Sama’s question made me blink, but I recovered enough to say, “How would ah lahk tah be involved inna wut, now?” I drawled lazily back at her, a Stetson holo materializing atop my head for me to flick up and out of my eyes. “Are y’all asking me ta ‘Fill Your Hand, You Sunuvabitch!’?”

“Well, we need a powerful Caster or two for a walk-on, and you’re a very recognizable Caster.”

“You just want to beat me up badly, and do it on-screen so your plucky no-magic gunmen can rescue my Powered ass.”

“You got any problems with that?” she asked archly.

“Where in the Hells did you find someone to make up a proper script?”

“Oh, we flew in a few old screenwriters for what they call Westerns in this world, and gave them a demonstration of fast-draw gunplay, rifles, shotguns, and sticks of plastic explosives. Told them we wanted a script with almost no magic in it, the mages would not be the stars of the show, and it must include the line ‘Fill Your Hand, You Sunuvabitch!’”

I arched an eyebrow. “They were Typeless?” I asked her shortly.

“Every single one of them. Famous only in their own circles, never on the screen. They goddamn begged me to do a whole damn series about this stuff, given how much damn money we have.”

“Cinema is a money pit. I trust you said no.”

“I did. If they make something successful, we’ll talk.”

With Typeless wizards able to cast Illusions and the new cameras able to record magic, special effects were not going to be a problem at all. With no mages as the focus, however, the magic was going to be of a very different type...

“You know I don’t have to appear as me, right?” I gave her a knowing glance. “I could, for instance, appear as you, sans the scarring.”

Her very blue eyes narrowed at the comment. “Oh. Oh, I had completely forgotten that aspect of things. That would be totally hilarious, watching someone looking like me out there throwing spells and getting her ass kicked around!” Her eight canines all gleamed at me. “Sure! I’ll be all for that! Everyone will even think it’s a psychological weakness for me wanting to be a spellcaster and seeing me that way!”

“You’re not going to be in it?” I asked, surprised. “I am totally aware you’re a Warshaper, you know.” She didn’t have to show her scar, that was just what it defaulted to, and it made her extremely memorable... and intimidating. Her Hag mindset promptly took that as a very Good thing, and since vanity was not her thing at all, she stayed the way she was.

Conversely, those who saw her without the Curse’s Scar would also never forget her, for exactly the opposite reason. All you had to do was hold a sheet in front of half her face to realize that Sama was world-class gorgeous without the Rantha scarring. It was just the crazy fearless Hackmistress mindset tended to overwhelm most people, especially if they were distracted by You No Have Magic Now, Wimp!

“Ehhh...” Sama shrugged. “I’m gonna be the producer and the director. Don’t need to be the star. Figure I’ll start a whole culture of Typeless actors and stuff.”

“Sisters. Older, younger. Older one has to keep dragging the younger one out of trouble, because she’s the headstrong mage and keeps thinking she’s better because of it. Maybe she’s a side character, but if I’m just there to get my arse kicked, then someone should be pulling me out of there.”

“Huh.” She smirked as she looked away, thinking about it. “I’ll take a look at the script and see if there’s room for it. I get to pull your ass out of the fire on camera? Totally worth it!”

“You’re going to have to really, really tone down the screen time, you know. We both have very high Charisma scores. We’ll dominate the screen anytime we’re on it, without even trying.”

“Yeah, temp Charisma boosters for the actors will be a thing. Gotta be larger than life on the big screen!” she agreed, drumming her Very Dangerous Nails on the arm of her chair, which was actually Tempered so as to be able to take the punishment.

“Where you gonna shoot it?” I had to ask.

“Mexico, of course! We can get a whole town as extras for next to nothing, all as part of the fun!” she grinned.

Made sense. And if there was an incursion from the sea, well, they could just put it into the movie!

“You and Briggs work out on how to handle the consumable ammo situation?” I asked with a sigh. One more thing on the list. Well, it should be fun!

“How’s a volatile alchemical formula that is very good, very powerful in small amounts, but increasingly unstable and likely to blow up as it accumulates sound to you?”

“Sounds like a way to really annoy the piss out of the people trying to imitate your gunpowder formula. What are you looking at for max size?”

“Grenade-level. They can still be launched, and put into an AP rocket for effect, but you won’t get nukes out of them. The science stuff probably can’t advance to nuke-level here, that’s all Sage-level mystical crap. If they try to make something bigger out of it, it’ll just overload internally.”

“What about bringing disparate amounts together suddenly to create the bang at a location?” I asked.

“The explosion is inherently chaotic, going off in bits and pieces rather than one big explosion. Yeah, you could do it, but there’d be no massive explosion of everything going off, and half the mass might be dispersed by the other half going off and be next to useless.” She grinned again. “The tests have been incredibly wild. We have to have Light shields up whenever stuff blows because the erratic detonations send the explosives all over the place!”

I had to laugh despite myself. “Thereby proving the superiority of magic over mere alchemy!” I called out, shaking my fist in rah-rah fashion.

“Don’t you know it!” she agreed cheerfully. “Of course, the real formulae are held in Markspace, complete with Typeless and Elemental varieties, as you know.”

As I’d helped design them with all my Ranks in Alchemy and Chemistry, yeah, I knew that. This world had just crazy requirements in Alchemy because of the saturated Manafield. Bring even alchemically-restrained gunpowder into the Beast World and it would go off almost instantly, as would most of the explosives that didn’t rely on dual-agent interaction.

“I’ll get with Babe and see if we can work out the Mage-Level spells for Plant and Earth. Don’t want the Blue Ox boys feeling deprived.” Lots of the local Michigan mages preferred to follow Babe’s format of Magic, which he had inherited from Paul Bunyan. More and more Plant and Earth mages around just made the farming situation even better, as it were, and the Husker Mages down further south enjoyed the main Elements, too. Babe’s fourth Element of Void was more elective, farmers often taking Water instead to complete the Farmer’s Four, as it was known by somewhat more dismissive Families who prized the more combat-driven Elements.

“You on track to deal with Fire Phoenix’s little problem?” Sama asked me.

“Once I get His Pyramid up, it won’t be an issue. The Imperial Luans should be visiting Him in a day or two, so I’ll be wasting some time doing a spell display for them. There’s no way a Pyramid can go up in the Amazon, The Trees won’t allow it, so I can’t do the same for them.”

“You have to walk into Antarctica during the middle of a Great Flood triggered by arrogant Humans and find the Ice Phoenix Emperor,” she pointed out, bemused. “Not a problem?”

“I hit 185% Cold and Fire Affinity with the Luans. The only one who can possibly hurt me with cold is the Ice Emperor Himself, and I don’t intend to visit Him. The hard point is getting around The Ice Emperor’s strictures, which might require a Pyramid, might not.”

The Ice Emperor desired the Ice Phoenix Emperor. Dragons and Phoenixes had, mmm, difficult relationships at best, both standing at the apex of Elemental Affinities. Dragons had more physical power on offense and defense, Phoenixes more magical ability and power in the air. In the eyes of the Beasts of the World, they were equals in the nobility of their Bloodlines.

More importantly, the combination of the Ice and Fire Phoenix Emperors was totally capable of standing up to The Ice Emperor, even if He was a tier higher. Alas for Them, the Ice Emperor was much older, and had simply decreed long ago that there would be no Ice Phoenixes of Imperial rank other than the Ice Phoenix Emperor. He would simply kill them if they advanced to that level... and He had, stifling the power of the Phoenixes in the world. There were supposedly three other Imperial Phoenixes in the world, but none of them had an Ice Phoenix mate and match for themselves.

Furthermore, Ice Phoenix Emperor was forbidden to leave Antarctica, and Fire Phoenix forbidden to enter it. It was widely believed that Ice Emperor wanted to make a Dragon Phoenix child with Ice Phoenix Emperor, but She naturally spurned Him. The Fire and Ice Phoenixes mated for life, and Ice Emperor’s desires meant nothing to Her.

So, that was what I was going to do, fix that problem with a little cleverness!

Of course, I had to finish the Fire Phoenix Pyramid and go visit all the True Emperors for the Council, in between making Vivic Braziers en masse, doing at least some Littoral work, adding to the defenses of the Coralost Communities in Mexico, expanding my Lived-Line, and arranging for ever-more quiet consolidation of efforts against Dark Magic.

“I have a suggestion,” Sama spoke up.

“Ears always open!” I answered her.

“There was a report from China’s Hunter’s Guild, very hush-hush. You remember hearing about the Giant Purple Linden Tree?”

I scrolled back through some of the monster reports. “A Low Ruler-level Tree. Uses an ambush predator approach, appearing to be of benefit to the surrounding Beasts and even Humans, until it betrays them all to slaughter them and harvest their blood for itself. It then moves itself and reappears in a different place and time where it is not known. A treacherous and cunning creature.”

“Someone collected the bounty on it.” I popped an eye open at her in interest again. “The report indicated that the Linden is actually the twin of another, nobler Tree, the Guardian Peach Tree, which is located in the mountains leading up to K’un-Lun.”

“That is not a friendly territory to Humans, either.” K’un-Lun was one of my destinations, believed to be the most magical of the Beast Realms. It was led by Heaven Westward Fox Emperor and His Court. If the legends were right, a good deal of the basic Elemental Magicks taught to Humanity had actually come down from K’un-Lun, which was basically the highest power of the Himalayas, and thus held dominion over the Beasts of both China and India.

There hadn’t been any contact between Humans and the K’un-Lun Court for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The Heaven Westward Fox Emperor was believed to be the most dangerous, intelligent, and cunning of the True Emperors, to the point where even the Sea Emperors didn’t want to push much into His territory.

“The report indicated that the Guardian Peach Tree can award a Peach and its core to a worthy supplicant, giving them a permanent boost to one of their Elements. However, it is believed to be the equivalent of the Blessing Element’s one-time Mage spell to do the same, and they don’t stack.”

There was no stacking anything on the Typeless Element, of course, only a specific branch of magic.

The Blessing Element’s Mage Spell was naturally a closely-held secret of the Acropolis, another one of the legs of power the establishment was built on. They gave away a Blessing of the Sun only reluctantly and to those they deemed fit... which naturally included the many Archmages who numbered among the Knights sworn to their service, giving them an advantage difficult for the rest of the world’s organizations to match.

All that was doubly true for the Blessing of the Moon, the Archmage version of the spell, which basically was only given to the Knights who protected the Acropolis, a unique advantage to their protectors! The even rarer Blessing of the Stars gave any and all non-Dark Elements not affected by the prior spells a straight +50% bonus, and was reserved for only the most elite members of the Acropolis...

You could only receive the permanent version of the Blessing of the Sun once, and naturally you wanted someone with an incredible Caster Level to administer it, preferably a Sage, and you wanted to be powerful enough to be able to retain as much of the Blessing as possible. Supposedly the Blessing started at +150% and rapidly lost energy as you hurriedly tried to apply it to your chosen Element. Most of the recipients only managed to retain +50% or so, with the rare skilled mage maybe keeping +100%.

Still, being able to have two of those instead of one of them was pretty solid on many levels, if it could be done! If not, it was a sale item or material component for something good...

“I’ll stop by it when I visit Heaven Westward Fox Emperor.”