Now Heavenly Fire Emperor’s eyes opened, the slits to the furnace within becoming open windows. A raging torrent of heat and light blew past and over me, and the Icefires exploded in size behind me, the image of a frozen Luan swirling above and beyond the rough and hazy image of a white Wolf of increasingly large size as Heavenly Fire Emperor glared at me.

“AND HOW WOULD A HUMAN KNOW OF SUCH A THING?” He almost purred, the sound still carrying over the burning roar and superheated winds effortlessly.

“To His Imperial Majesty! This one has aided in healing the Scar upon the soul of White Death Wolf Emperor! The intent of Ice Emperor to contain and constrain Heavenly Fire Emperor was obvious within it!”

His massive head, larger than a locomotive, rose slowly above the flames of the magma lake. His massive dark wings, flames swirling within them like fires across coal, spread to take in the heat and shimmer with sudden veins of fire rising and falling throughout them. His body rose effortlessly above the superheated magma that slid off him nigh as readily as water might, revealing he’d basically been laying down in it as He spoke to me.

“AH, MY KIND AND UNDERSTANDING ELDER BROTHER...” He murmured, a wave of magma negligently splashing towards me. As it fell over me, it instantly froze solid, shattered, and fell to the sides before touching me, as did any of the supernaturally hot rock within ten feet of me. I did not move.

“WHO ELSE IS TO BE INVITED?” He demanded to know, looking up above towards a sky streaked with ashen clouds of cinders that glowed with sullen heat of their own.

“To His Imperial Majesty! Heaven Westward Fox Emperor remains to be invited at this time!”

“K’UN-LUN...” Believed by the Human Elites and confirmed by Thunderbird to be the strongest Kingdom of Great Beasts in the world. Even the most powerful of the Imperial Aquatics paused at the thought of messing with K’un-Lun, and for good reason. They weren’t just powerful; they were very, very skilled, with abilities and understandings in multiple Elements that most Kingdoms only had in one.

The Himalayas could be said to be the most sought-after terrain in the world for Magical Beasts. Over a score of Royal and Imperial Lineages of all kinds could only be found there. It had all been in the Kingdom of K’un-Lun for ages unknown to Humanity, and Thunderbird Emperor could not remember a time when they had not ruled there.

If Heaven Westward Fox Emperor was not the most powerful True Emperor, He was by far the most learned in many areas. It was believed He had the Elements of Void, Chaos, Psychic, and Light, and was a terrifying opponent, with the strongest Will in the world.

Even Heavenly Fire Emperor wasn’t going to begrudge the Emperor of K’un-Lun from being honored as the last to be invited. The inclusion of the other Emperors was the proof that it would be worth His time.

And if it was worth the time of the Emperor of K’un-Lun, could Heavenly Fire Emperor dare to turn it down?

“I WILL ATTEND.” There was just a flicker of His slitted eye, and blue-purple flame gathered off the magma, condensing around a single tear of the stone that didn’t seem to cool so much as transcend color. It solidified into a crystal of solid flame that, like White Death’s Token, radiated no heat at all.

I Shaped a small ring of adamantine, mounted the teardrop of burning Will within it, and hung it from steelvine, where it joined the others on Noble.

“GO,” He dismissed me, His tail swaying past over my head with hurricane-force winds that nevertheless did not even disturb my hair.

Summarily dismissed, I simply lifted my Wings, and let the furnace-blast heat and wind force me back and upwards, trailing icy mists as I was lifted off the ground like a leaf and sent hurtling into the air, twisting and turning and trailing pale blue icefires as the updraft from the volcano flung me up and outwards from Heavenly Fire Emperor’s place of power.

I turned southwest and Linejumped for the horizon. With a flash of magic, I was out of there, and glad to be going.

Time to go home, veg for a day, get caught up on the unceasing amounts of work piling up (but which more and more people were capable of nibbling away at), and then come back and see what the Fox Emperor had to say.

Reynard had really begged me to go along on that one, and I wasn’t going to say no.

Also, I had a certain Formation to start on, and a certain High Emperor to chat with while I was making it, so He could make one of His own...

------

The Imperial Chat Club got its own little room at Thunderbird’s Nest. The walls were of Psychic Iron, to better enable them to feel their Wills and conduct their thoughts across the many miles. It was also tucked in an out-of-the-way area, not going to disturb Thunderbird if He wasn’t involved with them, and the Wills of multiple Emperors isolated from any random intruders, who might have bad things happen to them.

I had a Portal open above me, a single great sky-blue eye looking out it at everything I was doing, and also taking on the burden of keeping it open while I did the work.

The Whys and Hows of what I was doing were secondary to the What. Flowing Silver was a High Emperor, and could naturally memorize everything I was doing, also having the Void Magic to replicate much of it instantly, and all of it with some practice. The explanations as to why I was using Mind Silver here, and Serenity Gold there, and Mirrorsheen Dream Obsidian in this style, was secondary to Him just seeing me put it down, link it in, and just assembling the thing from beginning to end patiently and completely.

His first Formation in the Beast Realm would naturally include the Emperors Shiningwing, Ice Mountain, Goldenback, and Moltenheart, along with Him the five High Emperors who’d all been impacted by the Breach from the Netherworld. From there, He would expand to His other neighbors, and more distant Emperors as He saw fit to do so.

Reynard was already running around building a map of the Beastlands and the Imperial Regions for His ancestor with great enthusiasm. He might actually become one of the most-traveled Beasts around, rivalled only by the wandering Avian Nobles who flew anywhere and everywhere with no particular rhyme or reason during the years they were looking for inspiration and opportunity to break through to Emperor.

It didn’t matter much to me, as I could Summon Reynard from anywhere, and return him either to his last spot, or to any spot I was familiar with. We kept in regular contact just so I would be ‘familiar with’ multiple spots and save him some travel time on his popping about here and there, even if he wasn’t going to bug me too much about it.

It was fine, as the Beast Realm was a fantastic place to tour and sightsee.

---

Twelve hours of work with Shape Stone at VI, Telekinesis manipulating adamantine tools, and seventeen different versions of Energized minerals of sublime purity later, I had the Formation ready to go.

“There You go, Your Imperial Majesties. The only alterations You’ll need to make are materials conducive to the Elements of the Emperors whose Wills You are Gathering, to make the whole thing flow more easily.” They had the full list of those, and could see the Patterns in which to use them with the effort I was making.

The posts to hang the Tokens from were all in place, there being no station within the Formation itself. The Formation would create a Mindscape with all the Beasts in a circle. Some might be relatively stronger than the others there, but such rankings were things they could work out between themselves or not at all. None of the Emperors could directly bar or hurt another within the Mindscape, although they could certainly ignore one another if they wanted to.

And, well, most of them weren’t Monkeys, with their insufferable tendency to start mocking others. The Foxes did cruel jabs and comments well, but Monkeys, well, inviting them was just asking for some chaos.

Said the Furless Monkey, of course.

“AMUSINGLY COMPLEX AND DEMANDING OF DETAIL AND PRECISION,” Flowing Silver sent through the Portal, studying the whole Formation down to at least the bacterial level, as was the alert Thunderbird looking down from above. “IS THIS A CHARACTERISTIC OF ALL HUMAN CRAFT, HEALER FAE, OR MERELY YOUR OWN?”

“The best stuff is even more demanding, Your Imperial Majesty,” I admitted to Him. “Magic responds best to purity and precision in all aspects once one is dealing with Artifice. The rougher and cruder the job, the weaker and less controlled the Mana is, and the worse the effects are.” I sighed and sat back, staring at the whole thing, humming and ready to go once the Tokens were put in place and some Mana was injected to start the whole thing rolling. “Compare it to the spells and magic Your Imperial Majesties started with long ago. So rough, and yet the core of what You can accomplish today. How much more subtle and varied are the various aspects of the magic You both can use, where what seem to be small and nearly irrelevant thoughts and patterns are in truth extremely crucial and critical to what is being done?”

They both considered that, and I felt rather than saw Flowing Silver nod, while Thunderbird clucked once. “ENOUGH SMALL THINGS BECOME LARGE THINGS,” Flowing Silver agreed.

I considered a point, and sighed. “Your Imperial Majesty, this one has a trick to show You to work on.”

“OH?” He didn’t hide His interest. “A GOOD TRICK IT MUST BE, TO SHOW IT TO ME...”

“This one has only shown it to Thunderbird Emperor and Fire Phoenix Emperor.” I flipped up the basic Startrail for the simplest Psychic Magic attack, Thunderbird remaining silent. “This should be familiar to Your Imperial Majesty.” I replicated it twenty times in front of me, in a long series, like a gun, and saw His eye glitter with interest. “This cannot be done by Humans. It can, however, be done by Great Beasts with enough Control of their Mana.

“An Emperor must create False Stars of the appropriate Element, line them up, and then run the required amount of Mana through them, one per Startrail.” The Startrails in the Hologram lit up in series. “Each such Trail doubles the power of the one before.”

“HOOOO...” the Emperor of the Nine-Tailed Silver Foxes murmured, fully capable of doing the math, glancing over at Thunderbird, who nodded once. “THAT MIGHT BE A VERY POWERFUL ATTACK FOR ALMOST NO EFFORT...”

“The Cost is that if one loses control of a False Star, the Mana invested in it is lost permanently, and must be regained the hard way. Infinitesimal by itself, but if done repeatedly, it could set an Emperor back months, or even years of effort.

“Thunderbird and Fire Phoenix Emperors are testing it to find out the limits of their Control. This one invites Flowing Silver Emperor to do the same.” The seven basic Startrails for each of Air, Void, and Psychic Magic rose up on display all around me.

“WHY DOES THIS NOT WORK FOR HUMANS?” He asked, glancing at all the Startrails and memorizing the very basic arrangement of Stars.

“The flow of Mana rapidly exceeds what our internal Stars can tolerate, and they collapse. That instantly cripples Humans, as we cannot replace our internal Stars once formed, Your Imperial Majesty, and we don’t have the sheer raw power to make external False Stars like an Emperor can.”

“I THINK YOU ARE MISTAKEN. YOU NEED ONLY EMPLOY ONE OF YOUR TOOLS TO FORM A POWERFUL ENOUGH SHELL FOR YOU?”

“This one tried to make a rifling mechanism to store and contain False Stars, but the False Stars were no different than mere gatherings of Mana and could not do the job, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“AND YOU THINK AN EMPEROR’S ‘FALSE STARS’ ARE MERE GATHERINGS OF MANA?” He asked archly.