The Klamath Falls Region, near the Firelands...

I came back to the boys on the Focus I’d left behind, Lived-line points connecting across space.

They weren’t there, of course. They were down in the nest they’d torn open and emptied of insectile life.

Some swift fliers or scavengers might have gotten to some of the Ants, but most of them had been reduced to Soul Crystals and quickly harvested, heaped upon a Disk or two with shaped bowls of thin stone to hold them.

Driver Sam had scribed both Foci, having gotten very good at making the things on our Lived-Line drives, and was now further able to power it up with Void Magic, which made it even more receptive. I flitted to the nearest one across the few miles over thataway and a few hundred feet down, coming out in the egg chamber of the Ants.

It was going to be trashed, of course. We could have probably taken the whole haul back as exotic food ingredients that could be sold in some markets, but it wasn’t worth it. I Summoned up Reynard, and then at his suggestion, I reached out in a direct direction with the help of Sunny.

A Sunbound Portal opened up, and a whole flock of Sunbreasted Robins flooded through, astonished at the magic Calling from one of their own they’d thought lost. There was an eager series of greetings all around, Fire and Light Magic going off, wary eyeballs on the Humans watching patiently from the side, Hopper looming tall and majestic while crackling with Lightning, and a Fox with a Bloodline waaaay beyond any of them watching them with deep amusement.

“Elders, if you would like to clean out those Crimson Lava Ant eggs and return home, we’ll not have to destroy them all.”

A score of gold and black heads turned to the walls bulging with pinkish egg cases, some with redder larval figures visible within, and I swear if they could have, they would have started drooling.

A Robin is a finch-type in body, so everyone was a bit surprised when they literally exploded into predatory motion. The whole cavern erupted in blurs of fire and light, and the Sunbreasted Robins moved to feast!

They weren’t that big as Avians went, the Commander-class ‘adults’ among them only ten to fifteen feet tall when standing, but there was no denying that they had magical gullets. They plucked up crispy eggs the size of pink grapefruit like machines, and we all just sort of looked on as they raged through the place with merciless precision.

The Ant eggs vanished with amazing speed, swept up and every scrap plucked with unerring precision and ravenous appetites. Even Hopper, who’d definitely gorged himself on a lot of the Ants, watched in fascination as the Sunbreasted Robin flock tore through the chamber and reduced the thousands of eggs packed in there to absolutely nothing.

The Sunbreasted Robins landed in front of me, looking rather swollen and just radiating smug satisfaction. Sunny was among them, although he was much smaller than the elders of his flock.

The Great Commander chirped down at me, ready to be sent home, and almost daring us to ask for more from them.

“I will certainly do so if you wish me to, Elder, but we are right on the edge of the territory of Fire Phoenix Emperor.” Despite themselves, the freshly-glutted and sleepy Robins suddenly snapped to attention again. “I figured you might want to fly over and pay your respects while you are here, and it isn’t that far. You can simply return here afterwards if you desire, or fly home directly, however you want to handle it.”

The fat and happy Sunbreasted Robins had looked sleepy and wanting to drift off, but now they were all energized and excited again at the chance to go pay homage to the Emperor of the whole world’s Fire Avians!

In no time at all they hustled outside, Sunny going with them. The Robins all took the time to look over Red and poke at him, and he in turn poked back at them, noticing a few traces of scars on them he could help them deal with if they liked. Their territory was a long way from Michigan, of course, but with one of them linked to a Healer, naturally they would be happy to take advantage of such a thing, even if he was a Human!

---

In a minute or two, the Sunbreasted Robins were all aflight with a flutter of gold and black wings and heading into the Firelands, their breasts burning bright orange-gold and crimson, and definitely not mere servant creatures of Humans invading the airspace here. While there were opportunists here, sure enough, a whole flock of noble-Bloodline Avians coming here could only be a pilgrimage coming to see one of the Ruling Avians. Striking against them would be striking against that Ruler, so they should be fine.

“Now that’s a fine sight to a Michigan man,” the Mick pronounced, watching the flock of Sunbreasteds flying off with a contented smile. “Been Bunyan’s time since we seen a full flock of Sunbreasts back home. There’s a few scattered about the Fingers, but they never gather like that!” he said with feeling, using the term for the upper area of the peninsula left to the carefully-managed foresters there.

“Well, then, Red should make sure to go make their acquaintance with Sunny and let them know they’ve got some friends, and where those friends are,” I opined, and everyone nodded at that. “I think a full flock or two is something everyone in the States would appreciate.”

“And some fuckers would hunt,” spat Glenn knowingly, and quiet curses rose from all of them. The noble Lineage of the Robins was naturally very attractive to Fire and Light mages who wanted their bodies for components to speed their cultivation along.

“Hey, Lady Fae... can Beasts be Marked?” Red asked quietly.

All of the men turned to look at me. The power of the Marks to expand the mind was not to be underestimated. The KIA fellows had gone from being bright lads to as smart as some of the most talented people on the planet, and they were investing heavily and directly into it, and the other Stat Masteries.

It was one of the reasons they were so damn serious about Karmic Gain. Masteries and Skill Ranks were like a bottomless hole of need if they wanted to get the real cool stuff, but if they could just accumulate Karma to do so-!...

The realization that Feats and Masteries compounded their control of their Elements, but had to be used for each and every Element, was a shoulder-slumper. Picking up NPC Classes just for the Skill Ranks and Feats, like any proper power-leveler, was one of the big things they were doing.

“Yes, they can,” I assured them. “That includes both Sunny and Hopper,” I said, the big Lightning Runner perking up from where he was sitting on guard off to the side, sparking head flicking from angle to angle to watch the earth and sky on a regular rotation, something he could repeat without fail or fatigue for hours.

“That would be something like a Summoning Bond, but connected to every potential Marked person? Anyone could speak to our Contracted Beasts?” the Mick had to ask, reaching over to stroke Hopper encouragingly, the contact starting a dance of purple-violet voltage between them.

“Yes, but a lot of Beasts can’t deal with connections to so many other minds, they are too used to living inside the arc of their own senses, and Human minds, well, they aren’t normal Beasts. Born fully sapient is our great talent and birthright, and it means our brains function very different from theirs. Lesser Beasts really have to be restricted in who they contact, or they break down, or go berserk.” I’d talked with Briggs and Sama about this, as they had done some careful experiments with the magical creatures of the world and how they interacted with Marks.

Burt, who was carefully expanding his skill with Psychic Magic, nodded with the most understanding. Beast minds were simply built different than Humans were. While they could be just as smart, it was in different directions, especially their ‘instinctive’ Control of their own Elements, while they were often wholly inept at applying said Control creatively.

“Let’s go. Show me what you pulled out of there today.”

Boasting cheerfully about their increasing skill at yanking ores out of the ground, something which came with ever more Control Earth Skill Ranks, the men hopped back into the gap leading into the ground, and we rapidly descended into the nest once more.

---

The veins of ore were spread throughout the stone and soil, but only being faintly Energized at best, or of the wrong Element, the Ants had mostly ignored them as irrelevant. The Ants had been stoically following one of the firefingers, the pools of lava that expanded as the Fire Mana of the Firelands grew, melting its way through the normal stone and working its way into the surrounding territory, maintaining its heat and power even this far from the supervolcanic source.

A much-appreciated benefit was the single Lavaheart Spirit Seed under that glowing crimson pool of flame, which Big John had eagerly claimed. It worked best with a Fire/Earth mage, enabling one to bring up molten earth from below, like creating a fiery Domain about oneself which enhanced the area and damage of follow-up Fire spells.

It had proven very helpful when they were looking to reduce the mass of the ores they were pulling out, as gold and platinum melted at much higher temperatures than normal stone. Being able to melt the stone more readily had rapidly cut down on the mass of the stuff they needed to pull out.

With multiple Earth Mages at work, however, tons of material could be opened and removed directly by animating the rock, splitting open the ground, filling empty spots back in without waste, and piling up the precious ore and crystals separately.

Most of the metal was still bound up in crystals, and would still have to be separated alchemically, but they’d concentrated hundreds and thousands of tons down to merely dozens of cubic yards, a muchly-improved situation.

Briggs and Sama naturally had a facility made up to do just that sort of work, and without the environmental pollution, too. To be perfectly precise, Sama had a Floating Forge that could heat up hot enough to melt Earth Tungsten, or adamantine, and the boys had been using it with some Water-made reagents to crack open the ores and start the smelting process.

They already had a few tons of rough gold and platinum ingots off to the side, a constant stream of metal dripping out of the bottom of the Forge as the slag drained off to one side and was made into inert bricks on the other.

I Assayed the metal ingots, and nodded as the spell swept through them. The boys had swept them with Fire and Earth Magic, sifted them to remove any impurities, and they were 99.999% pure, more than refined enough to Burn without problem.

I compared what they’d done with how much more was available, and how much they’d finished, looking around at the mine. The Seed helped loads, speeding up the melting and smelting process to a half or a third normal. Not having to transport even the thinned-down ore was also convenient. This wasn’t like the massive supplies of iron and copper and the like, which were processed in the thousands of tons constantly from massive mines. Gold was scattered thinly, and so with Earth Magic, could be mined with much more precision and finesse.

“Looks like two or three more days?” I asked them, straightening up from the stacked mound of precious metals.

“Definitely two, unless we get raided by something,” the Mick agreed emphatically. “Big John’s been working us good and hard, and we’re getting better as we go.”

With four Earth Mages and one Adept here (Tox, his newest Element), they were working with skill and speed. Big John actually came from a mining family, and his expression when he talked about running away from his family’s traditional avocation to become a valiant Hunter, only to end up mining again, was always interesting to see.

Regardless, he had the best instincts for the job after basically his whole childhood being around mining talk, and he was actually taking lead on pulling the stuff out, the others following his directions, even while he experimented with how to use his new Fire Seed.