The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 175

Part 25

"Not to mention that his skill as a warrior is still absolutely breath-taking to me, and I've been watching it all my life. His grace in battle is unmatched by any being I've seen. If the organizers thought to limit him to the danger of fifty wizards, they failed. Father would be far more dangerous than fifty wizards if his sword was nothing but unspelled steel, even without his fire and claws and teeth. He must have butchered tens of thousands of demons today, or should I say, he sliced them with motions most efficient and artistic."

"Your skill is exactly equal to mine, and at the rate you're improving, you'll best me before you're even fully grown!" Kragorram laughed.

"How can his skill best yours when he copies your style exactly?" Povon teased. "For that matter, our skills are yours, since we got them from you with the transference spell."

"His skill may not best mine, but his size, strength, speed, tactics, and endurance surely will." Kragorram laughed. "And long before he's reached half his full growth!"

"Now you're just exaggerating." Karz laughed, trying to be humble while basking in his parents' praise.

"Perhaps, but if so, not by much." Kragorram assured him. "You'll be the greatest dragon who's ever lived, I'm sure of it."

"One thing's for sure, Karz." Fire smiled as she rubbed his hand. "With the limitations we faced today, you must have killed a thousand times as many demons as me. I'd have done better if I could swing a twelve meter sword too."

"True, but I'm a dragon, and among the dragons who fought today, my performance wasn't that exceptional, not like Mother and Father were." Karz protested. "I'm as skilled as they are, but I'm still pretty small for a dragon.

"Whereas anyone who hasn't seen you six fight before is in for a shocking experience, especially you three since you're so young and small looking. There was a giant who was killed today because he was standing there dumbfounded and saying holy crap as he watched you going through demons like a scythe through wheat. He didn't even notice the demons who tore his head off and ate it until it was happening."

They all got a chuckle out of that.

"Well, I have The Skills of Visinniria." Fire shrugged with a grin. "I wonder a little how good I'd be without it, or how good any of us would be. But I don't really want to find out."

"What I want to find out is how good it'll feel to go for a swim, eat a big meal, and go to bed." Mark declared as he stood with his family in his arms, and waited for the dragons to get out of the way before walking into the surf with them.

As they found, what he'd envisioned felt very good indeed.

Another week passed as they resumed their new routine, then they were visited at the Hilia cottage during a rainy afternoon by Amirgath and First Mauve.

Despite the weather, Mark and his family were working on the patio, keeping dry under a big bubble of Force and enjoying the occasional lightning strike and crash of thunder.

The two gods of different worlds floated above and beside the patio, seemingly unaware that the bubble of Force was intersecting their bodies.

"Good day." Amirgath began, and made a reasonable respectable shallow bow. "Today we will Translocate the spheres of The Triax into a circular path around Kellaran. But it will be an exceedingly difficult project, and the greatest act of power ever attempted by the gods and mortals of Kellaran and The Triax.

"The difficulty lies not only in the power requirements, the extreme distance, and the complexity and speed of the motions of the objects involved. There is also the consideration that a Translocation requires a complete knowledge of every bit and part of what is being transported, even if only as a subconscious gestalt. Even the smallest of the worldlets of the Triax war fleet is half a kilometer wide and contains hundreds of millions of individuals, along with all their infrastructure, possessions, domestic plants, and livestock. It is also full of liquid of a complex composition that circulates with a complex motion that must not be disturbed. That is a great deal of complexity to be simultaneously aware of, and their largest vessel is some forty-three kilometers in diameter.

"Even with all of the gods of Kellaran and the gods and citizens and devices of The Triax, it is still such a titanic job that The Triax are hesitant to commit to it. We are therefore recruiting the power of the citizens of Kellaran. We ask that all the power of The Just Alliance be made available to this effort, and we ask that the finest mortal psionicists and Translocators come with us to the Triax worldlets to assist in the envisioning as well as the casting. Which is why we are here now; your group represents a concentration of psionic ability."

"Actually, I'm chagrined that I never thought of this before, but then, no one else thought of it either." Mark told them. "All of that is unnecessary now. We can move the Triax fleet here through Gates. As we said the other day when we advocated for a strike on the demons, we can cast immense Gates if we really work on it, way bigger than we need to bring the biggest of the Triax worldlets here. We can do a Gate that big without even using automated spells if we get close to the sun to collect power.

"A Gate has a power cost for its size and its distance, but once it's cast it's just a window between two places. It costs the same in power whether nothing goes through it or entire worlds go through it, and there's no need to have any awareness of what's going through. In a lot of ways it's a lot simpler process, and even though it's a new spell-set, I'm sure it's safer than Translocating things as big and complex as the Triax fleet. And it'll sure cost a heck of a lot less in power. You also don't have to trust that billions of very different minds are going to be able to Link or meld or whatever without a problem."

"The only limitation," Six volunteered, "Is that you can't use a Gate to change the speed of something, unlike Translocation. Whatever speed the thing that's going in is doing when it enters the Gate's portal, it'll be doing exactly the same speed when it comes out the other portal. You can use the alignment of the portals to decide the direction it'll be moving when it comes out, but not the speed. So if the fleet needs to be doing a different speed to circle Kellaran than they're doing now, they'll have to speed up or slow down before they go through."

"Not so!" Fire stated, speaking up as soon as the idea struck her. "All that assumes that the Gate's portals are cast motionless relative to Kellaran. Meaning you'd have to get out ahead of them and cast the portal and wait for them to fly through it. But you can cast the portal moving with any speed you choose. You can make it simple by just flying along yourself at the speed you need to change The Triax's speed by. If they need to be going faster than they are now in order to circle Kellaran properly, then you just get out in front of them and fly toward them while you cast the portal. Your speed would be added to theirs when they come out, if the other portal is motionless relative to Kellaran. If you cast the portal in front of them and moving away from them at less speed than they're doing toward Kellaran, they come out slowed down.

"You could even change their speed and direction by moving both portals of the Gate at the same time, but the math on that gets pretty complex, now that I think about it."

The suggestions seemed to render the two gods speechless for a moment, when in reality they were communicating the idea to many others who were very far away, giving their opinions, asking the others' opinions, and waiting for consensus to be reached.

"We will have you do this thing." First Mauve then proclaimed. "Our vessels will need to be slowed. We will provide you with the necessary exact placement, orientation, and speed of the portals. We will begin the transfer with a very small vessel containing only a single mortal operator. If all goes well, we will transfer the fleet.☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

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