they could have two of these systems that collected this ambient cold or hot energy, as long as they were in atmosphere or a place that could be heated and cooled, then they could get power.