The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel 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.