The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 166

Part 24

“It’s either that or development or both, since we already know that magic capability has little or nothing to do with physical size.” Fire pointed out. “Six must weigh twice me now, and he has twice my strength, but my power matches his and Val’s pretty closely.

“Watch.”

She did what Val had done, and was a bit less capable than her half-sister as a wizard, and a bit more as a warlock.

“See, there you are.” she concluded with satisfaction.

“I’m trying something else.” Mark said as he cast. “First I’m going to make my collection field so dense that almost no warlock source power gets through it, like I did with the Source and the heat when I blocked Zarkog. Then I’ll expand that to as much area as I can. Measure my output versus my last attempt. Make sure you kids stay in front of me so you don’t get blocked.”

He cast, concentrated, and went as far as he could.

Povon gave the result. “You only covered about an eightieth of the area, but your power output was almost the same, just a bit less.”

“Ah, good to know.” Mark nodded. “Shall we move in?”

“How far?” Povon asked.

“Rather than a certain distance or a portion of the distance to the sun, I’d like to move in enough that the intensity of the sunlight is exactly twice what it is here. But I don’t know how to do the calculation.” Mark admitted.

“Like this;” Povon said, and demonstrated both the calculation and the group Translocation.

They repeated all the experiments, then moved in again, then again. At each stage their ability to cast collection fields was the same, but where the sun’s intensity was eight times as much as where they’d started they found that venting heat from their bodies and brains was becoming a serious issue. They also found that maintaining such big collection fields and casting such incredibly powerful spells was starting to wear on their concentration.

They made one more jump inward and found that the sun’s power at sixteen times it’s intensity in the void above Kellaran was all they could process, and the maximum size of their collection fields was reduced.

“All right, that gives us our maximum power collecting and casting capabilities.” Mark stated with satisfaction. “Now let’s go back to where we started and try it with all four of us co-operating to cast one big collection field at a time.”

They did so, and when the four of them were expanding the three children’s collection fields for Source power for their wizardry, they did the same for Talia, Alilia, and the three dragons. They found that such co-operation increased their total power to more than the total of their individual abilities.

“All right, let’s pool all our power and our will and see how much of the ones you have now we can do all together.” Mark instructed. “That way we know how much total power we can generate together.”

A few minutes later, they had their answer.

“All right, we command the power of about twenty-eight billion square kilometers of source at this distance, times sixteen for maximum intensity closer to the sun. Still less than one one-thousandths of covering the surface of the sun, and far less than that at the distance from the sun of maximum usable intensity. We were still a very long way away from the sun at sixteen times normal sunlight intensity, which would make for a very big globe. We’re still only capable of using a very tiny fraction of the sun’s output of magic.

“But still, that’s the equivalent of a normal-density power field at the distance of the sun from Kellaran with an area of about four hundred and fifty-six billion square kilometers. That is an absolutely colossal amount of power we have at our complete disposal, not to mention how many single-purpose independent spells of maximum power the four of us could cast in any given amount of time.

“Now it seems to me that the most efficient attack we could use with that power is Fire’s modification of Tithian’s Sun-Gate spell. We’ll add functions to identify the best places to cast a Gate to the sun on the demons or on their craft, and how big it needs to be to destroy them. If they can get it directly on the demons’ bodies on their most vulnerable place, I don’t think the Gates would have to be very big at all.

“If the spells are independent the demons might crack the spells’ protections and disable them, but I don’t think there’s much that’ll counter a Gate to the sun. They might find a way to Shield against a tiny one that would otherwise kill them, so we’ll have the spell just keep expanding the Gate over their surface until they’re covered and consumed, if necessary. And if we keep them under our guidance so they can’t be disabled they should be completely effective, period.

"Even with all the other functions, the Gate part uses almost all the power, so the spell is almost completely limited to the size of a Gate we can cast at the distance we have to use it. Let’s give that a try, shall we? We’ll cast the two portals of a gate only a hair’s width apart so we don’t risk anything. We can calculate the difference from the distance component afterwards.

“Fire, the Gate spell?”