Part 11
“We’ll cast more Xervian-style Wards, to absorb the power of such attacks.” Povon decided. “The elven-style Wards are better against individual demons because of their deceptions and transducing-counter-attacks, but they’re less efficient against big pure-energy attacks.”
“That’ll help, but not enough, not against something like we faced today.” Mark noted. “I think casting more varieties of Wards might stop them from Translocating in, though. We should cast every variety of Wards that we know of, with every kind of power and every kind of casting style we have available. And we should try that trick you showed me for psionic Shields, where you cast one, and then cast another at a different frequency. I doubt anyone’s ever tried to do that with other kinds of spells before. Shifting the frequency of complex spells is a tough task, but I bet we can figure out how to do it if we all work together. Actually, Yazadril did some basic work like that when he first figured out how to make wizard’s spells work on me.”
“And while you’re working on all that to stop attacking Translocations,” Valentia suggested, “You should give me that Xervian Wards spell and let us work on it for a while. I know it’s a really, really old unicorn magician’s spell. Since it’s really old and was probably designed to be cast by a group of unicorns, I’m sure I can make a much more direct and efficient way of casting it. And all unicorn spells have a big psionic component, and I’m sure my brother and sister can come up with improvements in the psionics of the spell. I’d also like to check to see how casting it with pure warlock-power affects its power-absorption rate. I mean, the spell absorbs power as it’s charged and as it’s attacked. There’s no limit to the power it can absorb slowly. It only gets overwhelmed when the power it’s hit with suddenly is a lot more than the power it had charged up with before that. If we can get it to absorb power a lot more quickly, it might be enough to stop a big explosion like today’s. Karzog can help us with it too.”
“Here.” Povon said as she passed Valentia the Xervian spell.
“All right then, let’s form up into teams and work on all that.” Mark said.
“I’d like Nemia, Povon, and Alilia with me on the frequency shifting problem.” Yazadril announced.
“We’ll compile all the forms of Wards and Shielding spells we have among us all.” Silaran announced, speaking for the unicorns.
unicorn and one dragon with us on this, so Kragorram and Equemev, you’re with us. And we’ll have Ria to help with magecraft. And
rest of you magic users can join whichever team you think you can
with me.” Wittan announced as he
will you do?”
‘em to get bored out there. Some will be standing on the ground just outside the wards, so we’ll build some nice drop-traps for them. And a lot of ‘em will be flying
Yazadril nodded. “A lot of these young elves won’t be very interested in the complex spell-work on the Wards.
his team out as the magic teams
from team to team; translated to different techniques by Mark’s team, frequency-shifted by Yazadril’s, simplified and improved by the children, then back
hall as they worked, and spent the last hour before supper consolidating their work. Finally they called the elves from the construction team to lend their power to the Command Link, and they all cast the improvements on the Wards with all the power they could muster, before
day was the same, and the next, and the next. Since everyone in the community had been ‘killed’ in the last exercise, they didn’t mind putting in the effort to prevent it from happening
improve the Wards and pour their power into them, and to build traps and catapults with various magic improvements.
the last explosion, though it destroyed many of the newly-built catapults and a few of the traps, as well as two of the nearer sub-surface emplacements. The remainder of those took their toll on the thousands of demons who arrived a moment later, though it was a small fraction of them who were killed. They all appeared as flat black spheres, for their new Shielding was all that could be seen
the sky was full of fire and fury, and the air was filled with a physical cacophony of noise and