[Be Gone] Ch 28 – Know the Dark of Fear

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            It was a big demonic army... or rather, a Shadowlands army.

            There were huge numbers of goblins, as well as twisted ogres and trolls. The Spirits whispered that they once had been merely strong, elemental creatures, simple and not very threatening, but the Taint had turned them savage, violent, and murderous.

            My sympathy was there, but it wasn’t going to affect what I was going to do.

            Said army was stewing on the other side of the river from me, kind of wondering what to do as they sat there twelve hundred feet away, staring across from it at us.

            At the white, crystalline river.

            There were continuous cracks and crunches as waves of ice surfaced from below, bobbing to the surface in glittering sprays of freezing water and ice. Their sleek, pure forms cracked and crunched and bobbed as they slowly headed downstream, soft white mists following behind them atop waters that were no longer black.

            Water Shugenja had split the river in two just long enough for the rods that anchored the Wall of Icefire to be plummeted down, anchored into the bed of the river, solidified there, and then the waters had come rushing back in. It had taken less than thirty seconds, giving the oni there no time to react, nor the creatures milling thickly in the waters in front of the keep, ready to help the demon army cross at the command of its leaders.

            Strands of vivus already in the water linked up and ignited, even as the first waters burned coldly clear, became ice, and surged to the surface in continuous waves before floating on downstream, misting as they went.

            They’d melt in Taint, they didn’t need heat to do so. Meanwhile, the vivus itself was hardly limited to the ice in its spreading. It chased after the Taint, swelled on those thin lines and the diluted Taint in the water, and with rather breathtaking speed spread from shore to shore, riverbed to rivertop, forming a white barrier of sparkling water and rising ice, the former of which started to extend rapidly forward.

            The shocked demons, in all sorts of vile hues and shapes, as well as the goblins and other minion creatures, could only watch the water burning mistily and clearing up as the vivus advanced against the flow. The creatures that were supposed to transport them across the waters or form bridges to walk across were instead chased rapidly away upstream... except there was no safety there, as the clean waters kept advancing behind them, and waters from upstream only grew thinner, clearer, and more damaging the further the beasts fled.

            If they didn’t succeed, they had to crawl out of the water or die. That wasn’t an option for many of the creatures there, and so soft mistfire-clad forms could be seen moving frantically in the waters, or leaping high and free from the river, burning with unwhite fire before splashing noisily back into the clear waters. Dark figures writhed and shook and darted about, before going abruptly still and dissolving away seconds later.

            I’d watched the lesser demons test the waters, and hiss and draw back as the Taint in them reacted to the vivus. A couple oni were pushed or tossed in to see what happened, and had just burned and basically exploded in seconds once immersed in the water. Goblins pushed in fared no better, only slower, hissing and burning as if they were in mild acid, and if they couldn’t get back out in time, they died, too.

            I watched them start sending spells into the waters, to Taint and Corrupt once again, great black clouds of Corruption that blossomed like foul dark flowers... only to start burning about the edges, flaring softly with hungry whiteness pressing in from all sides to eagerly eat the Taint away, disposing of the foul energies.

            It slowed the advance of the clear waters down, using up the vivus... but there was more being pumped in from the Wall of Icefire all the time, the waters there so shimmery with vivus that the Corrupted spells trying to reach it basically ignited firework flashes in response, sending waves of sparkling water in every direction, much to the discomfort of the things too close to the rapidly-whitening sands of the shores.

            Directly across the river from the invaders, the Tigers waited, along with what elites of the other Houses of the Empire had cared to accompany them.

            A major demonic army had stirred even the self-absorbed families of the inner Empire to at least send some people out to fight in a show of support, but naturally only the fastest ones could get to the site of the fighting in time.

            They also knew that the demons were coming for me, and I was the reason for all of this. Pragmatically, now that the Tigers had gotten the secret of vivus from me, the other Houses didn’t really give much of a shit what happened to me... unless perhaps I was willing to serve them as a vassal, of course!

            They looked at the once-oily black river running white and clear, and had a good idea why the demons wanted me dead. Then they looked at all the Weapons of the Tigers and a few of the Bears burning Vivic, and realized that something very fundamental had changed in this fight, sure. Just, how important was I to that?

            The airborne demonic forces flew about uneasily. Stillflight was a spell the Tigers had brought here, and they had installed it throughout the length of the Great Wall, along with Interdiction. The barriers against flight and interdimensional movement had hugely discomfited demonic and undead raiders, and the nature of the battles here had likewise changed once it was in effect.

            Incorporeals and fliers had gone from being deadly raiders and ambushers to barely usable as scouts. Forced into corporeality, the ghuls and phantoms and skulking undead creatures were far easier to spot and nowhere near as hard to kill, while fliers couldn’t even get near the Great Wall, let alone swoop and dive on the soldiers defending it.

            The Great Wall was indeed a Wall now, not just a minor bump in the land to annoy and play with on demand.

            Sure, both creature types could still get across the river. But once they hit this shore, they were targets, just like any other infantry.

            The demons were tireless and could normally walk across the bottom or swim the river without care, as could the undead and many of the Corrupted mutant beasts. The goblins, trolls, and ogres, however, required things to carry them across, be it beasts or boats or magic, it didn’t matter.

            Normally it was river beasts who did that, commanded by the demonic commanders and the Shugenja among them. But those beasts were now fleeing, dying, burning, and in no shape to be hauling across goblins, who didn’t want to try holding on to them in the corrosive water, anyway.

            They could march miles upstream and get past up there, wasting another day, and our army would have to move to defend at that location, paralleling them if they moved past along the shore, and likely pounding them with catapults, ballista, and the like the whole time. I was informed they were pretty good with Dragon Oil showers, too, what we’d call Greek Fire.

            Nothing said we couldn’t drop another Wall of Vivic Fire further upstream, either.

            Nothing was going to swim or walk across the bottom here without endangering their lives, either. It was not a short walk or swim, and even if it was diluted, 1 hp/6 seconds was going to kill almost everything there before it could make it to us, and the rest were going to be extremely damaged.

            To make it more fun, I started shooting them from across the river.

            My Mask of Clarity and Eagle Eyes VI went all the way up to x100 magnification, so I had no problem picking out individual targets from four hundred paces away, starting up with the Chain Shards.

            Those soon enough moved to Bursting Chained Shards as Residual Magic kicked in. Goblins and the weak Oni loved to cluster up, so the Kickers did all the damage they needed to a lot of them.

            Eight Shards per Cast, plus twenty Chains per Shard, as long as I had eight initial targets in a small enough area... which wasn’t hard, with all the clustering they were doing.

            Then five-foot Bursts added to the successive Casts, allowing me to raise the kill totals even more. Even if it was only three or four minions per Burst, that was still five hundred minions obliterated very suddenly per charge of a starter Wand. Economically, that was huge money leverage.

           Also, hundreds of thousands of minions doesn’t look so impressive when they start dying that fast, from that range.

            The Tigers and other elite soldiers all stayed behind me, just inside the I-S Wards, as I stepped onto Feature and went out to strafe down the length of the demon army.

            The fliers were arguably a little reluctant to get close to me while the cover fire from the archers on the shore was just waiting to pick them off. Feature was also plenty quick when moving over the dangerously clear waters of the river, basically daring them to come down and engage us.

            Word must have come of the Shardrays that had cleaned off the predecessors of the aerial forces. Popping off three dozen fliers was also a very acceptable use of a Shard Wand charge, and I had a full dozen Wands to burn through at this point, charged up or requisitioned by the Tigers.

            Feature was bored, so I allowed him to move out and up, daring the fliers to come in and dare his teeth and claws... presently blessed with +IV Magic Fangs from Tiger Casters and ready to go, as was his Nosespear Whiskers.

            They were going to be really surprised if the Enruned Main Gauche rattle on his tail hit them, too, like a cannonball at the end of a whip...

            If only one or two came in, Heavenbound Wrath cut them down effortlessly, Feature taking over shooting it out like an electrum flame so I could keep my bombardments going, now with a better view of the numbers to leverage my range advantage over.

            An acre or so of minor oni and goblins was going down at a time. Fifty thousand dead per Wand was a totally acceptable trade for me, and even if their masters disdained the little bastards, it was the cheap troops who actually won the fight with their swarms and numbers, wearing down an enemy with attrition and occupying them so the elites could concentrate their forces on key defenses.

            Bea had cast an Interdiction around me, so I wasn’t worried about anything teleporting in on top of me, and nothing up here was faster than Feature could be.

            Turning his teeth, claws, and tail into Eldritch Glaives for +16d6 of love per attack was also a very good way to demonstrate his aerial superiority.

            If they were close enough to use magic on me, I was close enough to use it on them, and the Wrath didn’t run out at all...

            At some point, the demons really did get tired of me shooting right past them and turning an acre of ground into a multi-colored death trap. There was a burst of dark light from deep in their lines, and the flying oni and mutant things came screaming for me in their flocks and Swarms of hundreds and thousands.

            The Elemental Spirits in this area had mostly gotten the Hell out of here if they were Tainted, driven away by the Sublime Chord, so any magic tossed my way had severe problems... and Feature and I both had Spell Resistance.

            Swarms exploded as my Clasp did its thing. Flocks of minor fliers blew apart in their scores as Chained Shards sliced through them, while the bigger ones got to eat Split Chained Shardrays and joined the corpses burning in the river.

            Feature leisurely dove towards the water, pulling up and skimming just above it in a serpentine manner, clearly baiting the demons back towards the shore, and just as clearly they had to follow us.

            We left a burning path of dead demons behind in the waters as Feature hit the shore, bounced up, and casually trailed a claw to the ground below as we entered the Wardfield.

            Totally expected, the dumber creatures hit that wall of King Gravity’s Domain and squawked as they left their lift behind and went spiraling down rather too fast under His Stern Judgement.

            The Archers who’d been riding around or towed behind on Disks were more than happy to open up on those who spread wings to stop themselves, too.

            As for the ones that hit the ground, there were plenty of cavalry down here to ride them down.

            When Feature arced around just outside the Stillflight field and rose into the air in a grand arc, jaws spreading wide as fires built into his throat, even the oni chasing him knew they were in for it.

            The cone of dragonfire and Wrath blew through the densest cluster of the things, obliterating them instantly, while Shardchains pierced through demons all around and lit up the sky. Feature flew through the chaos, spiraling and turning as Whiskers and his claws chopped through stuff, his tail occasionally flicking out to send a demon flying like a soccer ball.

            Deadly accurate ground fire followed back to the main line of Archers, now all nice and strung out so as to keep the many, many flying demons under continuous fire, and Tainted carcasses were falling to the shoreline and into the river all around, bursting into vivic fire.

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