The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

Save my baby?...

Goddammit! Just what kind of a situation...

Stabilize Concentration check! Assessment, slow everything down, right now!

The sensation of being sucked down and crammed into an impossibly tight corner suddenly reversed and exploded out, ripping me out and along blood vessels, nerves, muscles, skin; the container around me warping and shifting and I was spreading out into it, through it, filling it up...

Concentration and Heal Ranks combined as I sat there motionless, changing absolutely nothing, basically freezing everything into suspended animation.

That freaking psychopomp or whatever it was stuck me inside a girl... wonderful. And if the ears I was reading were right, she wasn’t even human...

Whatever! I was in a shitty situation where she had just died and I had been stuck inside her with no time to reverse the situation. I had at most seconds to turn this thing around... if I hadn’t basically just bought more time with the Concentration check to stop me at the -9 the infusion of my soul had rolled her back from -10 and dead...

Major blood loss from a huge wound in her lower abdomen. Her belly had been sliced open, distended skin, muscle severed without a care... had they just performed a lethal C-section on her?! Mithar, who the... all the tell-tale signs, placenta and everything, ruptured and amniotic fluid everywhere...

Okay, this was a combination of pregnancy trauma and pure Health damage. Ability score damage and Health loss.

As long as my Concentration held, I was stabilized at -9, one thread from death again. Wonderful.

I could use magic to heal her, I just needed to set up...

No, I couldn’t.

Just reaching out to touch the magic gave me the weirdest feeling. Like I could touch it, and then the power I was reaching out with self-destructed.

I rolled my mental eyes and turned my attention to her body again, and how it was interacting with the Matrix I was trying to attach to her body so I could spellcast...

Two Bloodlines?

I stared at the threads of black and white my efforts had pulled from her nervous system, watched them winding up to my Matrix as if competing... and when they touched, they promptly obliterated one another.

Two perfectly opposing magical Bloodlines? Who was this girl?

More to the point, fuck this entire situation! Did they expect me to make a choice between one of the Bloodlines or something? Whichever one got into my Matrix would obviously become dominant and push away the other one.

Well, eff that. My skill was with the bog standard Arcane Bloodline, the mutt of Bloodline pedigrees. The Arcane Bloodline was formed from having multiple potential magical heritages, all mixed together in a slurry of raw magical power that didn’t give a shit about other Bloodlines’ notions of purity. It was the Bloodline of magic itself, not tied to any other force or power.

Mutual destruction just meant release of energy. If these Vulcan ears meant what I thought they did, this girl was probably half-elven, which meant both human and elven bloodlines, all of which meant at the least +Fey and +Elven to the Bloodlines, plus whatever muck had built up in the genome on the human side, which could be anything from ancestors becoming liches to blessings of gods to alchemical experiments to Curses passed down...

And my own Death Curse was definitely contributing to this mix. I could see it mixing fine threads into the Matrix, looking for any sign of that ol’ Aelryinth Seven Traditions Theurgy, which it definitely wasn’t going to find here.

I focused down and proceeded to start spinning all the magic inside this girl at maximum speed. I reached down and dragged it out of every cell, every iota of magic naturally infused into her, every hidden Bloodline and recessive magical gene of being a Natural Powered. Wherever and whatever she could draw power from, in whatever infinitesimal amounts, I dragged it all out of her and began to spin it around my Matrix.

The silver and jet threads were the biggest and the thickest, and kept destroying one another. As they did, the power kept passing to the other traces of Bloodlines and powers, binding them together in destructive harmony. I kept them circling, weaving them tighter and tighter, building that first Core towards illumination and ignition...

Critical mass was reached, and the condensing threads exploded with light and power. A kaleidoscope of colors blazed to life, shot back along all those Bloodlines, a harmonic surge of lesser Bloodlines and magic empowered by the major ones that could not stand one another.

I was pretty sure every single cell in this girl’s body was now glowing in ecstasy at the sudden rush of power tearing through her, and the two Bloodlines, all the Bloodlines, vanished in the pure rush of the arcane fire now swirling through me.

Remove all bias, just leave me the magic. Thank you, goodbye!

And it took my damn Matrix with it. I was starting over from scratch?! Gawdammit!...

It was a weird-looking Core, because it was definitely woven through with the influence of my Death Curse, and I didn’t even want to know what effect that was going to have. Certainly, I couldn’t possibly take the path Aelryinth had when building his magic, so I was now going to have to build this thing up from nothing... which, considering I wasn’t the same species or gender, was basically a given regardless.

Whatever. I had to weave this thing to save whatever this excuse of a new life I was going to have was. How much Karma could I dump into this?

I seemed to have to Level... and I was currently in the middle of Character Creation, one way or another?...

My limit was probably the amount of Karma she had while living. I had no idea how much that was, as this was basically the equivalent of a spontaneous reorganization of Karma, with the amount my splinter of a soul consisted of perhaps being released at a more regular rate right now.

First Class?

Wizard. The creation benefit was access to all Cantrips without needing a spellbook. I would only have four + Read Magic active, but that was more than enough for now.

That didn’t change my Karma at all. I didn’t even Slot as I started taking action. I spun up the Valence I orbit, swirling it into shape as Karma helped form it, with the empty Engrams where power began to concentrate, waiting for the Spell Engrams to take form there.

I wanted to set an Arcane Bond... yes, she was wearing a ring on her left ring finger. I didn’t know where she got it, but it was at least QL 26, and was made of a white gold alloy... something I could build on.

I need to get Sustained as fast as possible. With an Arcane Bond, I could improve the Ring as if the Item Creation Feat for it was active. Very important, although there was literally nothing I could take right now that would be helpful, and it would take time to Infuse, regardless.

I could also pick one spell to Slot, plus two for my Intellect bonus... but that was completely secondary, oddly enough, because I needed to heal, so I had to ignore all the initial Creation stuff which would be so important to a One and keep going.

Scribe Scroll Class Benefit – Swap! Signature Spell Feat, Shards! This was a ubiquitous choice for Valence I’s. +2 to Caster Level and -1 to total Weirding costs on Shard spells!

Level One Feat, Dauntless! I really needed a clear head right now, and the stress was getting to me. The first spell I Cast had to save me, or I died.

My worries and concerns fell away, leaving my thoughts untrampled by anxiety and the risks I was taking/had been forced into. -9 HP wanted to move, but I hung on and didn’t let it as I made my changes, pure willpower clamping shut the blood vessels and keeping the cells from admitting it was over again.

Purchase Arcane Domain Mastery/1, Healing Domain!

A dark light went on in my head; another Slot opened in my Valence I, and the Stabilize Cantrip winked on in my Core.

Purchase Feat, Augment Healing!

Slot Faith Healing I in Domain Slot!

The spell, a prayer rewritten to accommodate arcane magic, settled into place. I promptly replicated it in all my Intellect Slots, because it was the only spell I could get, as I certainly didn’t have a spellbook sitting here!

I Cast, letting the power move through me, noting that this was much, much less painful back when I’d been part of a human and required an Implement to do this so smoothly. I had to release my Concentration to gasp out the words and twitch my fingers, my heart was faltering and arrested in mid-beat as life started to drain from me, and now all my focus was on completing the pull on magic and letting the spell broadcast through me.

I could feel death once again looming over me as the spell went off. Faith Healing automatically maximized the amount of healing you received from the spell, as long as you shared the same faith with the Caster.

I didn’t even know who I could be said to be worshipping at the moment, but I definitely shared that faith with myself!

Healing Domain, all Healing Spells cast at +1 Level. Augment Healing, all Healing spells heal +2 per die. The base d8+1 was auto-maxed to 9, 10 for Domain, 12 HP for the Feat.

Swirling black and silver magic bubbled over the bloody hole in my belly, and the blood and gore on the floor disappeared in a swirl of healing light. Flesh drew back together, blood spontaneously began to course back through my veins, ripped and severed muscles were brought together with a gasp of icy pain, which soon settled to a dull throb and flushing sensation.

I went from -9 Health to +3. I was no longer in danger of dying.

My abdomen convulsed, and discharged a whole bunch of stinking stuff, including the placenta, into the remaining bloody mess on the floor. I wanted to scream and curse, and instead Focused very, very hard on ignoring the pain and rebelling of my body against what was going on... because I didn’t want to attract any attention right now.

Somebody had torn this girl open and ripped a baby out of her. I definitely did not want them thinking she was still alive for at least the next minute or two.

Spells in Spellbook as a Wizard! I’d normally get 3 plus my Intellect bonus, but I didn’t have a spellbook, and could only grimace, since it was completely dependent on having a place to put the spells...

That said, Run, Vanish, Protection from Rain, Hidden Alignment, Endure Elements, Enlarge/Reduce, Comprehend Languages, Sleep, and Unseen Servant all glowed on my internal wall, waiting to be written down somewhere so I could actually Slot them as spells.

Second Class! I was made of Karma, I knew I had enough! Sorcerer/1, Sage Sorcerer Arcane Bloodline variant, which I now intended to make my Primary Class at Four. I wove the new Valence I orbital around my Matrix, and promptly Slotted Shards and Shield as my first Spell Engrams; my Bloodline spell of rote Identify, made for discerning how magical devices worked, auto-Slotted with them. Five Valences hummed in the Ring, ready to be used.

Swap out the Bloodline power of TK Throw for Power in the Blood: +1/die to Bloodline and Spell Focused spells. +2 to Spellcraft and Arcane Lore for Sage, instinctive empathy with magic from the Bloodline... and used Intellect instead of Charisma for all purposes, meaning it synergized VERY nicely with Wizard.

I already had an Arcane Bond, swapped that out for Devoted Intellect. This gave me Intellect to Will saves, and I could use Intellect instead of Wisdom for all Skills.

Intellect was the uber Caster Stat, and I intended to abuse it...