The Power of Ten

Chapter 12-349: Resolve of the Irish

Even The Mick’s knees wobbled at that welcome. That was literally hundreds of thousands of /voices slamming down upon all of them in totally sincere and hopeful welcome, and likely the most shocking and momentous moment of their entire lives.

His Banner popped over ten feet more, too.

There were tears coming down faces, none of them watery clear. As one, the Clanners all stood up, and with their Liege, roared back at the whole Allegiance, “BLOOD OF THE IRISH!” together.

Those standing to the side and looking on their weeping kin and comrades knew they’d just missed out on something awesome, and if a little disquiet and regret filled their souls, that was totally by design.

They were looking at The Mick, and now they could see him clearly, laughing with them, crying with them... and they could see the Monarch’s Mantle about him.

Old Man Kregor went to his knee again quietly. In eerie and sudden silence, the rest of the Blood of the Irish did the same.

The Mick took a long, deep breath, and nodded once.

Duty. Loyalty. The ties that bind between those who do not share blood. They could all feel it, and they could feel HIM.

Give him their Loyalty, and he’d not fail them.

Then they looked over at me, shook a little bit, blanched, and looked away.

Damn crazy Jesus-girl is right, /floated out from more than a few of them, which I raised an eyebrow at, glancing at The Mick, who only shrugged shamelessly.

I just chuckled, as Windwise swirled out of misty shadow next to her Banner, in front of the Wrapped and those with a lot of spite and malice in their souls.

Every Irishborn there, which didn’t include me, as Elrii had actually been born in France, and I technically in America, looked over at her and recognized the Pact with the Land.

More, they recognized that she was Irishborn as well, which startled just about everybody.

I flipped up the words, as she could not.

“This is a Warlord’s Vow, to one who will lead you in battle. If one day you seek to rise to an Oath and become something more, that is on you.” They all looked over at the Blood of the Irish, feeling an unspoken wall having risen between them. They couldn’t see it, but the rest of us could

“Take a knee.” There was no hesitation at my words, probably shame overriding any resentment.

“I, your name,” I began, leading them in the Vow, “a Child of Ireland, do swear to follow Windwise, Warlock Grandmaster of The Jet and the Silver Acknowledged by my Mother Land, to battle and to war, to fight and to serve, until the fighting is done, on this day, before Gods and Mortals!”

The Vow crystallized, and they looked up expectantly.

I saw and heard all of them gasp as they looked at Windwise. Their eyes were shaking as they turned their heads slightly, looked at me, and then hastily looked back at her.

Windwise smiled as her Banner rose slightly. All of them swallowed, and their eyes all fell as she looked from one to the next, one after another.

That towering hatred and resentment and thick-as-blood orneriness was quashed with a shiver of fear. They looked around at her, and then around in their own little section of the Markspace, and knowing /glances were being sent their way from other people there... who weren’t all that much different from them.

Then they could look Out There, at everyone else, and Up There, at me, and see the differences laid out starkly before them.

And they could look over at the Blood of the Irish, and see the difference there, too, in who they were Sworn to, and the Lord at the top of that stack.

It didn’t take much to see where they’d rather be, but it was equally obvious they didn’t belong there...

“Congratulations!” said Shvaughn in a very Irish accent, heavy with schadenfreude, dark eyes gleaming. “Mayhap someday, you’ll be a better person than I and you’ll get an actual Monarch that’s worth a damn. In the meantime, you’ll be reporting to Me.” Her knuckles popped loudly, and they all flinched at the memories of a lot of broken bones /flitted past them. “I have direct ways of dealing with attitude, and they tend to be painful, perhaps even lethal. You behave yourselves, and we’ll get along fine as you try to get strong enough to become a roadbump in front of me.josei

“If you have plans of lying, cheating, stealing, ganking, backstabbing, and the like, please, proceed with them! I will kill you slowly, take everything of yours, and burn it away for my own benefit. No muss, no fuss.”

There were /flickers from the ones out in China that she’d done exactly that at least fifteen times. A few of them had taken a whole hour to die, and everyone got to watch everything before she sent the soul of the traitorous, greedy idiot up into the Shroud to enjoy damnation there.

The newcomers all swallowed.

“You EARN the right to have a decent Monarch. Until then, you get the glory and wonder of dealing with ME.

“Now stand your worthless asses up and get ready to be Teleported, while I go over all the rules of do’s and don’ts, and explain to you the lovable consequences of violating them. We can then get ready to do some really basic killing of genocidally butchered Chinamen, and start the long process of turning you into something that’s worth a damn to our Mother Land.”

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Mister Burble was naturally going to tag along, and proved to be extremely useful. He morphed himself into place as a Teleportation Enhancement Node, which I merely had to supply with enough power to send them all off, basically ignoring mass as long as everyone fit into the Circle and there was an Energized Seal at the other end.

Getting someone to Energize that up wasn’t hard, and so basically it was crowding one another in together, touching the long oozy tentacles of the shoggoth, and getting whisked away to start doing things in the old, proper ways which were coming around again.

Mister Burble even took Bone Marrow along, because why not?

I went along to give them their first night of Buffs, and then departed as the newcomers arrived, along with a few thousand Chinamen who barely gave them a second glance as they all marched into the Shroudzone, and all the millions of slaughtered people waiting to be put down...

Me, I headed out to the shoreline much farther south, starting at the edge of the areas I’d not touched with Commune with Nature, and started sweeping up north along the shores. After all, Asia had a ton of aquatic locations down there, too, some quite populous, and there were not a small number of nukes to expend.

When I reached the Bering Strait, I’d cross over and come down the far side of America, and see how many surprises there were close to the shores. I would actually be able to zip down the west side of South America in a bunch of Waterjumps along my Lived-Line there, and if the sahaugin from before were any indication, recharging my ki shouldn’t be a problem...

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Starting Arc 13...

Daisy watched the tuxedoed figure of their target from the invisibility of the shadows, motionless as a statue. She could see the odd half-light of the glamour around the man, the illusion that concealed his appearance, and as the plane’s engine started running, she tensed, preparing to go after him.

“Do we attack or follow?” she asked eagerly, raring to go. She knew that her excitement stemmed from a lack of fear, the celestial music at the edge of her mind washing all that away, but still couldn’t help herself.

Her life was horrible, but this was at least something she could do about it.

The cool, very calm, nigh-emotionless voice from behind said, The Illuminati have secrets, and we’re going to find out some of them. He’s taking the quickest way to cross the water, probably to Norway. We’re going to track him as far as we can, and find out everything we can.

Daisy nodded, focusing on the flow of golden power inside her. That was her job, after all. She was in charge of Purity for their Heavenbound Pact.

Okay, technically it was Master Fred’s Heavenbound Pact, but given that he was sharing the benefits with so many of them, she thought of it as all of theirs, and he didn’t correct her.

Heaven was big enough for all of them, after all.

She watched the plane taxiing and taking off, and nodded to the other. “Okay, bringing it out.”

The horns flowed from her temple, curling backwards, and then up and down, like some fantastic combination of ram and stag, sleek and black and tipped in silver. The raven’s wings of black, and the angelic wings of white below them, flowed into existence, and the long and powerful tail came out of her spine, arching up above her like a scorpion, gleaming red and with a wicked poison stinger on it.

She could feel their power increase eightfold as their hands grew in size, especially the fingers... too long, too elegant, and too fantastically deadly with the power rippling around them.

It was Candace who activated the Ring on their finger, and they turned Invisible, on top of the Vampire’s Veil which would ensure they weren’t picked up by any radar.

They soared into the sky like a rocket, easily able to withstand g-forces that could knock a normal person cold, jumping ten floors in a second, only getting faster as their wings kicked in.

Keeping the airplane in sight as it accelerated into the sky would be effortless. If they poured on the speed, they could easily catch up to it, tear off the tail, and send it into the drink below... not that such a thing would impair the lich riding in front at all, she realized at Master Fred’s calm assessment of the idea, and Daisy blushed as she was getting ahead of herself.

She wasn’t the specialized flier, as Maria had enthusiastically taken over that role and was happily sending them whipping and swooping through the sky, cutting through the winds as if they weren’t there. Four wings and a tail caressed the air, along with the powers of Heaven, Hell, Storm, and the Pits... and that wasn’t even using Fire to really rocket them along.

They could break the sound barrier if they really wanted to, which had shocked and delighted all of them the first time they’d done it.

There was only so much practice time to spread around, of course, even if more than one of them could and did practice at the same time, teamwork as important as individual skill, especially in the situation they were all in. Daisy just focused on her part of the job, keeping the heavenly power flowing to their Angel Wings, meeting Sharice’s Storm power to form the Wings and combine them with Angel Walk, the same Storm power going into the Erinyes Wings to accentuate their power, too.

Supposedly, the two Rings they wore could be used to further increase their speed. One was a slowly building Air Elemental Command Ring some of them were Investing with the Energized Jewels dumped on them, whenever they had non-combat time, and the other was Telekinesis, which actually allowed those not in physical control to interact with the world, making it very popular with all of them.

It was just a lot of time and money spread between the Rings. They probably should have focused just on the TK Ring, seeing how useful it was, but there were similar active-use Elements to the AEC Ring that they liked using, too, and of course Selena and Nanai were actively specializing in its use, as Trudi and Monica were the TK Ring.

It is a strange and wonderful and post-horrible after-life, she thought, as Maria pulled at the air and tested their limits, zipping all around at four thousand feet, carefully shy of the Shroud.