Babe was naturally watching, and his ear twitched.

“She’s a Null, Elder. She’s very hard to directly affect with magic, even that of an Emperor,” I told him. “She’s also going to be very useful. Can you extend your Null into the tissue at all, Sama?”

“No, Nulls won’t work that way,” she replied instantly. “A Void could do it, but not me or Briggs.”

“If you sliced the scar open?” I asked further.

She pursed her lips. “The magic is seething all through the wound. Yeah, a fresh cut, some would be extending out of the meat, and I could Null that, I suppose. Note that’s not a Dispel.”

“Oh, we aren’t trying to Dispel this. We’re trying to harvest it all.” I turned and pointed to Babe’s horns. “We’re going to move all of that stuff into those!”

Sama looked back and forth, while Babe’s eyes rolled up to regard his own massive set of horns with some interest.

“Now that is just plain mean to that dead Wolverine. Sounds perfect!” Sama grinned, and all of the Michigan people cheered loudly in agreement at that. “What do you need to do?”

“Rough concept? I have to scribe some hydrocuprium Runes over Babe’s horns, which will conduct the Force Magic active in the scars up into his horns, aligning it all with his natural energy. Then we plug the cables into his scars, you slice them open, and push the damn Earth Mana up into the cables and into his horns, aligning with their natural energies and making them some wicked deadly horns.”

Sama grinned and flexed, hands cracking like breaking rocks. “Sounds fun! Don’t make me wait too long!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” My Disk followed me as I palmed the first ingot of hydrocuprium and zipped up to the great horns of Babe the Blue Ox.

---

It didn’t take overlong for me to get done. Shape Stone Raised to V could affect metal, and Heat Metal at V had no problems liquifying the copper I was using. Between the two, I could send hot liquid metal coursing over his horns in ornate and beautiful Rune-script. I wasn’t worried about hurting the ivory. Babe was a half-Emperor, and he could have gone rooting around in molten lava with the things. A little molten metal wasn’t going to hurt his horns!

Once I was done with chasing molten Water Copper over his horns, the spliced ends of the cables were melted right into the mass, and I extended them down over his back and to the side where the massive scars seemed to be waiting tensely for them.

I gave Sama the go-ahead, and she whipped out Tremble. Her Sword echoed Ding! Ting!, and Babe’s ears twitched sharply at the Notes.

Adamantine flared with Brilliance and stabbed into the raw scar tissue, sinking in with no appreciable resistance, despite the toughness and magically-reinforced hide and muscle of the Blue Ox. He huffed in astonishment as she walked along the air on misting feet, and behind her the great scar split open like overripe fruit, bright red blood immediately beginning to leak out and dribble down his azure hide.

Sama ignored the crimson, as well as the way the air seemed to twitch and hiss behind her Blade. I TK’d over a handful of leaves near the open wound, and watched as they were spontaneously chopped into shreds as they passed over the scar.

Yeah, some nasty Mana radiating out of that.

I could have Purified it off, sure. There was a lot of it, but Caster Level or go home. I could have chopped it apart and bled it off easily enough with Argent Magic, but why do that when I could turn Babe’s painful lesson into proper vengeance?

I plugged my end of the cable into the near edge of the effect as Sama finished up, watching her turn around, thrust her hand into the far end of the bloody wound, and start walking back my way.

There was a hissing twitch of the cable, and it jerked in my hand as she walked toward me, blood and magic retreating in front of her Vajra and Null. The interlinked residue was forced away from her along a convenient path of retreat.

Babe felt it as the magic spurted out onto, over, and into his horns, the Energized Copper humming and lighting up as the Earth Magic passed through it. I nodded to Sama that it was working, and she steadily kept up her gory pressure until she made it back to me and the cable.

“Nois!” I gave her a thumbs-up. “Elder, I’m not going to heal this until all four scars are dealt with this way, but the bleeding should stop quickly with the magic gone!”

Tremble rang out two deadly notes again, inserted into swollen scar tissue, and Sama paced off in the other direction once more, trailing a twelve-inch-deep slice behind herself.

--------

“Walk the cable up and chop it free,” I told Sama, tossing it to her. The insulation on it was already falling apart from the passage of the slicing Earth Magic, and her Vajra obligingly shoved said residue up along the metal. I bent to using Healing Magic on Babe the Blue Ox’s scars.

No way I was going to completely get rid of the scars. Those were badges of battle, impressive things to woo the females and intimidate his enemies. But the rampaging no-heal energies were gone, and I could very quickly turn them into bright but old badges of battle that wouldn’t discomfit him in the slightest.

Still, he had Health that ran into the thousands, so fixing him up this way wasn’t exactly easy, especially with the magical resistance he couldn’t exactly turn off.

But that was why I had Spell Penetration up the kazoo, and a Caster Level to complement it, particularly with Healing, as well as a lot of Mana to repeat the spells.

I just used Firefrost Healing, turning all the Spell Penetration and Caster Level of my Shards into a Healing Effect. Holy energies and Wrath joined the effort as hotcold Shards blasted into the injury, and instead of blowing it open in sprays of blood and flesh, they seemed to melt and fuse it shut in a big thick brand down his side, getting rid of any evidence of the old injury’s unhealed flesh as it was closed.

I was doing about 400 Healing all told with each Split Shardray as I worked down the length of his side, which amounted to about ten feet at a time. The scars were about forty feet long each...

It took me several minutes to heal all his scars, pumping enough Healing Magic to heal a small army from near-death into him as I did so. As I finished up, there was a pulse and flaring of magic behind me as Sama chopped the spliced cable away from Babe’s Horns, and the sheath of copper around his Horns glowed with some very, very aggressive new power.

+III, Bane to Netherworlders, Enmity to the Magical, and Bane of Legends. Basically +VII against anything he would bother to fight, and +IX against things of the Underworld, with either +2d6 or 4d6 of Kicker damage they wouldn’t appreciate.

Also, the copper Runescript was pretty cool and eye-catching.

“All good here, Elder!” I waved at him.

He grunted, turning slightly, and with improbable ease for the fact he was a gargantuan blue Ox weighing hundreds of tons, he surged to his hooves, raising his head high. The copper-adorned Horns rose into the sun as he bellowed out an insult and challenge to his old enemy, the muscles on his side rippling and pulsing as he flexed, and found there was no pain, and precious little stiffness.

He actually pranced in place a bit, showing more of that improbable energy, the coppery Runes on his Horns catching the sunlight and actually creating a slicing sensation across the eyes as they gleamed there.

“Well, he’s a happy camper,” Sama said, her own Whiskers of the Wild out and listening to the old Ox. “This was a nice thing you did.”

“Imagine what it’s going to be like when you go offer to Mark him.”

“Huh.” She considered that. “What Stat?”

“All his Elements are Wisdom-based, except for Void, which is Will.”

Her heavens-blue eyes narrowed. “Oh ho... Do you think it might help him break through?”

“He might gain the understanding, but he’d need an utterly massive source of energy.”

“Right, probably at least ten times what he’s currently at.” She tapped her biceps thoughtfully. “You think we should make a tower in the middle of the state he can use?”

“Better to ask him if there’s a natural Formation around which can retain the power for him.” I paused in consideration. “What do you think about that salt layer doing so?”

Her eyes widened again. “Wouldn’t that be something... If that’s true, no wonder the Wolverine Emperor stuck around here...”

“I can share a Commune with Nature with him and find out, if you can Mark him. From there, it’s basically a case of time and magic. If we can set up smaller Refractory Towers to inject Earth Elements back into the salt layer for him, pure volume of Mana becomes less important than density and attunement of it. After all, the density and purity of their Mana is one of the huge things Emperors have to slowly work towards.”

“I ain’t Michigan-born. FUZZY!” she shouted out, totally unnecessarily, but then, Sama was never much restrained about certain things. “We gotta talk to this Ox!”

There was a popping nearby, and Briggs came out of the trees, Endure in hand. His heavy boots trod the air as he walked up next to us, and we all headed over to the curious Babe, who was watching us with great interest.

“What’s up?” he asked, waving at the Blue Ox with the casual friendliness of someone born here.

“What do you think about helping promote Babe to Emperor?” I asked, and the Ox’s massive ears twitched with great interest indeed.

Briggs’ smile was very big, indeed. “I think that’s a great idea, and I imagine I can get a lot of help for it, too!” he agreed promptly. “What do we need to do for him?”

------

The big Ox loomed in closer to listen intently. Masks across all our faces meant we could understand him perfectly, taking this opportunity to also answer all his questions about the White Mana Zones.

It didn’t take much for him to understand the White Mana Zones were no threat to the ecology or magic. The Zone merely consisted of magic without bias. As it sank into the earth, was absorbed by plants, spun through the air, was bathed with light, and so forth, it naturally began picking up Elemental Bias once more. That Bias was the very stuff that he had glutted himself on recently, years of absorption and refinement accomplished in mere hours as the dense Elemental aspects directly bypassed the need to compress the power down.

Of course, the range of this Tower was limited by its size, and he understood that, as well. A much larger Tower would allow him to draw in power over a much broader area, speeding up the effect, and if he could store power in the salt layer, would be necessary to tap it.

In the end, the big guy agreed to a Mark, and to taking a tour of the State while I had a Commune with Nature going atop his back. The benefits of such a move would be immense for him in managing his chosen territory and gaining an ever-finer appreciation for how it worked, cutting across all Elements as it did... but Earth, Plant, Air, and Void were the Elements he wielded, uniquely suited for that kind of enlightenment and attunement to the Land.