[Be Gone] Ch 37 – Stone by Stone

« Chapter 36 | Index | Chapter 38 »

            I drove a road of white fire west, into the Shadowlands, and crested a hill just to the east of Watunzusji.

            The fortress loomed over the pass that led to the city, a tremendous defensive fortification in any traditional sense. Immense magic had generally been used to cripple it or render it unable to stop an invading army in the past, but it had always been rebuilt and restaffed, and new horrors gathered there to unleash upon invaders.

            Feature’s gaze leapt across the miles, studying the demons and mutated creatures circling the towers and walls of the fortress, and noting the sentries and their commanders staring in our direction.

            Even at ten miles, the unwhite fire of vivus would stand out in this dark land, like a candle inside a dark room.

            I smiled as they pointed and discussed among themselves, but no new troops came hurrying out to face me, nor were the flying troops wheeling about above them dispatched to deal with me.

            I was not Bear nor korobokru, and I had plenty of ways to deal with fliers. The fliers they’d sent after me had returned with a very small percentage of their numbers, or not at all. I was particularly good at sniping off high-altitude spotters who thought I wouldn’t react to their presence.

            I wasn’t down low because I was afraid of the air and the malevolent Elementals up there now. Now that I could Cast, the twisted Elemental Spirits hereabouts literally could not touch me, and if they dared to act against me, I could annihilate them.

            They knew it. I could hear them, I could see them retreating from me in terror at the Auras that surrounded me. The only ones that messed with me were those specifically tasked by the twisted maho magic of Jigoku, and those Fed the Land, leaving their peers even more terrified of me.

            The fortress of the Tainted had seen me. Now they were going to find out what it was like to deal with a Sustained gamer, not an honor-bound samurai-type warrior with a limited toolset to draw from.

            Furthermore, I had no sense of honor they recognized. I wasn’t going to bother with a combat of champions, I wasn’t going to be anything resembling direct in my tactics, and I wasn’t going to stop. I had the full range of tactics and methods to draw on, and except for Summoning in some help in this area, everything was on the table, if I could afford it.

            Warlock abilities didn’t run out of gas, and they added to the base Fast Healing of a Warshaper. I might have only had three Human Levels for my Health, but I had Toughness, Improved Toughness, Arcane Toughness, and was keeping my Dragon’s Heart Soul Tat maxed out for another +75 Health on top of all that.

            I was one bloody tough sunuvabitch even before dipping for more Health. Magical reinforcement of the body was no joke at higher Levels, even if we didn’t get Health Qi.

            They were standing between me and my way home. I was going to Kill Them All, and I wasn’t going to feel sad in the slightest as I did so.

-------

            Doubled up Detect Evil at VIII, Understand the Will of Darkness, ranged out for three thousand feet in all directions, looking for anything Evil around me. Sure, the air was saturated with Taint, but that still wasn’t as concentrated as the living, unliving, or Outsiders. They had a deuced hard time hiding from me, and I was coming for blood.

            22/7, I began to reduce the environs and the city itself in a remorseless, efficient, and deadly manner.

            I outranged all but their most powerful corrupted Shugenja, who had basically no chance of using magic on Feature or I successfully, and I wasn’t afraid of their archers at all with Fickle Winds Duskstopped around me.

            I did indeed kill everything living and set alight every concentrated center of Taint that I encountered, without exception.

            If there were bunches of them, I ranged them down from a thousand paces away with Shards they could not hide from. If they were not so much of a threat, a 20d8+16d6+Kickers breath from Feature could do the job just as nicely at closer range.

            A Dragonwall of Fire was a horribly bad thing to inflict on numerous creatures. To wit, use Eldritch Theurgy to drop your Warlock Wall of Fire into the Breath Weapon of your Familiar, and watch them exhale a thousand-foot-long strafing Wall of killing flame through a packed line of infantry, or something.

            It could tear up an army formation something fierce. Mostly, it looked really impressive, and it used my Wrath when I didn’t need to.

            Relentless dragon and Sorcerer creating havoc and just burning down all comers: what was not to create a frenzy of attention with?

            I literally did not care if they brought an army of demons to chase me. They were just Food for the Land. I could and would kite them for a hundred miles without any impatience, using superior range and speed to kill them, and if they tried to surround me, I’d shoot my way right through them.

            It was REALLY hard to deal with a Spell Resistance of 47 and rising as my Caster Level did, and all their hordes were to me was extra munchies for the Land, hastening the fall of the Shadowlands as the borders continued to shrink with every oni’s death, inch by inch by inch...

------------

            Watunzusji was gone. The Spiders and the Scorpions stood together on the ramparts of their Fortress and watched it burn.

            It could not be fear pricking at them, could it? The outlander hyu-man, Ayelinth or something, hadn’t dared test the Wards or defenses they had brought up around the citadel, contenting himself with scavenging and raiding the countryside of stragglers and the weak, dotting the landscape with unwhite fires that fed on the power of Jigoku and bubbled over the lands in heavy mist.

            To their eyes, the mists looked like poison, hungry and feeding away on the power that had Corrupted them, and yet sustained them, too.

            When the weak and foolish were dead, the outlander had brazenly gone in and wiped the city out.

            Howling unwhite infernos devoured the defenders, be they once-mortal, fallen Ogre, or demon, consuming them and leaving only the white dust now sparkling against the ground. The black stone itself, catching on unwhite fire like oil-soaked wood, blazed with heavy unwhite flames that fell into mist, crumbling and falling apart like kindling as it did so.

            The serpentine silver-chased black dragon ruled the sky, blowing infernos into every hiding-hole and pit, the ground collapsing as golden flames chased in white exploded underground, or belched out of the ground in fountains of heavenly fury that hurt their eyes to behold.

            The ground crumbled. Ancient buildings and their remnants collapsed with somehow muted roars into the furnaces raging underground. Sacrificial chambers, leashed demons, waiting undead, and wailing Spirits all burned and collapsed to the city now covered in waist-high, clinging mists, painted glowing white by the supernatural flames slowly devouring the Taint soaked into every rock and stone.

            The last of the city walls collapsed as it was eaten away, great blocks that had endured Taint and the elements for a thousand years cracking and crumbling, shattering to brittle chunks of stone that raged brighter as the vivic flames found more surface area to consume, creating larger bonfires among the smaller flames eating at them.

            Every tower, every wall, every cave, and every façade of a hill or hole in the ground or stone was burning and misting.

            Chains of whiteness led to the fallen city from the lands of mortals, garish lines that connected the effete empire of elves, korobokru, and gnomes to the city. They came along the Road of Fallen Jade, now a shimmering white lance thrust deep into the Shadowlands; once again pristine, and now burning about the edges and defying the encroaching Taint.

            Setting foot on it burned the Tainted. Throwing maho at it made the remnants of the vivus within explode forth hungrily to devour the corrupted magic.

            Eyes burning or bright with unnatural shades and hues, none of them benevolent, stared at the unwhite flames grinding and eating down the city they were supposed to defend, reducing all of it and its inhabitants to featureless whiteness.

            “Why is he ignoring us?” a voice that was no more than a whisper rose, but everyone heard it clearly as it crawled over their souls. The Bloodweaver, Daimyo of the Spider, was not a being to be ignored in any situation, and even demons paid heed when he spoke.

            “You speak as if your Wards and our defenses are not enough to stop him?” came a deep voice of iron and blood from the hulking form of the Scorpion Daimyo. Once a korobokru, now looming as tall as an ogre, his face was concealed behind a snarling helm of black iron he never removed, hefting an Axe that weighed more than a Lion soldier.

            Even the Spider stepped carefully around the looming mass of the Scorpion Daimyo, his true name lost to time, yet somehow the name of Kuulch clung to him. The Axe of Ebon Jade in his hands had slain many champions of the Empire, and even more challengers to his position.

            The Bloodweaver made a gesture with long, chitin-covered fingers. “They are not, as you deduced some time ago. The outlander tore apart every Ward and strongpoint in the city as if they were paper. While they were less competent than I, they were my lessers, not fools. The reason they are out there instead of in here is because I acknowledged their strength could be a threat to me, and I did not allow them to remain so close.”

            Kuulch watched the unwhite fires burning everything, unreadable behind his helm. “He is saving us for last, then. He drew a circle about the city, trapped everything inside, and then burned it all.” The jagged edge to his voice was as flat and cold as ever, giving no judgment to the deed. “We should withdraw.”

            “We cannot, by traditional means,” the Bloodweaver whispered. “The Veil is closed, and we cannot walk along the shadows out of here. To fly is to be destroyed. An army would simply be slaughtered around us as we fled... and where would we withdraw to, here in these lands?”

            The question hung about them. The demons were certainly no place to seek refuge among; they’d simply be enslaved or eaten on a whim, except for the most powerful among them, destroying their forces entirely. The goblins would provide no security and would inevitably turn on any intruders in the middle of their warrens, intimidated or not. The ogres and trolls were nomadic, and the undead were untrustworthy at the best of times, wanting only to kill all the living, and that included the Tainted.

            This was the place they’d taken and held. The Tainted came here to seek refuge. There were camps elsewhere they might head to, but the fortifications there were lacking.

            If this fortress they were in could not hold, what chances a lesser place?

            “The disruptions and calls from the Empire have done nothing?” Kuulch rasped grimly.

            “The announcement by the Great Dragons that the spreading of the white fire and the outlander’s work against the Shadowlands is the will of the Dragons, the Heavens, and the Land has made things... difficult. Not that he heeded an Imperial Summons in the slightest,” a new sibilant voice broke in. The woman, once a Crane of surpassing beauty, now adorned with patterns of artful gleaming bone scales and more dangerous in a far more lethal way, hovered at the elbow of the Scorpion Daimyo. Her flashes of color were only diversions to the darkness of her heart and tongue, however, and as Kuulch’s spymaster and ambassador-at-large, her intelligence network could rival that of the Snakes themselves, with far more breadth at the bottom of the social scale. “This one is a hyu-man, and only treats with the Tigers as equals. The other Houses are merely tools in his eyes to get this job done. He is polite but distant when he must speak with them, not wanting to be drawn into their politics.”

            Her name was Nunivio, and her voice was at once admiring and condemning. Politics were her preferred battlefield. Ignoring and avoiding such naturally gave her little chance to exert any influence on this single-mindedly destructive outlander with such power.

            “Orchio.” One of the nearby shadows seemed to take on mass and knelt at the command. “What have you learned of him?” Kuulch’s voice grated out.

« Chapter 36 | Index | Chapter 38 »