The inhabitants of this volcanic area were firenewts.

These were the devolved, mortalish descendants of elemental salamanders, the flaming half-men, half-serpents of legend from Elemental Fire. They had black skin whose cracks showed the heated flesh beneath, could breathe fire to a short range, and had the same kind of salamander proficiency in working metal, loving lava, and conquering anything colder than themselves.

Their preferred mounts were fire striders, which were vicious elemental versions of either flightless birds or raptor-dinos, depending on how you looked at them; mean fire-spitting bastards whose favorite pastime was standing around in burning forests.

This area was a slipshod territory where no Obelisk Zone was raised, and so no constraints were on safeguarding the natives, nor stopping attackers. As a result, the surrounding Zones of animated undead, grey dwarves, hill and mountain giants, and vampires had considered them fine hunting sport and a good way to let off steam for their more aggressive underlings.

The firenewts had reciprocated the fact, and their attackers never seemed to properly learn the lesson that when attacking creatures who lived in and were descended from fire elementals, mass fire resistance is really a thing, since the firenewts seemed to be thriving pretty well despite their neighbors.

Us, we weren’t so ill-equipped. Freezing, Coldphasing, Bane, Enmity/Fire, and other such custom preparations were all over the place. There were cold spells, and acid for firenewts who happened to be prepared for them, and yeah, they had native hellhounds and hellcats here and there, and large numbers of firedrakes, a couple lava wurms, and some actual real salamanders on long-term visits/vacations, along with bringing in some fiery devils, mostly burning abishai, for funsies and some fiendish bloodlines to spice up the magical gene pool.

Everybody but the apes and dragons were here, as those were busy dealing with invading hordes trying to escape the ruination coming down on them in a few days. Ravaging the neighboring Zones made it easier to divert the hordes around them, but inevitably such forces were also hungry, and rampaging through the forest chowing down on monkeys and greenery seemed like a good idea to most of them.

The dragons and their riders, along with a few angelic haror, had been engaged in a great deal of airborne combat, keeping the skies clear with the help of the winged monkeys. A unit of Ironblood Nulls had been tasked to reinforce them to help deal with the numbers of flying enemies, and massed Interdictions at unfortunate times for invaders could send literally thousands of attackers hurtling to the ground, where the chakon, champa-ka, and mandrilla dealt with them savagely, drumming them beat-sticks hard.

Elder Arg was far from averse to making more Exemplar Lite Elixirs, and had, with the help of Wayfair, salvaged the apparatus they’d made from a Mu Spore in that reduced Mushroom Zone, and made up Elixirs en masse for all the participants. The matter of him being the only one who could make the Elixirs was not something he exploited, as I was the one who had possession of the spilled Exemplar Blood, and the ultimate trust from the Three Kings... and none of them could really defy me. A working 50 Charisma combined with my Warlord bonuses was just frightening to deal with.

Even King Ivory had gotten into the show... and there had been other Mushroom Zones found in this Shardzone, which had been brutally cleared of Mu Spores by my trio. There were even more in the other Shardzones, but they had mostly been left alone unless the path of the Void Brothers doing the full circuit crossed them. They could be harvested later... and would be.

As a result, a lot of Mu Goop got processed by Exemplar Lite apes into Elixirs, and was shared with the mandrilla and the flying monkeys, as well as the uranga and the bandob, along with Elder Arg’s Bloodline.

The defenses of the monkeys took a mighty leap forwards. Naturally they also wanted to know more about the great Markspace their mighty champion spoke of so reverently, and a couple of the champa-ka had taken the necessary Ranks in Tattoo Artist and Spellcraft to make Marks that could, with my approval, link to a powerful Marked being’s own Mark... that entity naturally ending up being Elder Arg.

The ubiquitous Mark was naturally Intellect, and so the average intelligence level of the monkey kingdoms was skyrocketing. It was heartening to hear, and he got them to work on a great localized Formation that would help them to defy the incoming temporal synchronization. Skulls of invaders were a primary component, and were contributed enthusiastically.

Meanwhile, pretty much all the rest of us were now in this fiery landscape, running down all these firenewts.

There were thousands of them, they were very aggressive, fighting bitterly to the end, and they had a lot of fire magic to send at us. Of course, when everyone is Buffed against fire, they should have been more inventive, but that was their fault.

They did have a copious amount of loot from raw metals and minerals spilled out by the lava, and eagerly mined while they were also digging for the metals for their armor and weapons. We impolitely took hold of all of it, sending most of it outside to spill into the warehouses from all the bricks and blocks we were also sending out via Tapestry.

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“Soooooo... what’s the play, Sama?” Briggs asked, as we stood on the rim of the volcano that formed the heart of this hot zone.

The Priests of the firenewts had been undertaking a Ceremony here when the haror swooped in and flash-froze the entire congregation, stopping them from doing any funny stuff with the burning caldera yonder.

“Come along and see,” I said mischievously. I started down the crater wall, sliding down the jagged yet soft edges of the side here as if it were a slick slide, and he followed without hesitation.

His high-end Vajra fire resistance meant he had no trouble moving across the bubbling surface of the lava with me, and we made a trip around the roughly hundred-yard surface, looking at what was below.

We did move on tiptoes, metaphorically speaking. After all, this was an active volcano, and if it let go, that would be bad.

“Right here look good to you?” I asked, and he looked down.

“Probably best,” he agreed, and I /whistled mentally.

Three haror prepared for this, and immune like me to temperature extremes, swooped in overhead and began Casting. The lava in the area was opened up by a combination of Control Fire, Part Water, and Rock to Mud in Ritual, slowly and grandly pushing the thick soup of two-thousand-degree stone back to the dark black surface below in this area.

Sticking up out of that rough black surface was a blue-black spike about twenty feet high, almost the hue of adamant. We’d salvaged a lot of fire-metals off the ‘newts, and even now the haror were working at Shaping and Transmuting free the vein of adamant the newts had found, aiming to get as much of it out of here as we could before it went away. The Rockborn, heck, everyone, was lending muscle to that effort at the base of the mountain, tons of ore being hauled away by superhumanly strong workers eager to claim all that they could before it vanished.

Adamant make more QL 40+ Gear, yo!

Wayfair was already waiting for the smelters who were smelting free the excess stone, ready to Tapestry the whole mass and get it out of here before True Dawn.

She was quite decked out in Gear by now, very little of which she’d made herself. As she was responsible for securing all our wealth, it was agreed that everyone would split the duties of making her Gear among ourselves. The cost individually was minimized, and at the same time multiple pieces of Gear were worked on among different parties.

That they had to be QL 40 or higher, AND aesthetically pleasing, was a given, so Briggs and I ended up making the raw metalcraft, the dragons or Elder Arg did any Spellcraft, and Wayfair shuttled the pieces to the different groups to work on, individuals giving up a night of empowerment and the wealth that went with it to Infuse her Gear, leaving her time to teleport all over the place, see the sights, and transport away literally tens of thousands of cubic meters of goods over the past six months, laughing as she looted like no succubus had ever looted before.

So, yeah, she was decked out like a Herald of Sylune should be, to the best of our abilities. There was at least half a million gold in Gear adorning her now, girting her in layers of magical protection and potential offensive power that should give just about anyone conniption fits if they tried to mess with her.

At the same time, her evacuating the wealth of everyone, even splitting it with us, meant she was earning major Karma, even if she didn’t engage in combat. While ostensibly someone of her new status should be rather above mortal affairs, those mortal affairs had just made her the equivalent of a demigoddess in raw power, and she was doing the sort of Good work you just didn’t see as even being possible very often.

Fuzzy and I hopped down this hole in the lava, ignoring the heat rising all around as we skidded down the air and landed on the black surface below, next to the spike.

“You sure this isn’t going to blow up?” he asked, as I eyed the slightly curved spike with some trepidation. After all, consequences of messing this up were impressive, to say the least.

“Cross thine paws and hopeth Sama not be crazy,” I winked back. At these moments, being Dauntless and not really afraid of anything really was incredibly useful. Despite facing something that could literally blow up in our faces if it went wrong, I took out an enchanted adamant carving tool and proceeded to walk up to that twenty-foot spike’s base.

The amount of Fire running through this thing, humming just below the surface, was thick and intense. Just a blip in it, and the volcano around us was going to pop like a cork, and we’d be taking a free ride in the sky for a loooong ways. Breathing steadily to calm my anticipation, I crouched down and began to carve.

Yeah, this shit was magically-reinforced by the energy running through it, completely capable of ignoring truly massive forces, and then mending any damages or scratches to leave it unblemished. It took a special level of Blooding attuned to Fire, using the fact that what I was doing was designed to work with the existing magic and make it stronger, for me to actually start carving into it.

Even then, the chips didn’t fall off as much as melt back into the base, and only then if I worked quick.

Working quick on something this impossibly strong, even with a Tool designed for the purpose, required a LOT of muscle. My Philosopher’s Might was full out, and all my muscles and focus were on display. I was putting in place the first of the Runes, then secondary Patterns designed to link each of them, draw out the fiery energy within, and help them power up.

Yeah, there was a whole lot of power moving through this thing. The lines were lighting up very quickly, and the spike stopped trying to mend what I was doing as they began to burn red-hot in the dark stuff.

I wasn’t even sure what to call this. It was obviously a Fire material, but the quality level of it was clearly Eternal. I just didn’t have exposure to post-mortal materials like this. It was better than pure adamant, at least for purposes of Fire. Just crazy.

Still, I wasn’t going to stop, or it would just mend away the damage, repairing what didn’t light up in time and basically forcing me to start over from a certain point.

Thankfully, monstrous Constitution and VERY boosted Might meant working on this was not an issue.

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It took me six full hours of non-stop work to get carved what needed to be carved. I hadn’t designed most of the Pattern, Elder Arg had, which was of no surprise whatsoever. Executing it was within my capabilities, but I didn’t understand a lot of the why and relevance of some of the things I’d had to do.

Nevertheless, when I finished, there were six interlinked Marks on that spike, and about them was the gorgeous, flowing Pattern of a Greater Magic Weapon format, albeit done about six times more dramatically than anyone had ever Cast that spell.

The lines on it were filling with power at an impossible rate. The level of power at work here was Eternal-grade, past the mortal; if I could pull out this spike right now, the flaring Pattern meant it was already an Epic Weapon, even if only one of the Marks was actually active.

“Watcha think?” I asked Briggs, as I backed away from it.

“Well, it would look really eye-catching if we could have filled it in with precious metal... but I don’t know anything more valuable than whatever that is made of.” I had to agree with that. “Let’s get out of here. It’s twelve hours our time until the dawn of a whole old world.”

I smirked at him, and we both started treading on air, mists under our feet giving us leverage up. “Well, hey, just think what this volcano is going to leave behind when it dusts!”

He looked back down at the spike below as the haror floating above let the lava finally flow back, the silvery moonfire patterns and circles of the Ritual they’d been using gently fading away.

“Well, it’s going to be quite a show...”

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Author’s Note: Fuego is, of course, Spanish for Fire.