The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 140

Part 21

"The scale can be further specified, for instance; a given warrior will deserve a different score for their ability to fight on land, in the air, on water, in water, and in the void.

"The same scale is used to indicate the strength of cohesive military units composed of many individuals. For instance, an average Shoal of Warriors of The Kag composed of twelve hundred and sixty individuals will have a sub-aquatic warfare effectiveness score of twenty-seven hundred and fifty.

"We expect that most of the combat in the upcoming war with the demons will be fought in the air and in the void. In those arenas, an average fighter of The Triax has a score of one point eight, and there are around sixteen billion of them here in our void, plus another billion of support personnel and non-combatants.

"An average god of The Triax has a score of ten million or so, and most of them score between five and fifteen million, though they have a few with scores as low as four hundred thousand. Their most powerful is First Aquamarine, Triax God of Power, with a score of at least sixty million. There are seventeen thousand, three hundred and three gods of The Triax.

"An average god of Kellaran has a score of about forty million, with most scoring between thirty-five and forty-five million. Our extremes range from a low of two hundred thousand to the highest score ever achieved in the experience of The Triax, held by Amirgath; First God of Draconia, with a score of about one billion and two hundred million. There are three hundred and twenty-three experienced gods of Kellaran, and we expect there to be at least another one hundred and forty-six new gods when Prince Mark initiates The Great Ascension. He may find more candidates when the occupants of the time-bubbles emerge.

"All of these figures are now available on The Comprehensive Listing of Military Assets, a document which will be constantly updated as our might and our accounting of it improve. All our vessels, physical weapons, supply sources, supply chains, and other assets, as well as every military unit's state of readiness, are also available in The Comprehensive Listing. With this document in hand, we can now begin planning our first completely comprehensive and co-operative training exercise. It will simulate an attack by one quarter of all our void-capable forces on the demons' vessel, at the time when we have decided we will attack it, being approximately eighteen months from now. We should be prepared to conduct the exercise within a week.

"The planning for the exercise will be lead by Prince Yazadril; Supreme Commander of the Military of The Just Alliance, First Crimson; First of the Triax Gods of War, and myself. If those two will join me here, we will begin organizing everyone else who will contribute."

After those three had met on the stage and conferred for perhaps fifteen seconds, the rest of the assembly began starting conversations among themselves and ordering drinks and snacks from the attendants. Mark and his family were psionicly following what was being said on the stage when Yzell appeared on the floor before Mark, laying flat on her belly with her palms flat on the floor beside her head. Since her face was hidden, they had to check psionicly to see who it was.

"Yzell?" Mark asked in a puzzled tone.

"This position is one of supreme shame among the elves." Alilia stated in irritation. She nudged the prone midwife with her toe and demanded; "What have you done?!"

"I... I have solved the fertility problem!" Yzell cried in anguish. "I have discovered how to ensure that any elven woman can be pregnant from a single mating if she so chooses, and any humanoid female can become pregnant by almost any male of any humanoid race."

"So, ah, why are you laying on the floor?" Mark asked as people all around them began to pay attention to the scene to and relate to others what Yzell had revealed.

"I have offended against you My Prince!" Yzell sobbed. "I have offended against you greatly!"

Mark's brow knitted, and he considered Reading her before deciding on patience. "All right, just start from the beginning." he told her.

"My Prince, my first breakthrough in the problem came from my study of Talia's pregnancy by you, my study of the fine-scale recording I made of Alilia's conception by you, and her subsequent pregnancy. But it was not enough, I needed to study more examples of the process, preferably involving other women than Talia or Alilia to further isolate what parts of the process were caused by their bodies and what parts by yours. I tried so many times to bring myself to beg you to impregnate another elven woman, but I could not ask you that merely for the sake of my research, even as important as it is. And after Hilsith solved the longevity problem, and I was still not making any more significant progress on the fertility problem, I... I became jealous of her success, and envious of the adulation she received for it. I knew that if I only had a few more examples of the process, I could solve the problem.

"So, when Balen came to me on behalf of the forty-three females of The Hilian Volunteers, asking if I could give them the spells that made it practical for you to have sex with them, including the Contraception..."

"Great blazing Source above!" Mark breathed in shocked realization. "Don't tell me you..."

"I did My Prince!" Yzell sobbed, crying fully now, her voice hard to discern with her forehead pressed to the floor. "I purposefully ignored what an offence against you it would be, and concentrated on the hugely greater good that would come from it... The very survival of the elven race may depend on this in the days ahead, and you have not truly been harmed! It was for the greater good! But once it was done, my conscience and my vow of justice upon Mountainfire began to torture me, until I was driven to confess."

There was a long pause before Mark asked in a quietly angry tone; "And the girls didn't know about it?"

"They did not, My Lord, I swear, and they still don't know! I have blocked the knowledge of their pregnancies from them."

"I see." Mark growled, and there was another pause. His knuckles cracked as he steadily tightened his clenched fists, and he struggled to control his rising anger.

"Out with it, Yzell." he finally gritted through clenched teeth. "How many of the forty-three females of The Hilian Volunteers are pregnant with my child without my permission?"

"All of them, My Lord!" Yzell wailed in anguish. "And Kalem is bearing twins!"

There was a long shocked silence at that.

"I'll bet that you didn't solve the fertility problem until a moment before you came here to confess!" Talia angrily accused. "You say your conscience tortured you, but you still weren't going to confess until you had that achievement to balance your crime!"

Yzell kept crying whole-heartedly, but didn't speak.

Mark's anger grew until he could no longer control it. What began as a growl of angry frustration grew into a full-bodied scream of rage as he crouched a bit and held his fists shaking in front of him, he stamped his foot as he struck himself on his thighs, then he was gone in mid-scream.

He did nothing to prevent himself from being followed, and his family did so a fraction of a second later. They found themselves in the valley north of Focus Mountain.

"EVACUATE THE FIRING RANGE!!! NOW!!!" Mark screamed, augmenting his voice with ear-splitting magical volume and powerful psionics, and before any of those in the valley could do so, he began blasting the volcano north of Focus Mountain with an incredible inferno of destruction while screaming his rage at the top of his lungs, his voice still as amplified as his barked command.

The few weapons and spell researchers who had been in the firing range when he arrived fled in a panic.

"Fall back!" Alilia psionicly commanded, as she and the rest of the family moved back and up in a series of quick Translocation jumps until they were far enough away from Mark to comfortably observe what he was doing. They found themselves kilometers behind and above him, almost over the center of the Focus Mountain reflector, and still had to block most of the volume of Mark's cacophony of magic and his audible and psionic screaming, which itself sounded quite strange due to his extremely low and deep voice.

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