[Be Gone] Ch 50 – The Central Morass

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            The Demon Tree was a boss monster with a lot of Health Qi, maybe millions of it. That was okay. I was patient, and I was hitting it with a LOT of punishment. Shardrays and Fastcast Shardrays delivered shining and Singing lines of Primal Holy magic into the thing, wearing down its Health at a precipitous rate it probably couldn’t believe, even while the Pyramid slowly circled it and bound it into a vivic inferno of fires that only raged at it more and more strongly.

            Its secondary trunks finally blew apart from the top, raging up like torches the size of buildings, and the Runes I’d carved into them with Shardrays ignited into vertical Walls of Flame that blazed with unstoppable hunger. One by one, they became pyres, the blackness at their roots became crystal clarity feeding hungry vivus, and the silvery lake closed in from all directions.

            The soldiers watched the branches move and shudder. They saw annihilating rains of sword-needles, grenade-cones, and sprays of poisoned sap and pollen get swept up in blazing winds and fire and burn away before they could harm the watching warriors.

            They watched my nonstop Casting of spells that could bore through a castle, marking my foes in Burning Runework and sending them down in flames.

            Vengeance from above blasted apart major limbs, AoE effects ignited the Demon Tree’s own ammunition, sap, and pollen. Fires raged up and down the length of it, and the last twenty Thunderbolts all came from above down onto its central trunk, driving for the core of it, and its branches blazed with Sacred fires visible for miles.

            I kept working on one spot on its trunk, wrapping the area in Combustive Cacophony, Burning Vapors, and other effects which increased the fire damage I was dealing. I drove a great burning hole into the center of its trunk to meet the core-annihilating punishment coming from above.

            The inky, smoldering heartwood took forty spells in a 10x10 area to reach, a blazing circle of vivus raging upon the massive trunk, probably a hundred thousand damage or more driving into it and consuming it. There it met and merged with the great Thunderbolts coming down and pulsing through the length of the tree now.

            Its major limbs were all shattered and fell in great arcs into the lake below, which swallowed them up and dissolved them hungrily, the waters frothing with unwhite mists. The lesser branches were all blazing and streaming away as white ash in the howling winds. Fires raged up the hundreds of feet of its main trunk, white-hot lines of vivic Runes were pouring out of it, the Eye-Seals were pulsing and flaring, building and building...

            The crack as it split open was like thunder. Its Health Qi finally evaporated, and I held off for the very last Thunderbolt to come down from above.

            The shattering impact of the forked T-bolt blew it wide open. With a silent psychic scream of terror and despair, the mighty Demon Tree of the Living Forest turned into a great spinning firestorm of annihilation, moving up towards the sky and that unseen locus of Taint up there, now starting to Burn with fire and vivus. Flames began to spread throughout the sky in an ever-increasing radius as the Corruption of the fountains in the lake below generated ever more vivus to be sucked up into the sky and combined with the vortex there, spreading the cleansing vivic flames far and wide.

            The Pyramid turned south and west as the Tainted trees of the entire Living Forest screamed and swayed at the death of their master, and a true rain of fire began to fall on them from above in proper apocalyptic fashion.

            The inferno I was bringing would merely join the truly massive one now taking place behind me, a firestorm egged on by dozens of powerful Fire and Air Elementals, if not the very Dragons of Fire and Air themselves. The entire Living Forest would soon be aflame, and there was no forestalling it now.

            But now, it was time for the Swamp, and the middle of this morass of Taint and Sin.

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            Being the recalcitrant and irksome monkey that I was, pouring some salt onto the wounds I was wreaking only seemed appropriate.

            The Demon Tree was no longer there to contest the weather with me, so some Sacred Storms churning the skies with vivic-enhanced thunderstorms seemed only appropriate. The only rain they brought was fire, however, massive clouds of living embers, raining white and crimson across miles and miles as they rolled out from the Pyramid. The earth and sky Burned, and streamed towards that Vortex in the center of the Shadowlands at a lusty two miles an hour.

            I could feel waves pulsing out from the Vortex, and the magically Aware could feel them in the earth and sky, trying to twist the dimensions and shunt all this away. Vivus fed the Veil, and grew stronger and stronger, until the conflict was visible in the sky, black cracks twisting along the Veil and Burning as the vivus leapt along them like they were finest tinder.

            I calmly explained what was going on to the gaping soldiers below, assuaging their fears, and informing them that the reason I had set this whole bloody demonic forest on fire was to get the fuel to do exactly what was happening now.

            A wedge and a blade of unwhite fire was slicing through the Vortex’s disruption of space, and when it reached the center, the whole of the Shadowlands was going to collapse.

            After that, whatever that thing was that was out there and had cost me my eyes was really going to get what was coming to it. Its own efforts were just fuel feeding the inferno that was coming for it, and given it was in another plane feeding on the interplay between this world and Jigoku, it couldn’t even tell it was coming.

            The demons sure could, however. An entire horizon of burning stormclouds coming your way as slowly as this one was kind of hard to miss, even if the area affected was over a hundred miles in radius.

            Yeah, that meant it would take two days for us to catch up to the leading edge of the pyroclasm that was sweeping out ahead of us, although the effect was flattening up ahead against the dimensional pressure of the Vortex.

            That was fine. I wasn’t in any damn hurry at this point.

---------

            “Is there going to be anything for us to even do, Ael?” Korbald asked, his tone a mix of admiration and consternation.

            “While I admit having a speed-hewing contest through this forest sounds entertaining in some ways, from an efficiency standpoint, I’m falling back on the duties of the Casters.”

            He sighed as I sat there, Feature coiled around the altar casually. I didn’t move much from my floating position, because I didn’t have to, and I wasn’t in any hurry. “Kill the armies, right. Still, you brought everyone and everything along for a reason, right?”

            “One of the reasons I’m going so slow is so that the Shadowlands have time to gather everything up in front of us to stop us.” I gripped Mortus Dius more firmly, my smile mirthless. “There’s going to be plenty of tougher oni there a little vivic rain isn’t going to get rid of, although they will be Burned... and if they die, well, the Land is never not hungry, and is certainly owed a bunch.”

            “Ohhh, that sounds much more fun,” he admitted. “Any idea how many?”

            “Not the slightest idea, but I doubt severely you will have nothing to do.”

            “If only we could jump off and give this thing a good push along.”

            “Every full block on this Pyramid weighs fifty tons. There’s approximately sixty thousand or so here. If you think you can push along three million tons of stone any faster, I have severely underestimated your Might.”

            Korbald smirked despite himself. “You levitated an Arcane Device weighing three million tons?”

            “To be fair, it levitated itself. I just designed it to do so. Geomagnetism is such a fun principle to use.”

            “Heh! Do you think they will break and run?” he asked me.

            “None of them want to go back home, but none of them want to die forever, either. But, the only important ones are the Lords. They’ll happily sacrifice all their underlings and then flee to save themselves. They can’t endure outside the Shadowlands, so them running off to the lands of humans should not be an issue. I imagine if they set foot outside these lands the Dragons would pounce on them, and they will be weakened. They are too wedded to their home plane.”

            “So... I have to go hunting for them before they can flee,” he remarked thoughtfully.

            “To be honest, I don’t expect them to join the fighting if they have to enter my arc of fire. They’ve been watching from the horizon, and also using their scouts and spies. They think they’ve got a pretty good idea of my range, and they’ve probably become awfully aware that my Caster Level is unbelievable, and I’ve got all the Spirits on my side now.

            “Can you see the Fire and Air Dragons up there? They are really having a bit of fun.” I threw a thumb behind me at the maelstrom in the sky sending the Rain of Flames down on the forest, the unwhite, golden, and crimson flames leaving the troops riding the Pyramid spellbound at the sight.

            Well, the whole forest being on fire and forming a very complex sea of unnaturally vivid flames whose images they wouldn’t forget for the rest of their lives was a thing, too. There were a lot of Fire Elementals and other Spirits romping about in there...

            “Maybe. My Ranks in Spiritual Lore probably aren’t high enough,” he admitted, squinting up at the clouds. “Are they really outside your range?” he asked with a sly smile.

            “No. I can reach out and touch something at least twice as far as they’ve seen.”

            He laughed under his breath. “Still, those Bosses are where the big Karma is. Perma-wiping something at the level of a Demon Prince is a LOT of Karma, Ael.”

            “It’s like some big brutal guy I know has spent the last six months Gearing up for this by putting down a bunch of recalcitrant bastards with all his overmuscled friends, or something.”

            “Naming Karma for fun and profit!” he said easily, holding out a fist for me to bop. “They are going to hit us right at the swamp ahead, right?”

            I looked ahead, where the triple fires falling from the clouds were cut off like a knife, held at bay by both the power of the Vortex and multiple demonic Wills backing the effort. “Yes. Nice of them to so brazenly set up and let us know where they are going to be, right?”

            His eyes narrowed as he read the meaning in that. “Huh.” A wide and wicked smile began to rise on his face. “I have a feeling I should be leaving a bit early for that fight with my overmuscled friends.”

            “No, no, you can’t do that. All the danger is obviously coming from the great big burning, shining Pyramid carrying the army of mortals through a sea of fire coming directly our way. There isn’t going to be any fighting anywhere else.”

            He turned and looked that way, his eyes glowing with his rising chi. “I don’t have the Shadow chi, but, you know, I’ve kept my Stealth maxed out for some damn reason.”

            “Big fighter think with biceps not need puny sneak-sneak,” was my reply.

            “I’m sure you can whip up a few convincing illusions to make it seem I and my dumb friends are waiting around flexing for our chance to show off, too, right?” he not-quite wheedled.

            “I can have them playing air guitar to Van Halen if you want me to.”

            “Van Halen! Hey, do you have a lot of lyrics and notes to Earth music? Rapman’s done his best, but there’s so much we’re missing...”

            “Musical Lore, 15 Ranks?” I asked archly. “Kinda needed for Sublime Chord...”

            “You can probably recall and translate any song you’ve ever heard!” he muttered ruefully. “I’d ask you to start dumping to some of the scribes back home, but distance through the Shadowlands, right, right.”

            “Rap’s got enough Ranks that whatever I send him he can probably also memorize. That’s what Bardic Lore is all about, right?” It wouldn’t take any effort on my part, either.

            “He’d be ecstatic!” Korbald agreed. “I’ll get everyone ready.” He grinned ferociously, the Black Tiger about to go hunting the very deadliest of prey. “Anything else?”

            “How goes the evangelizing below?” I asked calmly.

            His eyes flickered again. “The silver crosses filling up as we kill is really making them think, as well as all the Holy power they can feel in the air, and how lethal it all is to the demons. We’ve got lots of korobokru joining us for the Salutes, and even some of the elves are starting to get interested. You’re setting a pretty terrifying example of the boons of a Divine Servant, and especially with the way you boosted us up, so are we.

            “Their motives may not be the purest, but they can’t deny yours are. You’re a great role model for a damn terrifying Servant of Heaven, Ael.”

            “Good. We’re going to be needing some Faith for the finishing move, and if all goes well, it’ll be enough to bring Mithar in, at the least.”

            Korbald pursed his lips. “Damn, won’t that be something...”

            “Indeed...”

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