Chapter 14: Chapter 14
Within the brood construct, the offspring of Glrt were swimming with their will cores open to intrusion. Such vulnerability couldn't be left to waste. It was easy enough to grab all of the pieces that they would have offered to me via worship. Once they were completely open to my influence, it was easy for me to rewrite their inherent circuits into the ones I wanted. Far easier than it would be in any other point of their lives. I considered making them equivalent to Trgl, but I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with its will circuit, so I left it equivalent to the rest. It was startling that they already finished creating all of their anti-splooge, but it made it convenient to harvest before they were ejected from the brood construct.
By the time they slid onto the earth, free of their life-long swim, they had all the adjustments made to them that I wanted to make to them. Having a couple of the ogres close to advancing to the third composite I could see all of the runes they'd activate. I could also tell that their circuits were beginning to break down at that point, so there was not going to be a fourth composite for them. Not until I invented one, anyway. I left room for the fourth circle to gain a third composite, but I wasn't sure if they needed it. They could only advance as far as they had because my circles were better than the ones they made naturally.
Since I now had mana to spare, I started another brood, this one a few hundreds instead of a few tens. As massive as the mana I could get from my mana true circuit was, ogres served many purposes. Not the least of which being expendable meat shields to warn me if someone I couldn't handle approached. If I got too many…well my bone construct was running low anyway.
They'd matured slowly in Glrt because it couldn't supply them with enough mana quickly enough. It simply pumped mana into the water they were swimming in and hoped it went in the right place. I could have them maturing in less than a tenth the time it took Glrt to make them.
While most of my attention was spent trying to learn composites for runes and the rules for growth, some of my attention turned to the humans that scouted out my camp. Most of them were still in a group, huddled around a fire trying to sleep despite their fear with one on guard muttering to itself darkly. I was technically watching the whole time, but they really weren't interesting. All they did was run, scream, eat, shit, and sleep.
The exception was Angie. She had reached a much larger group of humans. When it reached the larger group, I'd been amazed at the turbulence in the mana. So much was leaking and swirling that control would be a miracle for weak creatures like humans. I felt a little bit less contemptuous of my Creator, thinking of how hard it would be for a creature that didn't understand its will to control mana surrounded by such furor. Then I remembered that my Creator didn't live in this place and my contempt returned.
My will was pulled pretty tight on Angie so I could only see fifty or so people around it, but Angie had taught me the perfect circuit for this exact situation. I built the scry circuit, improved to remove waste and line everything up properly, and used the vision both ogres and humans used to look directly down at Angie's head. As the scry finished establishing itself it started to rise into the air, widening my view as it did. There were far more than fifty people. I stopped counting after four hundred. As the scry widened my view, I realized that every building was more or less the same. They were either cones, pyramids, or multi-sided versions of pyramids made of green leather in varied sizes.
Some were colored differently, but I could tell that it was paint or some other coloring agent being used on green leather. The buildings stretched in every direction longer than I could empower the scry, as eventually it reached higher than I could with the limited will I'd left on Angie. I could have detached some to keep the scry active, but I felt I'd learned enough. There was a wall on the outside of this collection of humans and green buildings. I would build a wall…but it would be easier to simply run away. My ogre worshippers were quite fast when they wanted to be and they'd be even faster when they reached the third composite.
As my view returned to my usual cloud of will I realized that the buildings were stone on the bottom. The walls rose to Angie's head height on most, but some were as tall as an ogre before the green leather cones started. It entered one of the buildings marked with crossed swords on the door. The mana in the room was highly disturbed as boisterous intent was spread everywhere by sixty seven people in the main room spread around dozens of tables. Some were empty, others occupied by as many as ten. A few calmer people wandered between the tables, seemingly at random but their intent spoke differently.
Angie walked straight to the back of the room to a long stone table, behind which was a human who radiated more mana than any of the occupants of the room. It was interesting however, as the body appeared frail and brittle. Probably only skin-deep, though. That much mana radiating meant either many slightly inefficient circuits spread throughout the body or one excessively inefficient circuit in its will. It was slightly greater than the ogres before I'd fixed them, so I'd guess the former. Its will was also tightly enclosed within the flesh, refusing to even touch the surface lest the illusion be broken. "Euri, we've got a problem. We were scouting out east and I saw twelve ogres before my scry got hit."
Euri didn't seem fazed. Not even a spike of worry through its will. "How many gobs and hobs? Any special equipment? Any other creatures?"
"Maybe a slime? I didn't get a good look at it. Their equipment was poor. Really poor. No gobs or hobs, just the ogres. All I saw was the very edge of the encampment before my scry got hit, though. That definitely wasn't an ogre's work. And it was weird…no mana ripples. It was totally calm, but I didn't see any warding laid down. Not sure if it's an illusion or a stealth array, but either way means we've got a problem." Angie calmed down a lot when Euri didn't react like it expected. Apparently whatever Euri was doing to keep its will calm was effective on Angie's method of sensation as well. Maybe more so. Euri had a spike of fear when the word slime was mentioned, as well as when Angie mentioned its doubts about illusions and stealth.
One of the boisterous ones approached. "Ain't no way dump fuckin' ogres built no array. 'Spect me t'believe ogres done built n'array? Slime neither. Only thing dumber'n ogres." This creature's will was fascinating. Its intent was entirely out of control and most emotions that colored it vanished immediately.
Euri cackled. "Url, get back to your seat before I punt you out the door." She pointed directly where he'd come from. Maybe her spikes of fear were due to things I hadn't noticed and not Angie's words? Possible…but I doubted it. As an aside, one benefit of being in such a boisterous environment, both in this building and the city outside, was being able to learn differentiations and contexts for them. Figuring out that I knew some before learning and some that were wrong entirely was confusing, but more knowledge never hurt anyone. For instance, a day in my understanding was a rise and fall of the sun whereas everyone else thought of it as a rotation of the sun. Why I had a conception of a day when I'd never seen a sun nor its rise or fall was beyond me. "I don't believe ogres built an array either. Nor does Angie." Satisfied he'd made his point, Url tottered back to his seat. "You sure you didn't see an array?"
"I'm sure. Arrays pop out like a tree in a field for my scry. It was also weird for another reason." Angie leaned over the bar. Euri matched her, leaving very little space between their faces. "The slime, or whatever it was looked like a slime, was fucking the ogres. All of them female except the last and I didn't see what he was fucking."
Euri's fear had returned. It was stronger this time. "What color was the slime?" she may have asked a question, but she definitely wasn't looking forward to the reply.
Angie started getting nervous. Apparently whatever fear broke through Euri's will-calming exercise broke through her face-calming exercise as well. "White. Really white. Not like a metal, though, or a reflection. White like paper, but liquid."
Euri's fear spiked to its highest point, which Angie picked up on. "Well…fuck me with a pitchfork." She jumped over the bar. "Come on, we need to call the guard. Fucking necromancers and their cum golems. Sometimes I wish gobs were smart enough to smell the evil on them."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone