[Warpworld] Ch 15 – Someone is going to need better Plans

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            The Chariot slammed into the ground. The ablative shields popped audibly, but took the full impact as the sorcerer staggered, the dirt and spray blasted off to the sides. He looked back up, bracing himself and trying to scramble away, knowing a dragon was falling on top of him and...

            Feature, his claws spread wide, using Wrath through his Cloudstepping Tats to wield the Hands of the Angels in place of Featherweight, was descending at a mere one foot a second above him, glowing mist trailing from his claws and wings as he fell, but slowly, slowly.

            He met the three eyes of the man below as he opened his jaws, and a star was born.

            The fellow screamed in frustration and denial, but the Topped Breath was not something he or his precious Chariot were going to survive intact, and vivus was hungry indeed for all the perverted magic upon him and his person.

            Feature tilted his wings and glided off to the side, landing gently on the snowy scrub of the wasteland below. He raised his head, panned across the skies, and saw nothing else living in the area.

            His claws tore at the soil as he slither-ran with a speed that would have startled anything looking at him, wings spread just widely enough to give him a little lift as he raced across the ground.

            He knew right where the edge of King Gravity’s edict was, beating his wings promptly as he cleared the edge of the Stillflight Field. He shot into the air as if weightless as Soul Tats lit with enough Wrath to allow him to walk on air took care of all problems with lift, and his Wings drove him forward at unseemly speed.

            That garishly bright flock of harpies or whatever they were still needed to be dealt with, and he built up momentum by slithering through the air like it was solid ground, his claws grasping at it and pulling him forward with ever-increasing speed as he did so, the magic in his wings adding to everything.

            The Warp Furies, as they were called, wouldn’t quite make it to the pass before he intercepted them. There were eighty-one of them, but they weren’t equipped to deal with a dragon like him, either, and he had a fun time chasing them across the sky, popping them in explosions of serenely white fires devouring their psychedelic feathers, and picking them off with Wrath when they tried to run.

            All in all, it was a fun time, and he was very glad to show off his power!

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            Ices broke his stick.

            I finished up the Block I was working on, letting it slide away from me and over to the top of the Pyramid, leaving a partial square of the thirty-second level hovering slightly over the rest of the Pyramid.

            I turned and eyeballed Ices’s location, and Linejumped over to it, popping right up next to where they were buried in ice and snow, totally impossible to make out unless you knew right where they were.

            Aaaand there they were, unmistakable blots of Evil and Chaos flying across the sky, scheming ink trailing reality-warping fractured obsidian as it pulled and tore at the strings of magic, and left them unraveled and shriveled in its wake.

            That looked to be a Spell Weaver, a greater demon of jRaztl. In truth, that should be a pretty redoubtable foe for any spellcaster, as they were servants of the Warp God who loved magic the most, had access to all the dark arcane secrets and such, resistance to mortal magic, blah blah blah.

            This place didn’t have much Good about it, which meant no Silver Magic native to the place, which meant that dumb sunuvabitch was about to have a major problem.

            It hadn’t spotted me yet, as I was standing next to a rock and had plenty of Stealth Ranks to stay hidden. It was about a mile away all told, keeping fairly low to the mountainside, but not invisible for some reason, brilliant plumage making it easy to see for Ices, and well, Detect Evil at VIII+1, Understand the Heart of Darkness, layered and amped by the Eyes of Heaven and the Inquiring Gaze of Heaven, ranged out to paint him for me, helped loads by Understand the Warp and Weft of the Woven World, Detect Magic at VIII+1.

            Yeah, couldn’t miss the sucker.

            Just to make sure there were minimal magical problems, I fully Weaponized the Greater Shards, something I didn’t often bother to do. It was a long way off, but I just aimed at the heart of that twisting, moving blot that dominated everything around it, and let fly.

            All it saw was a flicker of Silver light, and then Paired Admixtured Greater Shards backed with all the Holy Metas slammed into it and its magical shielding, each javelin-sized Shard as real as an arrow. All four volleys smashed into it in less than a heartbeat.

            The first volley completely blew through its ablative shields, destroying them (it wasn’t close enough for me to use Argent Mastery on it). The second set stopped its forward momentum entirely, the third blew it backwards through the air as it tried to scream in shock at the Holy Force magic tearing through it, brimming with Eldritch, Primal, and Heavenly powers, and then the fourth volley blew it all across the sky, the bits and pieces exploding and raining down in a polychromatic display that all faded to unwhite wisps as it perished forever, do not pass back to the Warp Realm, do not collect mortal souls in payment.

            Ices looked at me inquiringly.

            “I don’t think that was a lure, but keep a watch nonetheless. I’ve less than a day or so needed to work on the Pyramid. I imagine if they come with anything, it will be a major force from the plains beyond, but they might try a flanking force of fliers again.”

            Ices hissed, and settled back to their job, not about to argue with me if I could swat that thing that had radiated such unnaturalness and twisting of reality about it out of existence at that range.

            They’d lost a Greater Demon, a force of flying Warpknights, a Warp Sorcerer, and a flight of Shrieking Warprays, in addition to the Chaos Harpies. That was a lot of high-end muscle, and meant whoever was behind the attack would suddenly be a lot more cautious about what to expend here.

            They might or might not go for numbers. However, the attacks on the large numbers of Warped natives had been at night or at surprise moments, carefully conveyed to indicate that such things were being addressed more carefully... except for the last one, which had been utterly annihilated.

            Which meant if they came with an army, it would have to be a big one, and armies took time to raise, welding them together from disparate tribes, clans, and warbands and getting them to work together with an ornery lack of grace.

            I’d be done before they’d get an army together big enough to threaten me. Their caution of the power I’d displayed and their lack of information was proving useful. It wouldn’t stop them from coming, reading it as just another challenge from their insane gods to be overcome, but it bought me time, which was all I needed.

            Tomorrow the Pyramid would be completed, and then I’d be on the attack, just not in the way they thought I was... or to the purpose of it. They had no idea that I was going to be shutting down the main source of their power, cutting them off from the easy reach of the Warp gods and their servants, and rendering them just like all us other mortals as far as being able to get stronger and gain power.

            They wouldn’t take the demotion well. I smiled to picture it, patted #5’s head, and Linejumped back to the mountain wall and my expanse of purified mudrock to get back to work.

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            The fourth Block of the thirty-ninth layer slid into place with a clink to its mate. The pair then matched up with the first two, another smooth clink of integrated Rune circuits meeting, matching, crackling, and then they settled down atop the nine Blocks of level thirty-eight.

            There was another popping hiss and crackle, and I could feel the subtle change in the magic coursing through the Pyramid as everything but the capstone of the last level was in place.

            The last Block was always properly an altar of sorts when I built the Pyramid, although the sacrifices made there were definitely not of the blood variety. This one was going to be going through a lot of Chaotic and Warped magical energy there, so very specific applications that didn’t actually involve divine worship...

            But I was a total goddamn stinker about this kind of stuff, so guess what the Warp Gods and their little intrusion into the Mortal Realm was going to do for them?

            Uh-huh. I was going to take all that energy and use it to call in the big guns, and not just whatever minor godlings were running about here. I imagined they weren’t much better than those Realm Lords Fae had to deal with, except constrained much more by one another and running on Faith more than accumulated power.

            And it should get me headed home without too much problem, too, depending on just how much purified Mana the planet needed.

            I glanced at the sky I couldn’t actually see right now, only the Tainted flow of magic and corruption from Evil that rode in on it.

            The capstone took me two minutes to make, as it had more Rune circuits than the rest of the stuff, but when done it almost zipped away from me, pulled in by the hunger of the Pyramid there to be completed, and slammed down on top of it, culminating this forty-stepper at the apex.

            The air crystallized immediately about it, and there was a visible sparkle as the stray chaotic and unclean mana in the air suddenly ran into a vivic barrier, seeming to ignite with sudden snowflakes all over the northern side of the Pyramid. There was a bending of the flow of the stuff, as the sudden absence of the Taint riding the stuff made more circle in this way, and the powderpuff explosions began to spread to all sides of the Pyramid slowly.

            I flew up to the top of the place, the altar there starting to ripple and glow as vivified, pure mana was pulled into the Pyramid, every Block beginning to hum and thrum as a very, very deep tank began to get filled.

            “Ices, come on back. It’s time to move along,” I Said, and saw the snowdrift there erupt as the cryohydra jumped to their feet, turning to run eagerly back in this direction. I Shaped a stone bridge up at the foot of the stairs, and a few minutes later the hydra ran up them. I collapsed them back, put my hand on the altar, and indicated a direction.

            Slowly and ominously, the Warpeater Pyramid began to move north.

            I glided down the southwestern face to meet Ices, then turned sideways around the Pyramid and Ices followed me as we headed for the leading northern corner as the Pyramid swung around to line itself up on its target.

            I sat down on the edge of the thirtieth step, and Ices settled in next to me as the Pyramid moved.

            At a mile per hour, it wasn’t getting anywhere at speed, but that was fine. The key thing was that it got somewhere, not that it did it fast.

            The Permanent Walls of Fire were already embedded in the corner Blocks, and I could raise them up at any time. Anyone else trying to get aboard easily was going to get burned alive.

            The Hallucinatory Terrain protecting the Pyramid from view wavered and vanished, exposing the Pyramid to normal eyes. Nobody close by that we knew of, with Feature off in the distance looking for tracks and signs of movement.

            Geomagnetism keeping the Pyramid aloft, we headed regally on down the pass and the mountain, four hundred feet of a small moving mountain, artificially made, and feasting on the Tainted mana flowing around us as we came.

            The more came at us, the faster the Pyramid’s Domain would grow, which would bring in more of the stuff, which would grow it even faster. I patted Ices’ heads with TK all at the same time, and smiled at what was to come.

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