[Warpworld] Ch 35 – An Eye in the Sky

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            The railguns finally beeped a warning, the eager elves astutely backed away, and the things rolled back into the Pyramid and out of sight, no sign that they’d ever been there on the stonework.

            They weren’t needed anymore, as there were no viable targets left to shoot at.

            “Those are terrifying weapons, Master Aelryinth,” Master Sethanon said to me, eyeing the spots where they’d been. “How does one defend against such a dire threat?”

            “Spotters and missiles, mostly. Hide yourself behind a hill, target it with a hidden spotter, and launch arching attacks while it can’t touch you.” I whipped up a Holo, showing the railguns without field of fire or line of sight to their targets, while the return cannon or missile fire, if accurate, rained down upon them. “The effective range of them is limited, too. After the first second, the shots run into a wall of air and are rapidly ground away or start tumbling and slowing down, their very speed sending them out of control. You all saw the demands on power, so the rate of fire is highly dependent, and naturally there’s ammunition considerations, which weren’t a problem here, since you were all shooting the same four rounds over and over.”

            Returning Ammo was an easy Infusion and mass saver of time and material. Even if it was reduced to motes of hypersonic slivers on impact, it still reformed complete and whole in time for the next shot.

            Shaping Stone reached out ahead of us, forming inch-thick cracks in the massive blazing wall in front of us. There were cracks and rumbles, and then slowly and grandly, the barrier wall overbalanced backwards across a massive arc, and the whole Burning mess of it toppled over in grand slow motion.

            There wasn’t anything alive behind it to scream as it smashed down with a proper swirl of vivus and billowing unwhite mists flying about. The Warpeater Pyramid hummed as it sailed aloofly through the gap, and into the innermost depths of the Warp Zone.

            The grimly satisifed elves were all recovering their magical strength, something made extremely easy by the amount of vivic saturation around us. The Warp was howling in anger and dismay as it Burned, and there might as well have been an ocean of the stuff above us.

            A solid funnel tornado of vivic energy began to spin above us as I felt the Ventral Shunts fully empower on the bottom of the Pyramid, and all the excess vivus started being force-fed down into the Land beneath us.

            There would be no overloading the Pyramid. The super-condensing of the vivus was now shooting down into the Land in ever-thicker, ever-more-vital streams and jets, like a raging furnace of cool unwhiteness plunging into the rock and stone… and the Veil, let’s not forget the Veil.

            The spike we were punching into the Warpzone was only growing wider and harder, rolling it back, pushing it back. Overloading the battery wasn’t going to happen, only overloading the planet entire!

            “Can they stop this?” Master Artlis asked curiously, standing up and looking around at the massive amounts of investiture into strengthening true Reality going on. The mortal realm was pushing back the invading Warp Realm now, a loose and gossamer resistance that was now heavy as iron, progressing toward heavy as lead and better.

            It was extremely heartening to see. Such a basic premise: feed the Land, and let it do the heavy lifting, no need to provide the power when it was all right there and ready to be harvested!

            “Can they? They are gods. ‘Can’ is always on the table. Realistically, no, not at this point.” I looked up, smiling faintly. “I estimate there’s two things they can actually do, since they can’t mess with time and space around us anymore.

            “They can detonate the whole of the Warpzone, which would probably take out the Pyramid, but also remove it from this world, so we’d win the war, at the cost of us being gone, one way or another.

            “Or they could drop the Warp Moon on us, and hope that does the job.”

            Everyone’s eyes snapped up to the sky they couldn’t see now, agog at the very idea of having a moon dropped on them.

            It was Master Sethanon who spoke up first, “The very moon you set on vivic fire...” he whispered in recollection.

            I beamed. “Oh, and merrily ablaze it is right now, Elder! And for some odd reason, they are having real problems messing with its gravitics as a result...”

            “Could they not merely tear off a piece of it, and try to use that?” Master Artlis quickly spoke up. “Even a mere mountain-size piece of it...”

            “Yes, they could,” I admitted, inclining my head at his point. “However, they wouldn’t be able to control it, and it’s going to be Ignited as soon as it reaches the edge of the residual vivus from the Nexus that Master Sethanon was trapped in. They’ll lose all fine control of it, they’ll lose all ability to timesight it, and guess what the Domain Field of the Pyramid is doing to the spatial dynamics this far into the Warpzone.”

            I flipped up a Holo that forcibly brought to mind a ship cutting through waves, stacking up rows of spatial tremors compressing and rippling out from us as we advanced.

            “The odds of hitting us at about one in fifty thousand. The odds of getting close enough to do any damage are one in ten thousand.

            “The impact of anything that size crushing down on the Warpzone doing catastrophic damage to them and theirs throughout the entire place is absolute. Most of the impact would vent right into the Warp and set up a firestorm of the size of a continent, at least, devouring part of their Realm and sucking the energy back into this world, making a bad situation for them much worse.

            “Now, I don’t put it past them to try that, mind you, being the insane goatfuckers that they are, but I am watching, and if they try to drop a moon, comet, meteor, or anything from above on us and try to kill us with timesighting and fate manipulation, it’s not going to work.”

            The two senior elves glanced at one another. This human was terrifyingly calculating, prescient, aware, and willing to act in unknown ways. If he stayed on this world, there would be little doubt that humans would soon be the preeminent species upon it!

            I wisely didn’t bring their attention back to the Ranthas who were already here and could do a lot of that job without me.

            “If they cannot stop you, what will they do?” Master Artlis continued. “I do not see them sitting around waiting for inevitable defeat…”

            “They’ll try to scorch the earth. I expect that all the mortal and demonic servants that they can assemble are being sent out of the Warpzone right now, with orders to sweep across the world and extinguish all that live in a final glorious tribute to themselves. They may lose, but we would not win… and they will go on to other worlds, somewhere, to do the same again.”

            Thoughts and words were rapidly exchanged between the elves. A final spiteful assault, wiping the world before they lost all their followers here, spending them like a fool’s gold coins in one last bit of entertainment before the end.

            Yes, that definitely sounded like something the gods of the Warp would do.

            “But this world would have vivus,” Master Sethanon pointed out. “It is the counter to the energies of the Warp, its corruption, decadence, and subversion. Furthermore, it Burns them as it does not us, and what demons die, die and feed the Land!”

            “And as they do, they further lock away the power of the Warp, which means as you kill them, those remaining get weaker and weaker. Their bestowed gifts will fail to function, or might well mutate out of control and kill their servants entirely. Demons might simply be shoved out of the world, or be trapped and terribly weakened, waiting for vivus to consume the last of them, depending on how pissed the world is… and it’s not going to be happy with them, that is for certain.” I was cheerfully thoughtful at the implications.

            “Granted, it’s still going to be utterly horrible. The armies of the Warp will still be magically-empowered, basically free of many logistical needs of needing to eat and drink more than nominal amounts, and care only for death and slaughter, not slaves, plunder, and seizing control of the land if they’re just all going to die regardless.” There were Ranthas here. The fuckers were dead, even if took the Ranthas a century just to chase them all down. There was absolutely no way the Warped were going to inherit the planet.

            “Will you be… fighting them?” Master Sethanon asked, clearly wondering exactly what to think about that concept.

            “Mmmm. I completely would if it was required. However, what I imagine will happen is that this Pyramid will eventually collapse and consume the Warpzone, Sealing it tight, and I will ride the dimensional tides on towards my home.

            “I might be able to contribute for a short period of time as that happens, but I certainly will not remain here overlong. You need not worry about me setting up kingdoms or empires where all species are welcome and honored in a multi-cultural embrace of harmony, tolerance, and other such nonsense, Elders.”

            They flushed to the tips of their pointed ears. “You shame us, Master Aelryinth,” Master Artlis said quietly.

            “The gods I serve are not the gods of my people or species, Master Artlis. They are Good gods, Gods of Heaven. None of them claim to be truly human in origin, and they can appear human as they want or need, or any other race. They only care about the Color of your souls, not race, age, gender, accident of birth, vagaries of fate, appearance, wealth, or manners. They care about the Color of your soul and how closely you cleave to their ideals.

            “If you think about it, a truly Good god who differentiated based upon mere species or some other arbitrary measure is probably not a truly Good god at all. Goodness is not restricted by birth, after all.”

            It was still an alien concept to the two of them, raised on elfcentrism and elitism, but since it was why I was here, they could only bow their heads and accept it as impossibly moralistic high-minded idiocy, or just something foolish for them to take advantage of after I flarked off.

            That was life, dealing with Neutrals.

            On the other side, all those forces of the Warp moving out of the Zone were basically bringing about the End Times a little bit earlier than planned, so all sorts of shit was doubtless going down as the destruction of the Warpzone generated all kinds of signs likely to be misinterpreted as The End is Nigh.

            Well, it was the end for somethings.

            The Heightened Commune with Nature was extending across the full length of my backtrail and out into the real world beyond. Since all the Warped were being ordered to get out of the Warpzone with all speed and commence a Warptide Extermination (TM), they were naturally showing up as corruption and defilement areas on the landscape.

            Meaning, much to the future regret of those forces, I knew exactly where they were, and could reach them, or at least the general area they were marching through, without actually having seen such myself.

            Linejumping was pretty useful that way.

            There was a hissing gulp from nearby, and all the sauroids straightened, looking ahead at a shadow looming through the vivus and preparing to burst through the edge of the Domain..

            I stood up as well, because that thing wasn’t putting out the vibes of a Warp artifact or defense. As it stole closer, an aura of timelessness swirled about it, of pasts stained and split coming together for a new and final ending.

            It entered the envelope of the Domain, and I looked upon the work of the Creators.

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