A year and more passes...

Lord Quake’s tail caught me in midair. I screamed dramatically as I was sent flying towards the barn nearby, exploding through the wood of the hayloft and sending straw blowing out everywhere for maximum drama.

The cameraman, employing a no-Wind Flight spell, grinned as he followed me very closely the whole way.

The follow-up take of Sama poking her head up into the loft was shortly afterwards. Magical lighting illuminated what should have been a dark interior nicely. “Hey, cleaning the barn again, I see?”

I groaned. “Tell me again why I was cursed with you as an older sister?”

“Someone needs to keep calling for a healer for you,” she replied with a straight face. I groaned again, as my character was the Wind/Healer mage for the band in the film. “You gonna keep lying around, or do I need to carry you?”

I muttered something unintelligible under my breath as I started to get up, Sama pulled me up effortlessly, and the cameras cut to Lord Quake charging after the both of us, and the non-too-sturdy barn around us...

“Cut and great!” Director David Bigelow beamed at the two of us. I was currently blonde, Caucasian, and they’d have to fill in the blue eyes, because I couldn’t change the Sign of mine from silver. I looked a great deal like Sama, whose Hag Curse was down and mostly out of sight, only a couple scars further back towards her ear, looking more like magical burns than anything at the moment. “You sell that pretty well, and, ah, you take a beating good too, Lady Fae!”

I waved it off. A Mana-boosted False Life spell could take a very large amount of physical punishment.

Lord Quake, the maybe-evil star of the show, waved back to me when I leaned out unhurt, clearly pleased with his aim. The ‘wild rampaging dragon’ of the film had a deeper backstory everyone was going to find out, but I had less than ten minutes of screen time for the whole thing, being the relegated background Healer who just mended everyone else up, got bashed around when I got into combat, and was generally of enthusiastic not-much use for anything besides Healing everyone and getting them believably back into shape.

Typeless Healing, however, which was much more effective in some ways than Magery. It was one of the subtle things being introduced widely in the show.

I Prestidigitated the straw and stuff off me as I resumed my normal coloration. There’d been shots of me flying around, shots of me Healing others, shots of me getting swatted around haplessly, shots of me running away madly, shots of Sama dragging me out of this situation or the other one...

It was all in good fun.

Learning that in a movie you tended to shoot all the sequences in a particular place at the same time, regardless of when they happened in the movie, was still surprising to experience, given, well, that’s not how life was lived. But, movies, don’t make more work for yourself than you have to.

There were a few group scenes that needed to be shot, which meant being there when the main set of actors were in the appropriate costumes and being background candy (unable to hold the whiskey that Sama chugged down was another of my character’s weaknesses...).

This was the last shot of the day for me. Lord Quake was getting ready to enthusiastically rip the barn apart as we ‘ran out the other side’, sending him right into a baited trap by the rest of the team. Oh, the pyrotechnics that were ready to go off...

Sama poured me something more palatable than whiskey as we sat down on Disks in the shade and kicked back. The heat didn’t bother either of us, of course, but appearances.

“Missing anything?” she asked me lightly.

“Shanghai’s basically under siege, but after the shenanigans they’ve tried to pull, they can go help themselves.” I just didn’t have a lot of tolerance for those who messed with my people. Yeah, it punished the weaker mages and civilians, but it wasn’t like I had no choices on where to go, and China was waaaaaay down on the list.

India, on the other hand, had been getting a lot of visits from me. To the utter surprise of many natives, so had South America, and Coralost was expanding down there nicely. Also, a lot of the bandits, brigands, and cowardly local militaries had ‘fought bravely to the last against the terrible invaders from the sea’, and new governance was often in effect after Sama, Briggs, and I, plus a few of the lads, came to visit. They were kind of incredulous at how easy they died to hardened mages blooded by a LOT of littoral combat, thinking they were going to roll on up and take over again after the foreign mages left.

It... just hadn’t happened. Since they didn’t want to fight, there was no reason for them to keep existing and preying on the populace from the other side, right? The money, resources, food, and other expenses once allocated to cowards were redirected towards those willing to fight.

Mass Lesser Geases so the parasites had no choice but to fight even made some of those statements true!

There was combat somewhere along the shores all the time now, usually at least two or three places per continent, surging and falling back in waves as different Sea Rulers and Imperials made their moves.

“Next move?” she asked. She and Briggs had been seen all over the Americas, chipping in with bloody enthusiasm, and the Redshore Marines were now famous worldwide.

“Thunderbird got me an introduction tomorrow... to save Shanghai or Japan,” I admitted, and Sama just laughed at the irony.

“Finally got that meeting with Leviathan, eh?” she nodded once.

“He wasn’t easy to get ahold of, spends a lot of time asleep at the bottom of the sea in remote places. A lot of the older Sea Imperials loathe Him, of course, given how He likes to eat them and their Tribes.”

“Think He’ll help?” Sama asked casually. The Edict by The Council of Beast Emperors did not include any Sea Emperors who chose to act on our side for whatever reason.

“Maybe. But if I offer Him a Greater Sea Refactory Pyramid? The Northern Emperors said they’d be perfectly fine with putting it up under the North Pole.”

“That could speed His cultivation up a hundred-fold, especially if He gets some Water Mages to Meditate with Him...” It was what Queen Gichigumi did, after all, and Coralost’s Void, Water, and Ice Mages and Archmages kept faithfully to the monthly agreement. It was to their benefit too, after all, and quite independent of taking physical defense action.

The Whale, Seal, and Seabird Tribes weren’t the ones invading us. Various waves of fish-men, merfolk, finmen, and other anthro species of the ocean depths were the big drivers. They really hated Humanity’s Warded lands, but those didn’t save everyone. Whole villages, towns, and cities could get wiped if a Sound or Psychic Element among the Aquatics put the people under a Ward to sleep, and the invading forces swept in and massacred them all.

The areas between Humanity’s Wards? Also hideously vulnerable, and there was absolutely no fair play involved. Powerful Sea Tribes would happily rage across farming villages that were not a threat to them and eat everything, the Humans and Beasts in them having basically no chance to fight back against species whose least members were Great Warriors, or sometimes even Commanders.

There were two minor but important things going on in the fighting.

The first one was Vivic Fire Implements.

The ones we sold to others had been carefully tweaked to not leave Soul Crystals, but they consumed the bodies of the dead very quickly. That was extremely important, as feeding upon their slain was one of the big ways the Aquatics both sustained themselves and improved themselves. Kill a Finman Commander, some Great Warrior would devour the corpse and promote itself!

No, no, we weren’t letting that happen. The effect was subtle but powerful, as bloody battlezones were Burned clean and pristine, and hordes of Aquatic corpses that would normally be turning the seas into crimson pools were gone and leaving clear and healthy waters behind, even consuming tons of ambient Dark Mana while doing so.

Humans who died fighting Burned just the same, and cost the Aquatics their rewards, too.

The second thing was the Soul Jars being sold to the bigger battlezones.

These were large, awkward, and very powerful soul-gathering devices, attuned to non-humans, and could suck in the Partial Souls and Soul Remnants across a huge area, ensuring none of them went to waste. They distilled those souls down into the lowest order of Soul Crystals, suitable for one Tier of enhancement to Stars, or for making magical items.

The Soul-Forging Clans went absolute apeshit when we introduced them and practically ripped away the wartime market for their devices and services from them. None of their portable Soul Jars worked in the area of our big ones, except against Humans, and wow, wasn’t that a no-no in the eyes of most people, nor did our Jars require the Undead Element to function.

The lack of portability and need for Wards to be truly useful made the things perfect for armies and governments instead of Families to buy, although we couldn’t control where the Soul Crystals ended up. We could and did, however, create ‘operational difficulties’ when Families tried to siphon the Soul Crystals away for their own benefits, instead of doing public service things like making more and better Awakening Stones, or allowing normal soldiers to improve their Stars. Indeed, the Stars were repeatedly proven to only be able to enhance the first seven Stars of any Element, giving a big boost to Novice Mages for endurance casting, as opposed to more powerful Mages who didn’t need the help.

Broad, low power. The heights were already doing fine by themselves, so we just played the game of greed with the power-hungry.

Combined with Implements that added Kickers of other Elements to them, Lightning being the most desired for its armor-piercing effect, the lower-end Human forces were getting tougher and tougher... and the truth that Novice mages who had Tier-4 Stars broke through to Adept far more easily was publicized and soon proven true across the world.

There were now a dozen Coralost Academies across Michigan alone, each attended by thousands of Typeless mages who’d not Awakened an Element. The kids were determined to be able to grow stronger and be able to fight one way or another, and even if all it meant was being able to use magical devices wrought by Artificers and Alchemists so more powerful people could undertake higher roles, that was enough to contribute.

Or they could learn how to shoot firearms with the magic ammunition their friends were making for them. Wind and Fire Element users were naturals with them, the former able to guide the bullets more easily, the other able to make each shot more powerful. Earth Element users were best at maintaining the weapons.

Typeless Mages could be all three!

It meant a lot more soldiers were available than many armed forces had had in the past... if they had the Tools for those Typeless Casters to use. If not, then they could only be used for magitech industries, but that itself was a big thing in wartime like this!

“Any logistical kerfluffles I don’t know about?” she asked mildly. Briggs handled most of the logistics with devastating aplomb, his ability to motivate the Allegiance and basically anyone who dealt with him incredibly powerful on the broad, wide scale.

Kerfluffles were the people trying to stick their hands into the flow of things, make a mess, and drag out the benefits for themselves, instead of keeping things moving along smoothly. Sama handled those when a word from Briggs wasn’t enough to warn the Families and organizations off.

Greed lived forever, after all.

“Other than the five assassination attempts?” I asked calmly, turning my head in a certain direction.

Sama turned to look that way. “Oh, for love of-!” she spat, setting down her glass. Tremble snapped to her hand, Runes lighting up expectantly. “This is my vacation time! The inconsiderate pricks!”