Slayer Magic
Chapter Six
by Jared Ornstead
aka Skysaber
aka Perfect Lionheart
OoOoO
"Got a tally?" Amy asked from the sidelines.
Charity had been peeking out through a set of curtains, looking down over a balcony over the main floor of Xander's largest library, where a large crowd had gathered, despite the early hour. Harmony was stuck down there greeting them all as they arrived and probably had the official numbers, but an estimate would do until they could talk to her.
"Over a hundred people. Mostly girls, though not all," came her response.
Hope gave an amused huff. "And that is largely the case because it's getting increasingly hard for us to be around boys without having to constantly spurn their advances. So we can't casually invite them to things, for fear of them buying rings and proposing."
"Again," Cordelia had, through divine effort, remained merely amused by this phenomena. Some people just could not accept no for an answer, and it had a tendency to wear at one's patience, especially when those boys had already been introduced to girls who'd suit them better. Marriages were strongest between equals, after all.
"And again, and again," Hope and Charity agreed.
But Amy had already retreated to carry the news back up to Xander's bedroom. She was back down in moments. "Ok. They are ready now. Bring up the first six."
Cordelia nodded and went off to fetch her proto-Cordettes.
OoOoO
Cordelia entered Xander's room followed by Verity and five other girls to find him sitting up in bed, braced by pillows.
Shock was the first reaction of those girls, followed by concerned well-wishes.
Xander accepted them gratefully, then explained, "Something is going on. I'm sure you've noticed. What it boils down to is that I have been granted ability to, among other things, turn people into angels. The real, genuine article."
Cordelia, Willow and Xander all took this opportunity to forestall arguments over the matter by simply manifesting their wings and halos.
"That explains a bunch of things," Verity allowed, after a stunned silence.
"Like how?" One of her friends asked.
Verity shrugged. "I'm sure you must have noticed how these guys have *incredible* action economy. They never seem to rush or hurry, but they get tons of stuff done. It doesn't even seem to phase them to do a full on term paper in a couple of minutes, and that's *while* they are talking and socializing with half of the students crammed in the quad?"
"I have noticed they never seem to worry about homework, but always get it done early," that friend allowed. She'd taken part in the Cordette-watching too.
"Well, there you go. They are the most efficient people I've ever seen." Verity testified. "You know how much normal people fumble for a pencil, or waste time searching through her purse, or forgetting something in their locker and having to go back for it? Well, since Halloween, none of them have been doing any of that. They don't spill things, or lose things, or forget them. It's like, they're always cool and composed, doing just exactly the right thing at just the right moment to get maximum effect for minimal effort. Frankly, it was making me so envious I halfway wanted to change my name to Nadda, a name meaning generosity, so I could start my own neo-Cordettes," she half-joked.
"Doesn't stop you from listening to them sing in the quad," her friend jabbed her in the ribs.
"Well, yeah. There is that." Verity blushed, then addressed Xander, "It's actually a relief to hear you are angels. Now I don't have to be all anxious over 'I can never compete with that' because I'm not supposed to. Everyone expects angels to be perfect. Mortals aren't."
"Thank you for the compliment," Xander smiled. "It's nice to feel appreciated. Although, on that note, no jealousy is required. As I believe I just stated, I am in control of magic that can make people into angels."
"Sign me up!" Verity eagerly volunteered. The other five quickly followed likewise.
"You might want to cover your eyes," he advised, bringing a card up. "It gets a little bright."
Very soon everyone was protecting their eyes from the brilliant white light. Harmony, who had been downstairs, miraculously arrived just in time to take that card and copy it, multiplying the glow.
"Now, if our experience with this is right," Xander informed them all, "While this first card here won't do anything to you, the next should start transforming you into angels."
The first Sigil of The Empty Throne came down.
Anticipation built.
Then came down the next.
His audience tensed. Five girls closed their eyes and leaned forward, greatly anticipating their upcoming transformation, while one kept her eyes open, wanting to watch.
Instead of transforming one of them, however, a new angel appeared in midair, materializing out of the aether, wings spread and smiling.
"What happened?" Cordy was flummoxed.
"Token creatures!" Amy slapped her forehead. All eyes went to her, but it was Willow who piped up to explain.
"That's right!" the redhead blurted out in sudden understanding. "Cards can be anything, but in a game where every card is precious, tracked and special, they came up with the game mechanic of tokens to answer the awkwardness of 'what do you do when one card brings more than one thing into play'? They've got to be tracked differently. So one card can't be four different creatures, because different things could happen to each one. So they came up with tokens to represent 'this is another one of that'."
"And apparently," Amy finished off for her, "While we need real people to bring card based creatures into play..."
"We don't need any such thing to invest the power of token creatures," Willow finished her sentence for her.
"OH!" Amy breathed in realization. "That's it, isn't it? In this game, cards have value. They can be bought or sold or traded, and their rarity increases the price. Wasn't that what Xander said, the first time we copied one? These cards basically were money? But tokens can be anything, from pennies to bits of glass or plastic. Even pocket lint can serve as a token."
"So, to get a card creature into play requires real value, a person in other words to have the power invested in," Willow saw where this was going and surmised, then finished off with a smile. "But token creatures don't."
Xander nodded his head. "Well, a promise is a promise. Don't worry, girls," he addressed their new recruits. "I'm confident we'll draw new angel cards to be able to transform you in a moment. There will just be a little wait, I'm sure. Although I do apologize for the delay."
Reassurances quickly got offered that it was alright.
With that, he rather hurriedly brought the other enchantments into play, bringing the tally up to six angel token creatures, who, to be honest, came off as a little bland personality wise.
The life he gained from doing that, however, had him up and off life support, feeling hale and healthy for the first time in two weeks.
He also drew sixteen more cards.
"Castle!" He spotted the first enchantment in that number, after having flipped through three other creatures (none of them angels) and a land.
"All untapped creatures you control get plus zero-plus two," Amy recited from memory as Harmony accepted the card to copy. "With four of those, we'll all get plus eight to our toughness! We could stop those giants from last night easy!"
"Island Sanctuary is even better for our purposes, I think," Xander felt immense relief as he read the next card, as not only was it an enchantment, but it just solved the majority of their creature problems.
Since nobody there had it memorized, he read aloud, "Skip drawing a card: Until the start of your next turn, only creatures with flying or islandwalk can attack you."
There came an explosion of celebration at that news.
"What's going on? What did I miss?" Sophie popped into the room, fresh from speaking to her sisters downstairs, trailing Hope and Charity along with her while Bianca took care of the raw recruits, giving the angels a private moment together by serving breakfast to all of their guests. Once it got explained, she groaned aloud at the relief that brought. Seeing the questioning looks in Hope and Charity's eyes, she explained, "There are any number of special abilities available in this game, and it isn't all that hard to find creatures with one or two to overcome just about any obstacle. There are creatures who can't be blocked by walls, ones who can't be blocked except by walls, ones who are just plain unblockable, creatures who can't be blocked by white creatures, and so on."
"And over the past month or so it feels like we've faced most of them," Cordy quipped.
"However," Sophie agreed with her sister angel with a nod, "While it's easy enough to find any ability you like, and there's loads of them..." she pursed her lips, thinking how best to put this. "The moment you start asking for combinations of abilities, options are scarcer."
"You see," Willow broke in, eager and excited. "Special abilities are significant. Getting even one represents a big investment of time and energy. So having two is less common. As an example, you know how it seems like there are zillions of doctors and lawyers in the world? Well, how many can you think of who are both doctors *and* lawyers?"
"There are some," Cordy admitted. "But they are rare."
"That's what makes having the Island Sanctuary so significant," Amy instructed them all. "As we have learned, to our cost, our enemies have many creatures who possess abilities that allow them to bypass our defenses..."
"But there are a lot fewer creatures who have both Fear *and* Flying, than just Fear alone!" Cordy responded, getting it.
"Exactly!" Sophie, Amy and Willow chorused as a trio, then openly giggled over doing it.
"You want something that has Protection From White? You have options," Sophie agreed. "But you want that *and* flying? There are fewer."
"LOTS fewer!" Willow gloated.
"Flying is something we are increasingly able to deal with, and Islandwalk is a rare special ability that never really got implemented much in the first place, and fell out of favor shortly thereafter. So there aren't many creatures who have it," Amy instructed with an open smile.
"What did it do?"
"Creatures who possessed it were unblockable when attacking someone who controlled any islands. There was one of those for each basic land type: plainswalk and forestwalk, and so on. Picture someone who was so super sneaky, so expert on creeping across a certain type of land, there was just no chance of stopping him before he hit his target."
"Batman would have Gotham-walk," Sophie quipped with a smile. "While in Gotham, there really isn't much chance of stopping him from getting anyplace he wants to go. So you'd best just plan for him to break in to your hideout and beat you up."
"Alright," Charity nodded her understanding.
"It would have made sense if someone with islandwalk could block something else with islandwalk, since sneaky people know the tricks and how to catch other sneaky people, but they never set it up that way," Amy admitted. "If you've got islands, someone with this ability can't be stopped."
"Good thing Xander doesn't have any islands, then!" Sophie agreed.
"Actually," Xander broke in from where he'd been quietly drawing cards. "I just drew Tropical Island, and it says it counts as both an island, and a forest. It can be tapped for either blue or green mana, it says."
Amy just shook her head and whistled. "One of the original dual color lands. Wildly popular with everybody. It gave access to two colors without disadvantages. For years and years they refused to print any nearly as good. You've sure got some expensive cards in there."
"It's not like I mind," he returned with a grin.
"True," she quipped.
The young man hopped out of bed. "Well, that's it for this sixteen. We have a load of creatures (only one angel, unfortunately), two enchantments, and a couple land. I'm a bit surprised not to see any artifacts in this, since we've seen quite a few of those so far. But it's time to draw new cards, I think."
There truly was no inherent need to cast all of the Island Sanctuaries, because one did the same work as all four. However, since they got extra angels for every enchantment played, and extra life for each angel, and since casting four of the same spell cost them the same as one, thanks to the copier, they very much wanted to cast all of them!
Some very intense flashes of light followed. Thirty two new angel tokens appeared, and Xander's health shot up nicely.
Having played enchantments, in the form of first Castle, then Island Sanctuary, Xander was ready to draw more cards when there came a ripple in the fabric of reality and Cordelia, Sophie, Hope and Charity all went down screaming, their flesh turning amorphous and like jelly, losing color and cohesion, as though they were melting.
Xander grabbed for Sophie, to steady her while her legs went to jello, and that was all he knew until he came to on the floor moments later.
He sat up, rubbing his head, and smiled reassuringly when he saw Amy's wide, panicked gaze. "I'm alright. Do you know what happened? The moment I touched Sophie I went all confused, like when we were first combining ourselves with other cards."
"A moment to get over the panic, please." Amy requested, clutching her wand to her chest, something that Xander had not seen in nearly a month. Then the flare of a white wing being stretched caught his eye, and his expression went to astonished, as that *wasn't* the wing of any angel he knew!
Following it back to the back it was attached to, he saw Verity just rise to float off the floor in a brief twirl of self-examination, just as they'd all done when first becoming angels. Sophie, by his side, was now fine, and marveling over this new angel, too.
"Charity and the others started to dissolve," Amy squeaked out the moment she could, motioning toward the rest of the floor with her wand. "Anyone who touched them began to dissolve too."
Indeed, there were now three distinct puddles of gelatinous people parts, slowly spreading as those parts dissolved further. One looked as though it was one person alone, although the state of decay was such he could not tell who. The others were multiples, although even then he had to guess by volume how many people made up the goo.
Nothing appeared to be dissolving any further than it already was, not quickly anyway, although he did note that Amy was hovering above the floor, carefully not touching anything, and that two of their six non-angel guests who'd been invited up had dodged back out the door to his room, and were gazing with some panic of their own back at the scene inside.
Amy gathered her breath, and swung her wand at one of the larger puddles, declaring, "As three are one, now one become three!"
But apparently her guess as to the numbers was off, as that puddle separated into four lumps, three of which immediately began to resolve into people.
"Willow!" Xander started to dart forward, only for rationality to assert itself before he could touch her. Whatever was going wrong, it would not be helped by him dissolving himself again. He could afford to wait until the spell resolved itself, and it did, with three of the four puddle bits swiftly forming back into Willow and two of their guests.
And as Xander watched them resolve, he couldn't believe what his senses were telling him, not until both of those guests who'd been a part of the puddle with Willow began their own 'twirl and spin' floating self-examinations, having both become angels.
It was beautiful, but Xander's gaze had gone back to Verity, who'd only just completed her twirl of self-examination, and beamed toward him with a brilliant smile. Then, just as fast, his eyes went towards Sophie, and expanded in surprise.
He shot up off the floor like a lightning bolt, dragging Sophie into the air with him. "Their stats are the same as ours were, after combining, but before reading the level-up books," he told Amy, indicating Sophie, and the new angel Verity. "Four-four white angel, knight, wizards with the full set of our special abilities - not their own."
A chill passed down his spine as he realized that meant Sophie had lost her angelic special ability to protect his artifacts from being targeted. A quick glance informed him none of the puddles had any discernible abilities, either. That meant his artifacts were subject to attack from worlds away, although that was secondary to getting his friends and compatriots back!
Despite depending on those artifacts to continue fighting and thus living, Xander was still very much of the opinion that the lives of his friends were far more important to him than his.
Amy had more or less ignored his pronouncement, putting that mentally aside to deal with later as she focused all of her power and control on reverting the next pile of dissolved human and angel parts back into real people, using the same incantation as before.
One of these new people being revealed as the magic restored her was apparently someone of great significance to one of those two recruits hanging back in fear outside the door, as that maiden chose to rush in upon seeing her, and tripped over a puddle of person parts she wasn't paying attention to by the door on her way in, giving Xander a chance to see the dissolving action from an outside perspective this time.
It wasn't pretty.
The way the young lady fell was also unfortunate, joining the remaining people-puddles together as her mass fell across them.
Amy merely wiped the sweat from off her brow and continued centering herself, catching her breath before reverting the final puddle, extra member or no.
"What happened? What is going on?" Willow overcame her own confusion from the aftereffects of being goo long enough to ask.
Xander answered grimly. "As near as I can tell, somebody just cast a spell to the effect of 'Verduran Enchantresses cannot exist'. And one with particularly horrific effects, at that."
"But..." Willow sputtered. "They Can't Do That!"
"Not with any Magic card I know of," Amy agreed having just cast the final spell, so the last puddle of people began reforming. "Destroy all Verduran Enchantresses is not a card that would sell very well."
"If it was just a 'destroy all' I could have regenerated them," Xander shook his head, noting in the privacy of his mind that what had been true for Sophie was true for them all. Every one of the former goo people had identical stat blocks - probably as a direct result of the way Amy had restored them.
"But a 'Destroy All' is one of the few, if not the only, effects that will simply bypass both 'Protection From' and 'Can't Be Targeted' defenses - which we have. So someone invoked a unique magical effect, tailor-made to stop us," Amy worried, but she was already continuing on her explanation. "Probably made up on the spot. That actually fits something I've been concerned with. I've been keeping records, and most of the creatures we've seen aren't real cards. Some are close, but the majority are very different. In fact, for some I'd say the similarities are mostly due to being based on similar legends."
"Yeah, so far this 'game' has been going by a very different set of rules." Sophie, who was quite bravely overcoming her own shock, agreed. Collecting herself rapidly, she explained, "Amy and I had been discussing this, and as near as we can tell from reading the Watcher's books we borrowed from Giles, that's because the other players aren't 'players' in a Magic: The Gathering sense, more like powerful groups or individuals who already had loads of supernatural followers and that got identified as 'opponents' when you picked up that deck of cards. They might not even be mages at all, certainly not in the sense you are, anyway."
Willow nodded, having been reading on this topic exhaustively those hours when she could not be with Xander, sorrowfully added her own conclusion. "That's what my research has been bearing out. According to the Watcher's diaries, there have always been a large number of archdevils and demon lords vying for control of this and many other worlds. I think when you picked up that deck you simply entered that competition as a mage styled on Magic, The Gathering - but it is not a Magic-style game. It's just a bunch of tremendously powerful figures fighting each other for control over a number of closely linked dimensions."
Amy summed up. "So, while you have to follow the rules, they don't. Or, rather, they are following their own rules. I imagine everyone with power has some restrictions on it."
"Only we really don't know what those restrictions might me," Sophie observed. "That's a disadvantage right there. Not knowing how they defend themselves, it becomes difficult to attack them, or to block their attacks on us."
"Actually, that's not quite true," Xander observed. "We already know these guys are creature heavy, and light on spells, just from what we've already observed attack us. And those creatures, at least, we mostly know how to deal with."
"Mostly," Sophie agreed, still privately thinking of the many attacks that had gotten through.
"So what really happened?"
Xander gestured to the balcony, and all present, barring the girl who was still hanging fearfully around the door, flew off of it to see their surroundings. Gone was Sunnydale. Instead, all of their libraries and towers and other properties had been moved to an island somewhere. A sanctuary. Great castles of white stone stood tall on the beaches, and Xander could somehow tell this place was just waiting to be empowered as tropical islands.
"Best guess is, someone caught us rewriting reality, felt threatened, then pulled whatever it was he pulled trying to make us stop. It might have been chance he struck at our angelic enchantresses, or it might have been the only link he could hit. I don't imagine demons have much in the way of specialized deck removal. Invoking obscure and special case game rules to destroy decks of playing cards that shouldn't even exist strikes me as a low priority for world-spanning demon lords, generally speaking. But still, somebody felt us acting, then did what they could to stop us from continuing what we were doing."
"Can't afford to let an enemy have that kind of advantage," Sophie agreed.
"That's what most monsters of this level think, I'm certain," he observed.
"Can they stop us?" Willow asked quietly.
Xander closed his eyes in concern. "I don't know. But we do ourselves no favors if we do their jobs for them and don't even try. Thanks to Amy, we recovered mostly from the last hit. We'll just have to go forward boldly, and if we take another, deal with that, too."
He brought up a card and charged it with energy, before handing it off to Harmony without need for further comment. "Archangel, a five-five flying that does not tap to attack."
"Basically Serra, but more powerful and tougher. Less popular, because she was a *lot* more expensive, thus harder to get out," Amy summarized.
Xander landed before the young lady still quivering just outside the door to his bedroom. "Hi there. I believe I have a promise to keep about transforming you into an angel?"
As he accepted the charged cards back from Harmony, Charity darted out the entrance, saying, "I'll go fetch three other girls!"
OoOoO
After his initial draw of five, Xander had drawn three sets of sixteen cards, minus one to pay to activate the ability of his Island Sanctuaries - So they ought to be seeing a lot fewer successful monster attacks during the coming month.
However, he still had a huge number of cards.
"I still have seven enchantments to play. Provided I can get to all of them, that's ten, total, this round. We only got six angels out of the Sigil itself, but between those six and the sixteen each out of the other nine, that's going to leave us with a tidy one hundred and fifty four-four flying angel tokens this round."
"And two thousand, four hundred health, just from that," Willow smiled up at her man.
"So, what needs to be played, in what order, for best effect?" Amy requested, folding her arms below her breasts while leaning against a counter. That she was halfway up the wall while doing it, flying effortlessly in midair only underscored the situation.
Xander nodded her way in acknowledgement of the very serious question. "Well, I've got four new angel cards out of the last couple draws of sixteen. That's not counting Archangel, which has already been played. I should probably play the one called Emeria Angel soon, because she has a special ability of bringing a one-one white bird token with flying into play whenever I play a land. So if I put her out first I'll get max bird tokens out of her."
"How much land have you got?" Amy inquired, still floating in midair, now seating herself crosslegged upon the top of a lampshade.
"Seven. I drew a plains, tropical island, Elfhame Palace, forest, Serra's Sanctum, Library of Leng and School of the Unseen."
Amy blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. "That's not a lot of land for having drawn fifty two cards this turn. I'd worry about you being mana-starved for everything we're going to have to do, except the Serra's Sanctums come in ridiculously handy for us there."
"What do they do?" Hope asked.
"Most land, plains and such, say 'tap for one white'," Willow expounded. "That's standard, one mana of one color per land. Forest gives green, islands blue, etc."
"Serra's Sanctum is a bit of heaven, a beautiful city that floats in mid-air just like she does, and has the ability to 'tap for one white - For Every Enchantment You Control'!" Amy emphasized.
Willow did a quick bit of math. "Which, between the ones played last turn, and the ten more from this one, could give us fifty-seven white mana tapping just one of them. It could be an even sixty if we wanted to play the remaining three Fastbonds."
"I'd advise against that," Amy told her friend. "Frankly, either way, one of these will fill our needs for white mana. And it's still best to hold something back so that he can run the Libraries of Alexandria for more cards next turn."
"True," Willow allowed.
Sophie sighed and shook her head. "I'd advise against playing the tropical island, just to not give anything with islandwalk an opening to attack us, but we are rather starved for blue mana at the moment. And we can't use the 'any color' to cover for it all of the time."
"What about the Elfhame Palace, Library of Leng or School of the Unseen?" Charity inquired politely.
"Elfhame Palace is one of the many follow-up cards to the original dual color lands," Amy expounded to her friends, now folding her arms above her head, and floating sideways. "It gives you two color options, in this case white and green, but has a disadvantage in that it comes into play already tapped. So we can't use it this turn."
"Nevertheless, I expect it will be a fun place to live," Xander quipped.
That gave those girls pause as they thought about it. Living in a palace? That had to have something to recommend it, considering the reputation it held.
"And the Library of Leng?"
"That's probably a card we'll just keep back, as it doesn't do anything we really need done, at present." Amy was now floating upside-down, staring down at the ceiling. "It removes any limit to number of cards in the hand, but our Spellbook already does that. It does let us choose to discard back into the deck itself, rather than the discard pile. But, again, we don't have a real pressing need to do that at present. We might play one, as a precautionary measure, just to have the ability, but the other three can be held back, easy."
She smiled at all of them. "While we could play them for the extra bird tokens we'd get though Emeria Angel, with a hundred and fifty angel tokens already expected this turn, I'm not feeling all that desperate for extra blockers."
"The School of The Unseen?"
"An invisible academy for wizards. Think Hogwarts, only without the copyrighted characters, and hopefully with a competent staff. What we can do with it, however, is tap it for colorless mana, or feed it two mana and tap it to get one back of any color, a conversion system that helps more than you might think, as we're currently swimming in white, but are rather short on green and feeling a bit starved for blue."
Cordelia nodded. "If we play four of each of those six lands, plus one of the Library of Leng, that's going to be a hundred one-one bird tokens with flying." She turned to face Harmony. "Do we have enough of that magic paint to color all of them blue?"
While eyes went round all around her, Harmony nodded her agreement. "Sure. Easy. The cans refill if you feed them a bit of magical energy." Here she smirked, "Although, in the amounts you're talking about, we might need to hit Xander up for a point of mana just to keep our paint cans filled."
Cordelia nodded decisively. "Then that helps out our blocking situation as well, giving us a good answer to all of that Protection From White that keeps attacking us. Birds won't kill many of our attackers, but we need not be overly concerned should we lose them, either."
"Shouldn't we make some green?" Charity asked in concern.
Xander shook his head. "No need," he said, showing off one of the cards he held in his hand currently. "Deranged Hermit. Every time he enters play, each one of him brings four one-one green squirrel tokens into play with him. So between our four hermits, that's sixteen green squirrels. But also, each hermit has the special ability that all squirrels get plus one-plus one while the hermit is in play. So, four hermits grants plus four-plus four, and our little one-one squirrels become five-five creatures. The equal of fully grown dragons. I think we have adequate defenders for green," he told everyone with a grin.
"I'm concerned they don't fly," Willow told him earnestly.
"That shouldn't be as much of a problem." Xander hopped out of his seat, hovered a bit in mid air, than came down brandishing four more cards, each of different types. "I drew four more walls this turn. One of those is Wall of Thunder, which flies. I think if we combine that with our walls already capable of blocking armies and not being damaged, flying creatures no longer present the same degree of threat to us."
"Three types of wall into one creature, I'm sure we can do it," Amy agreed, since the one they'd already relied upon for defense was only two, one more ought to be possible.
"What are the other walls?" Sophie leaned forward to ask.
"Wall of Hope, a zero-three white wall that whenever it gets dealt damage, I get extra life equal to that damage. Wall of Pine Needles, a three-three green wall that regenerates for one green mana. And Wall of Resistance, a zero-three white flier that every time it takes damage, gets a plus zero-plus one counter."
"I think we should combine those three into one also," Sophie told everyone eagerly. "Think about it. A three-three wall with flying isn't bad, only it isn't great either until you add in the 'get extra life' and 'get tougher' abilities. Our Fortified Area enchantments give all of our walls Banding, a special ability that lets us choose how damage gets distributed among them. So pair up our Life Giving Walls with our Stop Army Walls. Our enemies still get stopped cold, but we can feed the Life Giving ones just as much damage as they could survive during each attack. That grants you a trickle of extra life, but also makes those walls tougher so they could survive more damage the next time we get attacked, which in turn grants you even more life because each time they get hit, they can handle more the next time."
"But why the extra wall?" Hope asked. "What does the pine needles one add? Doesn't he already have the ability to regenerate his creatures?"
"For two mana, which is harder to scare up in an emergency than one," Amy answered for her. "And don't forget we ran out of mana to do it last turn, which is why our treefolk are dead, and not standing guard outside. Plus, regeneration requires green, which is not our best supply. Also, think on this, last time we got pounded into the ropes we had to send out our treefolk to die in order to save Xander's life. Now, if it came down to that level, where he was so hurting that we were desperate and looking to regenerate creatures, during one of those attacks we *could* stop, have our Stop Army Walls pour all of that damage the blocked creatures would normally do into one of our Life Giving Walls. Suddenly Xander gains in life what would have been a whole assault's worth of damage! Then we regenerate that wall!"
She sighed, yet smiled happily, tossing her hair. "We couldn't do it every turn. Being regenerated from damage that would destroy you is exhausting, and leaves you tapped. And tapped creatures can't do any more blocking. So, long term, we'd get more life per wall by letting them build up capacity just taking what they could sustain with each attack. But in an emergency, we could convert however many attacking creatures' power we like directly into life for Xander."
"Suddenly, I'm no longer so scared about living until my next turn," Xander told everyone honestly. Pivoting in place, he turned to face his lifelong friend.
"Willow, will you marry me?"
"Yes," she dimpled softly, then consumed him in an enormous hug.
OoOoO
Author's Notes:
D'Hoffryn is decent proof there are demon lords out there who can simply rewrite reality to suit them, which was the rationale behind zapping the Verduran Enchantresses.
Also, I am aware that Serra's Sanctum is a Legendary Land, and you can only have one of each Legend in play at any one time. So they could only have one of those Sanctums, and yet talked like they planned for several. I was going to address that, but ran out of room.
And, as tough as those new defenses sound, the twenty-seven opposing players each gave him what effectively amounts to a finger flick last turn, expecting it to suffice. Now they know better.
I have more defenses yet to give him, yet they still won't hardly be enough. That's what you ought to expect when mere mortals tangle in the affairs of the Powers That Be.