[Warpworld] Ch 32 – Nailing the Warp

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            “I used layers of Primal, Eldritch, Sacred, Arcane, and Spiritual power to do so, energies at exactly the same level as its bent and twisted Divine power, and when agglomerated and harmonized, even levels above it. Furthermore, I concentrated immense power into very small areas, the spell wound together so tightly that the protection about the minion there could not itself concentrate enough to negate them or take them apart.

            “Its Divine protection was thus neutralized, leaving it absolutely vulnerable to the full power of the spell assault that came next, and it was not at all prepared to deal with that level of concentrated attack magic. It neglected its own defenses and power with absolute faith in the power of its master, and it paid the price for its lack of redundancy.”

            The two elves digested what I was saying, doubtless reading further into it that I myself had definitely NOT neglected having multiple layers of defenses, and working at higher levels than the plain Arcane magic they were wielding.

            It takes all kinds of Casters to be a Theurge, after all.

            “Is there a way to defeat such attacks?” Master Artlis wondered aloud.

            “Naturally. It becomes a ploy and counterploy by the contesting Casters. Rays versus reflecting shields and spell turning. Auto-hits versus targeting substitution. Cover versus multi-angular pathing. Point defenses against multiple attacks. Accuracy of skill versus spatial bending. Counterspells against Resonance. Girding against Penetration. Raised spells against Valence immunities. Contests of Caster Level, Passive Domination against Active Burn, Specialization against General Superiority... all the factors come into play. Guarding against ploy and counter-ploy gets very complex among our set, as you doubtless know.”

            “This is true, to the point where in the end it often comes down to staying power and who runs out of energy first,” Master Artlis agreed, golden eyes gleaming as he considered something in his past. “And... who has the more powerful backing.”

            “Aye, Elder. There are many Arcane Casters who believe in the superiority of their own arts and their own power over all others, either because they have massive egos related to their control over magic, or they are so, so much smarter than those about them, and they know it.

            “And yet, Pact Magic, Divine Magic, and Natural Magic all mean you can have big and powerful friends to lean on, whose limits are, well, not mortal at all. Thinking you would be worse off with beneficial relationships in those areas is the height of foolishness.”

            “The problem is finding a beneficial relationship,” Master Sethanon replied to that, almost sighing. “Too many times, the other party has quite wicked intentions and is misleading you, or they consider you a pawn in their own games of power.”

            “A fact sure to discourage the madly independent, I agree. Finding the right Patrons and working with them on mutually acceptable goals can be difficult to do, especially when they are concerned with higher causes than one’s own goals, one’s friends, family, nation, or people. Nations of ants might be interesting to watch, but such entities are often far above such mortal limitations and fixations.”

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            The two elves digested that as the Warpeater Pyramid trundled forward at turtle-breaking speed, sucking up the vivus and applying it to reality about us, reinforcing it against the Warp, extending the thin needle made by the Ranthas and turning it into a massive nail, wedge, and spike aimed at the heart of the Warpzone.

            I could have been expanding the Domain of the Pyramid, but no. I was now reinforcing it to be stronger and stronger against what would certainly be ever-escalating attempts to overwhelm it, with the rest of the Warp Zone doubtless being stripped of energy in the attempt to do so, accelerating its fall and decline.

            Still, regardless of what was happening, they knew that unprotected demons stood no chance in the Domain, and the Warped just Burned to white ash, as well.

            Those gifted the most by the Warp Gods Burned the brightest and fastest, a horrible conundrum for them, and what beings existed in this area who were not Warped by now? Mutants, mutates, and monsters alike were glutted on the power of Chaos and Change here, and here they died by it, twisted minds, bodies, and souls returned to the Land and used to deny the very things that had given them the strength they craved.

            The twisted landscape rolled by, hour by hour. Pits to foul horrors, animated hills and mountains, festering pools of latent energies, writhing rivers of substances that were very much not water, clouds of poison and pestilence, and endless vile creatures and creations twisted by malevolent imagination into parodies and maddened things all Burned and died as the Domain swept over them, and vivus ignited on them and Fed them to the Land.

            As an Ur-Priest, I was far more aware of the flows of Faith than normal Priests, who normally could only sense the waning or waxing of belief in their own gods. As Ur-Priests could technically serve and call on any gods, including none at all, employing the flow of Faith to empower Divine Magic even without a proper intervening entity, sensing the ravaging of Faith in the area as the Warp Gods were being challenged and losing wasn’t that hard to do.

            Naturally there were fanatics who just believed I was moving slowly and utterly to my doom, my little pile of stone nothing before the true might and power of the Warp Gods.

            The fact was, they were completely right. The Warp Gods were gods, I was a mortal challenging them, and all the power was on their side.

            Except for one little thing, and that was that the Land and Mortal Plane were completely on my side. This whole attack of mine wasn’t about me flexing my power, although I’d done a little bit of that. No, it was pushing back the blanketing influence of the Warp and letting in the power of the Land that the Warp Gods had to suppress here.

            The Land didn’t want this obscene break in the Veil to be here. Through various machinations, the Warp Gods had caused the Rift here to open, extruding part of the Warp into real space here for a mix-and-match nightmare of contesting realities.

            The Warp Realm was a minor thing compared to the Mortal Plane. The Laws and Rules of the Mortal Plane were pervasive and mighty, its size was exponentially greater in all aspects, and wherever it stood, it was basically the center and foundation of the local multiversal structure.

            The Warp Realm could concentrate its power on an area under the influence of the Warp Gods, which was what was going on here. Doing so, it had wedged open a crack and kept it there, braced against the constant weight and power of the Mortal Plane, and that had allowed the Warp to unduly reflect the realm of mortal life, where all the truly important and fun stuff happened.

            I wasn’t bringing my power in here. I was driving a wedge into the power of the Warp with the ominous hammer of the Mortal Plane behind me, and the solid block of rampant, alien energies and Rules contesting with the Mortal Plane was being duly split apart and ground down, like the fangs of a great jaw slowly closing.

            I was just a little razor blade, or the tip of a pounding nail. Backing me up was the whole Mortal Plane, and it was putting more and more pressure on this entire area.

            No longer having eyes, I had to pay much more attention to alternate spectra. It was a way the Warp used to ensorcel the mind and soul and drive mortals mad, but those mortals weren’t under a Pact with Heaven and possessing a level of Divine and Natural Protection against those influences trying to get into my head.

            After all, Chaos was represented in Heaven. The dark parts of it were what I was opposed to, so I wasn’t going to be seduced by the powers of Chaos this way. As for the various and well-concealed forms of dark influences inside the thaumaturgic light show, they were running into Wards on mind, body, and soul, and the burning Wrath of my Heaven Pact, and weren’t getting very far at all.

            With every foot I rolled forward on the Warpeater Pyramid, the pressure on the Warp Gods increased, the weight of Reality loomed ever higher and stronger behind me. The frayed Laws and Rules straightened themselves back out, wove themselves tighter, and began to wrap and bind and constrict against the frayed energies and influence of the alien dimension that had dared to extend into ours.

            Not my power at all, no. The Domain might have been a rounded sphere, but from the viewpoint of Reality I was a razor blade slicing into this extrusion, nothing more. Reality itself was doing all the really heavy work, I was just cutting through the tangles and opening up the road.

            Said road was plowing a path towards its destination, glowing white with devouring vivus eating away happily at the alien energies around, making Reality stronger and stronger as it did so, the nail of what was coming more adamant than steel now, relatively speaking.

=======

            “Ah, here it comes.” I straightened up on my Disk in anticipation of the show to come, while the elves and the lizardfolk who’d gathered up to listen to me take questions from them directed their attention back forward.

            “What do you mean, magos?” the general of the lizardfolk asked, clutching his great ancient Axe of bone and steel.

            “The Warp Gods have a limited number of ways they can approach what I am doing. There are many variations within those approaches, but a hundred varieties of flanking attacks are still flanking attacks, correct?”

            “This is true,” the looming pseudo-dinothroid with aspirations of triceratops-dom murmured, looking ahead to see what might be concealed there.

            “For the last twelve hours, they’ve been trying illusions and misdirections, attempting to bend the direction we are traveling in.”

            I whipped up a Holo of the Warpzone, and our path into it. It was basically line-straight, spreading out in a slow wedge behind us, putting immense pressure to the sides of us that was rippling and cracking through the edge of the intruding space. Elves and reptile-men alike looked to the sides, where madly churning Warpstorms were pounding at the edge of the Domain... and if you looked closely, shearing and churning off the edges of it, like a boat passing through turbulent seas.

            “By doing so, they could greatly alleviate the pressure coming from behind us, sever the continuity, and then force Reality backwards.”

            I bent the straight angle of our path slowly aside in a curve, and the crack behind us stopped growing as we began to meander randomly inside the Warp Zone, and eventually the path behind us was sealed shut, and began to organically force the intruding spike backwards, until the Warp Zone was sealed shut behind us and the Pyramid was just a point of light running around randomly, leaving a trail behind it that was continually erased as it moved about.

            “Illusion and misdirection. They can effectively exile us to a random portion of the Warp Zone, and keep us busy with occasional raids and minions set to test us, or random defenses erected in our path to keep us occupied and effectively impotent!” Master Sethanon declared, seeing through the tactic promptly. “How are you defying it?”

            “Because I’m not heading for the center of the Warp Zone by divination or dead reckoning or anything. I’m following an existing trail out of the central point etched into it by the Ranthas when they emerged from the Warp, Burned a path through this fake reality, and then cemented it into place with Source and Null fields combined. The Warp Gods are desperately trying to erode their backtrail, but it’s not working very well, and that tiny little thread of space they cleared is an unending hunting path forged from the blood and souls of their own in this space. It leads right back to where they came from, the Warp itself, and so exactly where we want to go.”

            I waved Mortus Dius idly in the air. “There have been some immensely subtle and powerful directional-bending spatial shifts, temporal recursions, and perception obfuscations laid down ahead of and around us. If I paid attention to them at all, I’d likely have been thinking I was moving straight ahead, and actually been either going to an isolated space deeper in the Warp Zone where we could wander around for eternity, or heading right back outside. The direction of North has shifted across our entire forward vector twice over.” An illusionary compass in front of us slowly shifted one way, then suddenly was all the way to the other quarter, and then flipped from one vector to another, with no rhyme or reason to the pattern.

            “The one thing they can’t do is fake Reality being here already, and Reality has already flowed into that tiny little path made by the Ranthas. They are twisting space and actually a good portion of the Warp Zone around us, but they can’t change our trail.”

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