[Warpworld] Ch 41 – Upping the Rent
Added 2025-03-29 04:37:42 +0000 UTC« Chapter 40 | Index | Chapter 42 »
It turned out the Phaselocking Meta, an effect meant to stop the target of one of your attack spells from teleporting, phasing, or other such dimensional mischief, was a very useful add-on to the Shards, almost doubling the amount of dimensional weight each Shard carried, driving them further into the Warp before detonating, little scrabbling holds on the Warp reality could press in and build on.
The Warp could push them back, but only slowly, and soon enough I had thousands of the spiky intrusions punching into the Warp, creating an internal bulge and breaking the perfect sphere that the Warp was using to help forestall us.
Once that bulge was in place, however small it might be, it allowed the Weight of the World to concentrate on the weakest point, and forced the Warp to expend more energy to try to push it all back and delay us, cursing at the weakness of foiled geometry.
The meter advanced further, as I didn’t allow them to push all the way back, and this Rift in the Veil seemed to groan and creak at times from the dimensional pressures that were building up on it.
Next stage.
I erected my first Wall of Fire at the edge of the Rift, and anchored it to that edge, there to move with it as reality closed in. I also Widen II’d it, Anchored, Admixed, and Paired it, getting eight of them for ten Valence equivs, paid for out of my Pool.
Wall of Fire was a trans-Theurgic spell on a bunch of Class Lists. My effective Caster Level with it was over 90. Doubled in its two dimensions for nothing, that meant one Wall of Fire was about two thousand feet long, and I put in place eight of them at once… well, with a one-round delay, laying them end to end, each one extending off the previous.
I couldn’t maintain eight at once… but I could Permanency the lot of them, tying them to the vivic flow that erupted as Sacred Primal Divine flames ate at the Warp and freed up a lot of energy, which curled back into the Walls to keep them going.
Funnily enough, there were a significant number of magical items with Warped magic in them all nice and ready to be sacrificed to pay for such, too.
The damage per round per Wall wasn’t quite what I was doing with my Shards, all things told, but it was completely constant, didn’t require any maintenance from me while it was up and going… and I could always put up more Walls.
So, I did.
Golden flames blazing with Holy energies roared and feasted on alien energies, vivus billowed from them, fed back into the fires and kept them going.
It was a pure Valence expenditure, so I was limited in how many times a day I could do such a thing, but that was fine.
Each one was basically adding another volley per round to the firepower I was putting up, crawling flames reaching over and into the Warp and feeding on it for pure power, shining and chiming gently as they Burned with quiet Thunder.
Master Artlis had to come wandering over during one of their rest periods after seeing nearly ten miles of Walls of Fire going at it before I was done. “Those flames are magnificent, I’ve never seen anything like them,” he admitted to me, stopping there to listen to the chimes of the Flames complement the ringing tonals of my detonating Shards.
“They are the Fires of Heaven, Void Phoenix Arcane magic imbued with true Divine energy, as well as the Primal flames of the Land, the burning Chords of the Heart, the Eldritch friction between dimensions of Pact Magic, and the defiant blaze of Soul magic, anchored by the Typeless Magic of Artifice to the Circle underneath them and tied to the edge of the Rift, instead of the matter they stand upon.
“Their fuel is the energies of the Warp, and they will Burn as long as such is available.” I had expended a lot of my Arcane Pool, Valences, and support energies to get them going. “Each thousand feet is about equal to one of my basic individual Shard spells being cast. So right now, the amount of energy they are delivering is about four times what I am Casting, although it is much more evenly distributed.”
For two hundred paces in either direction from me, the Warp was now bulged in visibly, the Circles enwrapping it evidence of how the holes I was punching into it and which the elves and saurids had repeatedly been driving Reality’s Weight into had pushed it back in this area. It was slammed a full hundred yards past the most recent Circle I’d filled in now, and I was still Casting, not letting it fill the loss back in.
The incoming Weights had naturally channeled nicely into the dimple, concentrating their power, pushing it into the spikes my Shards forced into it, further increasing the stress on the Rift’s integrity.
“You are increasing the pressure on them, then. How do you think they will respond?” the elf asked slowly.
“Poorly. Their personalities are not well-geared to be reactive and defensive. They are of Chaos; they want to grow, conquer, sublimate, expand. Crashing head-on into something else and battling for supremacy is what they want. A continuous pressure exerted on them is the exact opposite of their desires, and the fact it is eating away at them, instead of vice versa, is likely annoying the piss out of them and leaving them at a loss of how to confront me.
“I’m forcing them to accelerate their plans and schedules, which means expending more power than they planned in a shorter period of time than they wanted to happen. The Walls aren’t feeding the Pyramid the way my Shards and its Domain is, but they are accelerating the pace of things.
“I imagine they do not like the feeling of not being the ones who dictate events at all. There is a very different mindset between starting something and watching the ants respond to it, then starting something else to make it more fun, as opposed to starting something because if you don’t, the game stops and you lose.”
“Ah. They realize you are attempting to remove our world from their game entirely, and they have to react to that, rather than you reacting to whatever moves they play, secure in their utter and superior power.” The elf nodded once, the hubris of the mindset not lost on him. Playing such games with gods was a dangerous thing. “The fact that whatever they are throwing at you only seems to make you stronger must be very discomfiting to them…”
“Good has always been the greatest enemy of the Warp Gods, Master Artlis,” I replied easily. “Law is too predictable, too easy to outmaneuver. It can be obdurate and deadly face to face, but pure Law lacks the flexibility to deal with all the ways and means of Chaos, although it bears all the ruthlessness.
“Good, however, tears at the very motivations of the Warp Gods’ power, with virtues like honesty, brotherhood, empathy, true love, valor, and the like antithetical to the very self-centered motivations of the Warp Gods. The willingness to sacrifice and fight for others, as opposed to sacrificing and fighting others, means they have a difficult time understanding the mindset of the Good, and their power falters when they need to confront it and cannot immediately corrupt it.
“Evil is the fuel that powers and purifies the rise of Good, and the Warp has it in spades.”
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The elven archmage sat back and considered that viewpoint, listening to the many tones of Thunder echoing in his heart and soul, seemingly elevating and lifting his soul to think on nobler mindsets, virtues, and deeds, rather than the blatant self-interest of the elves over all others.
Master Sethanon, by way of contrast, found it very uncomfortable to come up here. He was first and foremost concerned with the elven people and their fate, and all other things were secondary. It was a noble and selfless mindset in its own way, but it relegated the survival of other races to levels of irrelevance, not to be considered unless they contributed to the survival of the elves, or it did not take any effort or power on his side of things.
The saurids weren’t quite so limited, as they looked at the whole world and ecosystem… but they also considered themselves more vital to the survival of the world than any other species, and naturally considered themselves the superiors of all the others as the favored aides of the Creators. While they often had the greater benefit of the world in mind, they simply did not care about or concern themselves with the side-effects of their actions on the other races.
Good was a notion that transcended races and lumped all sapient races into the same pot. It was, Artlis realized abruptly, exactly how the Warp gods viewed mortals! They were just souls, all of them, in meat suits, and the Warp gods did not care what the meat suit was. They wanted the souls inside, and so their schemes and plans were not subject to the contrariness and infighting that the racially and even factionally-disparate gods of the mortal races were subject to.
The Warp Gods didn’t care about your race or species, they wanted your soul and worship. Good didn’t care about your race or species, either…
“How does Heaven view the mortal races?” he found himself asking.
The blind human didn’t turn to look at him, since that would have been foolish. His fusillade of magic continued without stopping as he replied, “All Good souls are considered part of the great big family of Heaven. Family looks out for one another, and Good families make good neighbors. Alas, Heaven’s neighbors are not Good, and they want what Heaven has, will seek to acquire it by any means they can use, and Heaven knows this.
“Thus, Heaven has to fight, and it has always had to fight. Heaven makes for a poor conqueror, but a mighty defender, and of all Alignments tends to raise up the mightiest individuals, and those happy with their lot in life. They lift one another up.
“The other Alignments tend to have greater strength in general than Good does, which lasts until they come rampaging towards the Good. Then the Good have to set down their comfortable lives, and take up the duties of defending themselves and all about them… at which point Good gets very deadly, very quickly, and those attacking them pay dearly for all they have done.
“Good men going to war are the most dangerous kind of warriors. There is no clinical detachment, there is no overwhelming thirst for combat. There is the recognition that this is a job that must be done, it must be done right so it doesn’t have to be done again, and logic and emotion are bound in the same bitter course to resolution.
“Good is only weak until is tested by the morally weak, and then, then they find they have roused a phoenix to life once more, and they pay the price.” He sighed at the taller elf. “The fact it keeps happening means that Good rarely gets the time or place needed to truly glory in that which is Good, and when it does, it only inspires more hatred and envy from its rivals, who seek to tear it all down.
“In times of war, Good can stand with any and all of the other Alignments. In times of peace, none of them can rival the Good.”
The elf, hundreds of years older than this human, he was certain, considered that philosophy, the attitude that where and what you were born as was immaterial, only your level of enlightenment mattered.
He could very honestly say he knew few elves who would qualify to gain Heaven’s favors. This world did not breed them, and instead punished those who tried to be noble, with the Gods of Chaos likely behind that. It could even be self-interest, as if Good was indeed their greatest enemy, they would attempt everything to keep it out.
And now a Champion of Good was here, and wrong-footing them repeatedly, with resources that he had never seen before, whose knowledge had been denied them, and the permission to use it likely rare, too.
He could see several of the energies the human was using clearly, and knew he could wield them if merely instructed on the basics of them. Others… trying to touch them without permission would likely be very dangerous, and that was especially true of anything touched with the Holy, Divine, or Primal powers. What was behind them… did not want him or his people wielding them.
At all.
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