[Warpworld] Ch 30 – Life is a Sloooooow Pyramid

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            We advanced into the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no Evil, for Heaven walketh beside me and lead me to good fields...

            I cleared my throat to nobody in particular as we hurtled along at three kph, the sloths on the outside corner clawing madly for the lead, while the vast warhost to the sides of us was edged out, and the one in front of us had to give way or Burn where it stood.

            They’d put up fortifications in front of us, trying to stop us, but lo, master of stone here. There was plenty of time to blast down and fracture even the best of stone walls, and really, all I had to do was crack them along the base and they fell right over as the Warpeater Pyramid advanced ahead, vivic fires eagerly consuming the Wards they tried to put down to stop me with great enthusiasm.

            I might have contributed a few dozen Spellflares to that process, as well, and elves and lizardfolk and their fine colorful friends were waiting on the Pyramid’s blocks for any attempts to climb aboard and stop us.

            Treating the dragons and phoenixes so nicely naturally meant I had to treat the creatures of the lizardfolk, too. Lo, and what mundane forces the Warped could bring to bear ran into a shitshow of Burnings fangs and talons, the display put on by the mounts of the elves the day before repeated with gusto, especially since they’d all come back heavily wounded, and yet I had somehow managed to fix all of them, rider and mounts alike, all the way back up to pristine status, amazing all of them at the power of my Healing magic.

            Even the two elven Archmages, fully able to use the Life Magic of their people, couldn’t Heal as effectively as I could, as their magic put great stress on the systems of the living. Mine, buttressed with Divine and Primal power, had no such limits, and since I wasn’t blasting willy-nilly all the time, I was plenty happy to watch over every single damn one of them, Healing Shards streaking in all directions and dropping off jolts of Healing power and invigoration that really helped out the morale situation for all involved.

            If the wiser ones realized I could probably handle a lot of this fighting myself, they kept it to themselves, realizing I was letting them deal with the problems they could handle, so I would be ready to handle the problems they could not.

            The path did wind through the mountains a bit, and doubtless could have been used to dimensionally twist things around, confuse us, and deny us entry.

            Unfortunately for them, someone had driven a long and narrow dimensional nail through that mountain pass, and the instant their path had intersected that of the Pyramid, Reality had flown out through and along it, massively reinforcing the Veil that the Rantha duo had put into place. That line of vivified slaughter was now an iron bar we were traveling along, and no shenanigans were able to twist the Truth that it represented.

            There was no seeing the sky now, the Winds of the Warp were much too strong, the streams of vivus basically a dome of reinforcement feeding the Warpeater Pyramid faster and faster, and giving it the strength to devour ever more quickly. It was funny watching edifices all along the walls of our path explode in unwhiteness and then crumble as the supporting energies were consumed, bringing down the living and their constructions alike before they could do things as gauche as fire engines of war at us.

            Massive power, massive weakness, I judged, watching it all with unwinking eye sockets, Detects, and the views of Feature, Mortus Dius, and my Rings. I could have whipped up a Halo Crown for all-around sight, but eh, I had to get used to this, and I was getting a LOT of practice at developing up an Aural-based substitute to the visual spectrum.

------

            The crack in the expulsion crater wall was about twenty-two miles long, mostly straight, and if a whole lot of the walls crumbled and cracked and fell ahead of us, well, the Warpeater Pyramid just drifted over the rubble, pushing the worst of it out of the way with the stolid patience of millions of tons of stone and a whole lot of raging Holy Vivic Flames, my intrepid escorts enthusiastically countering any missile fire or attempts to climb on aboard by the recalcitrant.

            The Winds of the Warp were howling down the valley, trying to push the Domain back, but it remained steady, and grew ever steadier, as it had stopped expanding and simply reinforced itself more and more against any coming shenanigans.

            Still, the way the beleaguered mountains erupted in refreshing vivic fire all around us as the Domain swept past did make for a very interesting panorama as we cruised on by on our monolithic ride.

-----

            It was a very hot point of Fire and Evil and Chaos out in front of us, nearly a hundred feet tall and coming this way, as if unafraid of the vivic fire and what that would do to it.

            There was a lot of Divine power wound about the thing, and it appeared hastily-made black Armor and bands had been wrapped about it, giving it Life Wards to repel the vivic flames.

            Also, the full blessing of Klaw, meaning the flaming Titan coming this way was for all intents and purposes invulnerable to mortal efforts.

            The elven Archmages were on either side of me as we watched it approach, the warhost that was retreating in front of us lest they explode into vivus chanting a name as the creature approached.

            Khorgul. Khorgul! KHORGUL!!!

            “I got nothing. Either of you two know what that is?” I asked them.

            They glanced at one another and shook their heads.

            “Well, I’m going to proceed as if it’s an Avatar of Klaw. Feel free to bombard the enemy, but stay inside the Domain.” And so saying, with a light tap of my Staff, Feature shot forward beneath me, eager to engage.

            Feature wouldn’t be fighting himself, of course. But he was proudly carrying me forth to do so!

            Greater Shards flowed into existence around me. The Casters of the various Warp Gods in the Warhost ahead of me screamed the alarm, but there was precious little they could do as I began to reap them.

            I didn’t want them near me or around me as I engaged their champion, and so I obliterated them.

            Screaming mortals who had been serving their masters for timeless eras, along with the demons wrought from the screaming souls of the faithful, exploded and died in massive numbers. Burning unwhiteness flared up in the rich, thick air of Warped energy in the atmosphere, and basically made the landscape a misty heavenhole of death for creatures anointed by the Warp.

---

            The incoming Child of Klaw, his stride the very picture of arrogance and manly power, impervious to such silly tricks, paused on seeing the display of annihilation coming towards him like a misting arrow. He watched Greater Demons get impaled multiple times from every direction, their supernatural toughness only seeming to make the misty fires latch onto them the more fiercely.

            More importantly, he watched them be devoured in body AND soul, their spirits fed to the Land, not returning to the Warp to play around again, and despite his supposed invulnerability, that checked him.

            After all, no one was supposed to be able to destroy the souls of demons like that. Only standing before the Warp Gods themselves could a spirit be destroyed utterly, it was not a feat even HE could do!

            If that was possible, was he really invulnerable?

            He masked his fear with hauteur, seeing his foe was coming to him. In any event, there was no running, as his Master would kill him for doing so, and was not he gifted with this very armor so as to make him invulnerable to that effect?

            He watched uncaringly as thousands of servants of his Master and the ‘allied’ Warp Gods were utterly annihilated, all for the simple crime of not being able to flee fast enough from the oncoming master of the Pyramid behind. That the master had come forth, instead of waiting on the Pyramid for his doom, bespoke either a certainty of being able to deal with him, or a realization that the cloudy Domain of his tool would not be able to save him...

---

            I swept away the Warped for a mile around the Child of Klaw as he watched, uncaring of their deaths, massive arms folded and merely watching the carnage as the lesser creatures died. The vivus pulling at the air couldn’t approach him, which I could tell buoyed his confidence, and it just made me smirk.

            “SORCERER,” he spat, the word one of ultimate contempt.

            “Demon,” I replied, in the exact same tone, only I had Truth in my voice, and it made him snarl. He’d sold off his spirit for power, and was nothing but a disposable tool. So what if I was a Sorcerer? My soul wasn’t chained and gone for the appetites of an uncaring god...       

            He spread his arms out slowly, widely, grinning as the vivus that was devouring the Winds failed to touch him, only swirling about him impotently. “YOU THINK YOUR PUNY POWERS CAN TOUCH ME HERE? COME, SHOW ME YOUR STRENGTH, LITTLE MORTAL, BEFORE I TEAR YOU AND YOUR STACK OF STONES TO SPRAYS OF BLOOD, AND MOUNT YOUR SKULLS BEFORE THE THRONE OF MY MASTER!”

            “Oh, sorry, I was going to allow you the chance to start an attack, and then obliterate you,” I replied kindly, standing there atop Feature, who let out the hissy snake equivalent of a snicker. “Do you have any particular last words, then?”

            My confidence made him snarl. “YOUR MAGIC CANNOT TOUCH ME, LITTLE SORCERER!” he tensed, confident of his assessment.

            “Right, right, right.” I waved the words off airily. “A barbarian’s words who knows nothing about magic, and an idiot of a god who doesn’t know magic, either.”

            “YOU DARE DEFAME THE POWER OF KLAW BEFORE ME?!” he bellowed, and burst forward, heedless of his former boast in the face of such blasphemy.

            He was really strong, really fast, and the four hundred yards between us didn’t take him more than a second to cross, as fast as his words, some time-shifting going on.

            The Fastcast Arcane Fusion hit him and exploded into two spells.

            The first was a Spellflare, specifically targeting not him, but his little Divine shield from his god. Normally this wouldn’t have had any effect at all, but Klaw was merely a Lesser God, and he didn’t know shit for magic. His Divine Power was all on the war and Domain side of things, not even any real priests beyond some fanatics who could Summon his servants.

            A Dispel Check in the +90 area? Completely beyond His knowledge and understanding. jRaztl wouldn’t be able to do the same without some artificial boosts. The idea that a mortal could Dispel a godly gift and protection was probably wholly unexpected.

            Theurgic boosts for the win! Dispel Magic existed across five of the seven Traditions I knew (technically eight if you included the Shugenja Class). Spellflare was merely an advanced version of it, which made the magic go boom instead of just unraveling it.

            The second spell was Suppress Spell-like Ability, a spell normally used on monsters, but here would prevent him from putting the Divine Shield back up.

            My mind works fast, and time dilation doesn’t really work too well on me. I have Contingencies against it, especially a Temporal Cloak that I had tied off to recast every Renewal, now.

            So, I saw his eyes widen as the many, many Greater Shards materialized around me. He saw the skull of an Oni Prince glaring at him with the non-mortal power of a Dreadskull. He saw +XV gleaming on Mortus Dius, a level of power far beyond mortal, into the realm we called Eternal, and what was often called Legendary.

            Not mortal in the slightest!

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