The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 112

Part 17

"Sweet gods this is beautiful..." Alilia quietly exclaimed, then they all fell silent and still for minutes.

"Damn it, I've almost got it..." Mark muttered, and drew more power until he was sweating freely and having to strain to hold it all. The other participants did the same.

He had just started to think; "That's it, I've got it! I understand what I did to Zarkog with the collection fields!" when Val, Six, and Fire had the same realization.

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere." Val said to herself, and a minute later she announced. "All right, I understand what I wanted to know about the collection fields. But there's still a lot of things I want to figure out, and we're not getting it. Most importantly, how to prevent us from losing this understanding and comprehension when we're not holding all this power."

"Try this:" Fire suggested as she carefully cast a cooling spell on herself, concentrating on monitoring and maintaining the temperature of her brain, and adding the excess heat to what she was venting above them. Then she drew and held even more power; almost half again as much.

"And this:" Six said as he showed what he'd done while Fire was casting the cooling spell; he'd cast a constant Healing and monitoring spell on his own nervous system, then drawn and held almost twice the power, trusting the spell to fix any damage this caused as it happened.

A blink later they'd copied each other's techniques, adding them to their own, and Val and Karz had copied both spells.

"I'm not doing that!" Talia declared. "It's too dangerous!"

"I will." Mark decided, and did so.

None of the others joined him. Soon they were being left behind, and could no longer keep up with the psionic conversation.

A couple of minutes after that it became obvious that while Mark and Karz could keep up with the three young warlocks, they were only following the thoughts of the three, while Val, Six, and Fire led the process with a continuous series of incredible breakthroughs.

After a few minutes more, Mark Retrieved his power stone and Moved its collecting stone back into the upper cone of power. He gritted his teeth as the extra energy flowed into him, and he added most of it to the heat he was venting above them, but he managed to increase what he was holding by an intuitive process that none of the others could grasp.

Soon he was keeping up with his children again, and contributing to the discussion. Karz fell behind, while the others were rapidly reaching a state of complete confusion.

"Look, you seven are not helping us, and this is becoming unpleasant for you." Val stated. "I propose that you concentrate on monitoring our well-being, and let us use the rest of your intellectual capacity. I have a nice spell set for that now."

Val, Six, Fire, and Mark deepened their Link to a greater extent than they ever had before, and became a single mind.

The rest gave Val their agreement and did as she asked.

A few moments later Fire had a big breakthrough, and Six and Val started helping her with it.

But her breakthrough triggered Mark to have a sudden inspiration that was a completely different solution to the same problem, so he politely co-opted the excess mental capacity of Talia, Alilia, Povon, and Equemev, and carefully withdrew them from his children's Link while keeping only a trace of that Link active between the young warlocks and himself. Then he let his awareness encompass the observers, and invited Yazadril, Nemia, Somonik, and Gran to gather as much power as they could hold, join his Link, and allow him to use some of their intellectual capacity.

They agreed, and did so.

Inspired by this, Val reached out to the observers Linked through the unicorns, and similarly added Tithian and nine of her people's researchers to her Link.

That was all the minds they could maintain in both Links at that level of psionic intensity, but it was all they needed. The two loosely-Linked groups continued to develop what they were working on, then moved on to related problems.

High above them, the FireStorm they'd created with their excess power was a blazing hurricane almost three kilometers wide.

Almost forty minutes later, Val announced to all: "We haven't come up with anything really new for the last six minutes. We're only still doing this because it's so beautiful. This is the most beautiful experience I've ever had."

"Same here." Mark agreed as he fully re-opened the Link with his children. "On both those points. But some of us are getting to be mentally fatigued, and we'll have to get ready for the meeting soon." "Yes, but before we end it, let's all have a big hug!" Val giggled, and everyone agreed.

A moment later there were five dragons, twelve unicorns, four elves, Mark, and his children, all clumped together in mid-air, all carefully hugging, nuzzling, and caressing each other while deeply Linked, all of their minds fairly sizzling with power and intelligence and a thousand thoughts every second, all of their senses and awareness heightened as they gloried in the experience.

Finally Povon was the first to withdraw her touch and her Link, and she vented much of the power she was holding in a mighty explosion amidst the FireStorm overhead. One by one, the others did the same, and the FireStorm dissipated.

"Ahh, I hated to let that go, but I'm burnt." she said as she did a long, slow stretch in mid-air. "We got what we wanted though, didn't we? All we wanted and more."

"A lot more." Mark nodded.

"But we don't have time to do anything with it now, or to implement anything in Serminak." Talia noted. "This took a lot longer than we anticipated. We have to get ready for the meeting of the Assembly." "Hah." Val said, and in the time it took her to speak the syllable she'd cast spells to clean herself, style her hair, Retrieve her finest armor and weapons, and don it all. "I'm ready, let's go early. There's a lot of people I'd like to meet before the business gets started."

"I'm with you there." Fire said as she duplicated her sister's preparations.

"Now hold on!" Yazadril insisted, even as Nemia took care of his preparations for him. "You must at least give us a summary of what you... Of what we... Damn."

"A harsh realization, isn't it?" Somonik chuckled. "We've already lost what we had when we were Linked and held the power. We knew what they'd done, if not exactly how they'd done it, and now we either can't remember it or can't comprehend it."

"Please tell me that it's not lost completely!" Yazadril said as he turned to Mark in exasperation.

"My stuff's not." Mark said as he considered the warlock's power stone. "I reduced everything we came up with in my side of the Link to fourteen spells, and put castable versions of them into this stone. Along with a whole bunch of locked personal keys and fail-safes. I don't understand it anymore either, but it's all ready to go."

Val giggled. "We did a little better than that, I think. We figured out that only a very small part of all the power we were holding was actually helping us think better. Then we figured out exactly how it worked. Then we figured out how to cast a power field on our own brains and nervous systems that does the same thing. It doesn't actually take much power."¶¶¶¶¶¶

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