[Warpworld] Ch 40 – Lord of Circles
Added 2025-03-29 04:36:24 +0000 UTC« Chapter 39 | Index | Chapter 41 »
“Master Aelryinth, what did you do?” Grandmaster Artlis asked softly, coming up to stand beside me as we looked out into the Warp.
Thirty feet in front of me was yesterday’s marker for the edge of the Warp, a simple crystalline post extending out of the ground, its base now surrounded by a prismatic array of spontaneously erupting crystals.
A new post extended up ten inches beyond it, where our efforts indicated our advance.
The area in between it was a revealed Circle, exposed to sight now, extending off to left and right visibly, thrumming with the power of Binding, Sealing, Interdicting, and reinforcement to the Veil. The Runes there glowed with anathema to Chaos and Evil, and no being of the Warp could step near them, or even force themselves to strike at or through them.
Protection from Evil and Chaos, writ large upon the top of the world!
“I used the clever tactic of the Warp Gods against it, Master Artlis,” I responded calmly, rising to my feet next to him, Mortus Dius and the gaping avatar’s Baneskull atop it Burning and ready for duty. The Sublime Chord began to exhibit a more eager, martial air as I began to call on power and weave it together once more. “Their tactic of diverting the force of our arrival around the entire Rift basically brought into being a perfect area for me to sculpt the stone of. No cracks, fissures, gaps, intrusions, or other problems, only minor problems of height and lay of the land. Perfectly congealed returned substance of reality.
“I used their generous gift to build a Thaumaturgic Circle around the entirety of the Warp Rift. This nicely turned their Warpstorm attack specifically aimed at us into a Warpstorm attack against the entirety of the Rift’s boundaries, diluting its power a thousandfold and making it relatively easy to withstand. When the Warpstorm abates, I imagine we are going to be making some significant progress rather quickly.”
The golden-eyed, silver-haired elven archmage pondered that as he regarded the hints of the madness beyond the seething vivic wall not far in front of us. “You expanded the Domain slightly,” he noticed after a moment.
“Natural Renewal doubled the amount of resistance the Warp has to overcome, alleviating some of the pressure upon the Domain. I’m just feeding the extra vivus into the Rune fields and Circles I made, bringing more counter-pressure to bear.”
“Rune fields and Circles,” he repeated, emphasizing the ‘s’.
“Look over the edge,” I advised him.
He stepped up to there, leaning on his Staff to carefully peer over the nearly vertical slope of stone below him.
I waited as his head turned slowly right, slowly left, seeing the utterly massive expanses of Runes Shaped out of the stone, the crystalline protrusions of purified matter jutting from them in a pattern somehow extremely profound while seeming totally random.
Miles after miles of Runes, extending off into the distance to the sides and down below, until the roiling war of vivus and Warp energies hid them from sight.
Beneath, below, and through them, multiple layers of Thaumaturgic Circles gleamed, sometimes touching, reinforcing one another, all taking the incredible pressure of the Warpstorm stolidly, the Laws of Reality behind them.
“You… made all of that?” the elven archmage asked faintly, turning back to look at me.
“I did,” I confirmed easily, circles of Greater Shards and mystic Seals and Sigils starting to dance in the air around me. Thunder was reverberating and The Light was glowing warmly within them.
“When?” he asked, at a loss.
“While I was busy Casting these massively distracting salvos of Warp-eating magic for them to focus on and enjoy. Like I am still doing right now.”
He looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. Well, multiple thoughtstreams gave basically the same benefit.
I lowered Mortus Dius, and the first shots against the Warp of the day reached out and detonated. For a moment, the screaming madness was wailing and shrieking as tolling bells and chimes of Thunder ripped apart its whispers and roars, and The Light washed the darkness away.
A second later, it was gone, and the endless howling darkness behind was swarming back, but that was fine.
I had a Fastcast volley to go, and the Echoes were going to start up in six seconds, too.
Master Artlis wandered back to his Ritual that was starting up again… with some Runic structures I’d put into place to help amplify what they were doing a little bit more and better. It could still be fine-tuned, and the elves in particular were attempting to do so out of pride.
I didn’t care, they knew their magic better than I did. Drawing out the vivus flooding through the ground to help their own magic could only help them, so that was why I’d done it.
The new day rang out with Thunder and The Light, and soon enough Waves of the Weight of the World came crashing over from their conjoined Rituals to magnify what I was doing. The relentless assault on the Warp continued, Warpstorm or no.
The madness without protested, but we didn’t care. We weren’t beating it back, but we were feeding on it, and it was just delivering us more concentrated fuel for the Mortal Realm as it raged out there.
It was a storm, and we were the river that was going to flow out there despite the storm surge, leading the Weight of the World.
------
It wasn’t a full day, as I’d not felt the Natural Renewal going off, but the Ritual Casters had rested for four hours once again, splitting their time. Master Artlis had wandered over, looked at the ground, his golden eyes gleaming, and where the post had moved.
It was half a day, and it had moved a foot beyond where it was in the morning.
Doubling the distance, and a little more.
Patience, persistence, endurance, the strength of flowing water coming down the mountain. Water was not unnatural for the elves, and strength and endurance was very natural for the saurids. One was raising the height of the mountain, and the other was sending a river and avalanche flowing down it and crashing into the Warp.
It was working. It might have seemed small, but the power of doubling meant it would all fall if we kept at it… and that sort of timeless patience elves had nicely.
I had the experience of building Pyramids for years, literally millions of Blocks made at levels a normal human simply couldn’t visualize in anything but the simplest terms. It was a lot of time invested in separate constructions aiming for a greater whole.
This was actually a faster version of the same thing. My building Pyramids didn’t multiply in speed every day.
Also, I was getting mad Rep Counts on all manner of high Valences and Energies attached to my Shards. I could only regret that I wasn’t getting free refills on what I was doing. If so, I would have unleashed Arcane Fusions all day.
Man, wouldn’t that have been a sight to see, adding more Interdictions and other effects on top of the Shards igniting the corrupted energies of the Warp beyond.
I didn’t normally use Axiomatic energies, as I wasn’t a big proponent of Law, but this was a special situation and I didn’t mind letting the Warp eating some additional opposed punch here. The Sublime Chord employed the energies of Order as well as it did everything else, and harmonic, slicing Thunder pealed endlessly against the screaming rage of the Warp, cutting and stabbing deep into its essence and whatever forces drove it as it magnified the power of all the energies doing the punching.
Silvered spears against the incoming annihilation that couldn’t reach us, only Burn and blow past us.
------
There it was. The ebbing.
The Warp roiled and surged back and forth irregularly, as was its wont, but the overall pressure didn’t really change, only the immediate force, not that actually backing it. But there was a greater Warp, too, and this was only a tiny manifestation of it. It would blow out, in time, and I liked to think that the Good and Law spitting into the teeth of this Warpstorm had helped herd it all on past, the living Chaos trying to recoil and ignore us even as it was taunted and pricked by such tiny energies from the Mortal world.
Pricks that encouraged it to go elsewhere, perhaps back to the path it had always been meant to be on before it was shoved in our direction.
“The Warp Storm has reached its height and begun to ebb. Carry on as you are. It is going to fade, and then we shall see what the Warp loses out of this failure…”
They all heard me, and there was a bit of an emotional surge of delight at the news, but it rapidly returned to calm.
Thunder tolled and Chimed, a Silvered Light stabbed into the heart of energies Chaotic and Evil, and time ticked steadily past, ignoring us all.
------
“Behold the new day!”
Natural Renewal rolled across the world, completely ephemeral, a universal standard of natural Laws. The Veil seemed to swell and rise with its approach, and then it closed down about us.
The Rune Circles I’d put in place blazed, and the Weight of the World came crashing down.
Pressure from the very universe came evenly from all directions, and the chaotic defiance of the intruding plane tried to fight it, and could not.
Silently, steadily, even as I raised a new post to mark the morning, a full meter of progress finished now, the edge of the Rift retreated. Another meter, two, three… before steadying there for a moment.
“It seems,” Master Sethanon remarked with great satisfaction, golden eyes agleam with the intellectual predatory instincts of powerful Casters, “that we are slightly ahead of schedule.”
I tilted my head back, looking at the roiling dome of vivic mists and unwhite energies conflicting with the raw output of the Rift above us. “They have moved their focus. It should not have quadrupled progress like this. They are now spending their energies against the Warped Moon above us, instead of leaning back against us.”
Saurids and elves turned their heads back to look up at an unseen sky, wondering what I saw with my empty eye sockets. “They still intend to drop the moon upon us…” Master Artlis mused, then glanced at me and my slight smile. “You believed they would do so…”
“It is already on vivic fire, and the size of the conflagration doubles in radius daily. The whole moon is a feast for the universe, and reality is devouring it. There is also a lot of interference coming from some strange source as they have to reach through the Rift in front of us, and can’t tell exactly what is wrong with the place. Think of trying to juggle flaming balls while dancing on hot coals in a dark room, wondering why the balls are burning you because you can’t see the flames.”
The elves and saurids considered that with their own versions of amusement. “Will they be able to bring it down?” General Rixugor asked in a low growl.
“Of course! They are the Warp Gods, naturally they can bring it down. Whether they can do so in time, or even more of a challenge, with any amount of control, is a different matter entirely. Trying to do so while reaching through a Warp Storm and the Thaumaturgic Circle binding this entire area is impossible, so they are having to filter through smaller openings to the Warp elsewhere, which both limits their power and forces them to spend even more power opening those small gaps further…”
“Would their expended power fan those vivic flames on the Warp Moon further?” Master Artlis inquired astutely.
“Why, yes.”
Hums and grunts rose from elves and saurids as they considered that, however the Warp Gods were going to act, they were going to pay…
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