My dear boy,

I brought my report of your activities to the Family Council. I perhaps could have ameliorated their response with the right words and spending some capital... but I sat back and let events play out much as I envisioned them.

They did not see the light in your eyes and the confidence in your step, and I may have forgotten to let slip that you had suddenly made Archmage, and how you achieved it. Combined with your instruction to halt Family assignments, it now seems you are an ‘unreliable rebel’ who needs to be ‘brought to heel’.

The Old Man did not intervene, and so you have been Outcast from the Family. Your stipend is terminated, and you are barred from all Family activities and functions. They have begun to move to secure Family holdings that you have authority over, and your retainers are being contacted and notified of your current status, with offers extended if they are valuable. It seems they value the people you have built up over the years more than they do you!

The matter with your lawyer and your in-laws will lay idle and be forgotten shortly. Now that you are Outcast, you will be persona non grata on the social scene, and moving against your decision would only draw attention to the fact they value the Family name even on an Outcast.

I am sure that you realize how dangerous it would be for you to join a hostile Family, and I have faith you have not even considered such a thing, given the nature of what you are doing now against the DuPonts. I have faith and trust in my son, regardless of what my siblings and parents blather about.

Fly free, my boy. It would do this old man proud to see you make Great Archmage, and let the Family cry into their tea if you actually achieve what I saw in your eyes. If Coralost is the Family you make after ours gave you up, then make Coralost great.

As a final note, on this matter of vengeance with the DuPonts: If you come up with some manner in which I may assist you in your vengeance against them with what authority I still retain, please let me know, and damn the Family’s words! They moved against my son, and I will not forgive them for that. I have already informed your brothers of what they did, and they also stand ready to assist in letting them know the Dows, and we in particular, are no soft persimmons to be plucked and played!

Sincerely,

Henry H. Dow

Your Proud Father

================

Cameron looked at the brooding winter sky above, and the dark waters with drifting ice all around them. A bone-chilling wind cut across the waters, but he didn’t feel it, keeping it at bay with ease.

His old man hadn’t let him down. He would have continued on his course even without his father’s support, showing him and his brothers and sisters what he could achieve without the support of the Family... but his family wasn’t letting him down.

He had anticipated the Outcast status, even reveled in it. The Family had effectively cut off their own hold on his loyalty, and were letting him free to flounder, the unspoken onus over him that if he joined a Family opposed to their efforts, he, and likely his whole family, would be eliminated with extreme prejudice for betraying the Dow Family.

But Coralost was not a Family, and could never really be. Going to work for them was... going to work for them, a job everyone in the Dow Family wanted, a relationship with a new up-and-coming power that every powerful Family and Great Family in the nation, perhaps the world, would leap to take advantage of.

If they only knew, they would be kneeling at the gates and begging to be brought into the Allegiance, the Markspace, the Academy, the Gritworks, the Wind Towers, the White Mana Zones, and into relationships with Great Beasts...

“We’re all ready, Cam!” the Mick called out, and he turned to look about them.

A dozen Void Mages, every single one Awakened by Lady Fae’s marvelous hand, had joined him on the shell of Queen Gichigumi, sitting out here like a small island in the stormy winter waters of Lake Superior. Surrounding them were dozens of Ice and Water Mages, also come to join the Formation.

A dozen Void Mages was something you’d be lucky to find in the Greatest of Families, although perhaps that would be less true in the future, with the Voidhouse in Mackinaw City open now.

Golden and moonsilver lines curled and whorled around the ridged shell of the Turtle Empress of the Great Lakes, and the Mages all sat within them, circulating power and sending it flowing through a Formation wrought upon the very shell of the Turtle Empress. An introduction from Babe, a conversation with Lady Fae, and a relationship had been struck.

He was now the most powerful mage affiliated directly with Coralost, giving him some new responsibilities, ones that involved less dealing with problems others did not want to dirty their hands with, and more with raising up the other wizards and artificers of Coralost.

A builder and a teacher and a maker, not just a magical fist behind a diplomatic smile.

The Mick was now one of his underlings and peers, if only because of personal power, and because Cameron had competency in moving in circles The Mick and his crew of deadly mercenaries did not. It was another of the things he was teaching, a new form of sophistication for a new form of spellcaster.

“Let us begin, then!”

They all sat down, and began to circulate power through the Formation. Slowly and gently, Queen Gichigumi’s power joined what they were doing, using the Formation as a power and an anchor, and they all began to draw the Mana in.

The waters, the ice, and space itself, the great powers of the Empress of the Great Lakes, swirled about them for miles and miles, but there was none out here to see it, nor even sense what was going on as the Mana came to them.

Came, was refined through circle after circle of the Formation, and was poured into the mages on the Queen’s shell... and the Empress Herself, accomplishing in moments what might take Her days to do on her own. The Great Beasts did not absorb energy so readily as Humans did, as the more powerful Beasts had to refine it over and over again, making it denser and heavier before it could join their incredible reserves, and so they raised their power over years, decades, centuries, even millennia and longer.

The Emperors among Beasts gained power very slowly, if at all. But this Formation...

This one night would be worth a whole year of Queen Gichigumi sleeping in Her palace at the bottom of Lake Superior. The agreement was that Coralost would hold such Meditations regularly with the Empress, in return for helping inspire Mages to Archmage in Water, Ice, or Void Magic.

His own personal price had been taking Water as his fourth Element, a debt he had gladly paid. Queen Gichigumi had not forgotten the pollution his forebears had inflicted on the Land and waters of Her territory, and demanded he be aware of such things in the future. Thus, he was now tied to the Earth, Air, and Water of Michigan, his home, and would be able to move about it with phenomenal speed to redress problems to it.

It was enough. The Oath he had taken he would fulfill, as he had the others. It was going to take time and effort, and a level of studying he had thought he had left behind, but he was going to master Wizardry, take his Caster Level past Twenty into Sagedom, and step into the power all the Dows before him had failed to accomplish!

He still needed destiny on his side, it was not automatic... but it was all on him, and the Road was clear, it was only if he had the Will and desire to make it there.

Which he definitely would, along with a level of cultivation resources that didn’t mean competing with his Family for rare components, plants, and items dribbled and drabbled out to the favorites in the Family.

He was also going to be going back to Baja and the Littoral Zone there after all these years. He had Soul Crystals to pick up, thousands of them, Stars to Tier up and give him a boost to his power his Family could only dream of. Having a Salt Seed was only going to help him when he did...

Yes, he was not going to miss the machinations of his Family at all, and when they inevitably came back to him asking for his return... well, he’d consider that when the time came.

For now, it was working with the Great Turtle of the Great Lakes to mutual benefit, helping Her as she helped them, making them all stronger together!

Void Magic thrummed in the air, space fluctuating about them, and Mana poured down into them at a speed greater than any private Meditation Chamber the Dow Family could access or afford.

He had over eight thousand Stars to refine, but the incredible supply of Mana would save him a great deal of time.

Meditating with Babe would also work for his Air and Earth Magic, in addition to Babe’s Plant and Void Magic. Princess Karegnondi wielded Water and Chaos Magic, the latter a complete surprise to him; it was the Element he promised to Awaken if he ever reached Sage, binding him to each of the Great Beasts. Perhaps he could help the Great Pike advance to Emperor, as well...

------------

There it is, the Mick thought.

Hopper paced to a halt on the hilltop, both of them looking to the horizon, and the looming mountain there.

Thunderbird Mountain, home of the greatest Beast Emperor of North America.

The eager howls from behind them cut his moment of reverie short. Hopper clucked disparagingly, and sparks flew as the Thunder Runner took off again.

The Tempest Wolf pack behind them was definitely not something they could fight off readily, and the land-running Bird and the Mage riding it made ideal prey for the Wolves. These lands were naturally homes for Lightning-attribute Beasts, who were all tyrannical and overbearing in manner, chasing away any Beasts of other Elements with domineering harassment and bias.

The various Avians of Lightning dominated, of course, and brooked no opposition to that dominance. Thunderbird Himself never took part in such paltry activities, generally responding to nothing less than Great Rulers or other Emperors coming into His personal territory.

It was Thunderbird’s writ that no Dragon was allowed to lair in North America, an edict enforced by every other Emperor here for fear of His displeasure. Many had been the Dragons who had sought to contest that writ, and many had been the Dragons who had died.

Drakes were watched carefully, but as long as they could not fly, were largely left alone. If they made any attempt to claim a territory as a Ruler, however, they generally were mobbed from all sides and chased back overseas, or they ended up dead. Dragons and Drakes Contracted to Humans were also largely left alone, but the instant their Contract ended, usually with the death of their Contractor, most of them would immediately flee North America as the protection of their Contract evaporated and Thunderbird’s Writ loomed in the skies of North America.

Thunder Runners didn’t make it up here often. They preferred drier country, and they were landbound Birds for the most part, with very limited flying ability. Having to run overland to pay homage to the Thunderbird exposed them to great risks on the trip this far north, and so only a Ruling Storm Runner would ever dare the trip, being satisfied with paying homage to any lesser Stormcrown Eagles that might come by checking up on things.

But there hadn’t been that many Thunder Runners who’d Contracted with Lightning Mages. That number was on the rise, now.

The number contracted with Lightning Wizards was actually fairly close to the first number, too, for some odd reason...