[Be Gone] Ch 17 – The Great Tiger

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The remaining oni didn’t have a chance, and couldn’t even run away, since they couldn’t fly and were far too slow on the ground.

            I swept swathes of them away with volleys of Shards Chaining through them, dumping all them Kickers into them by the scores, killing the weak and wounding the strong for the eager Melee people and deadly precise Archers to pick off.

            The Casters up there did their jobs as well, focusing on the minor demons who could impede the Melees slamming into and through the tough stuff, taking the easy mass kills instead of the unsure big hits.

            The bigger oni weren’t going anywhere, that was certain. The amount of Holy Banefire I was seeing here was impressive, and none of the Melees I could see were less than a Deep Eight.

            The demons didn’t have a chance. Impelled by a hefty +6 To Hit and Damage Heartsong bonus, the Archers and Melees did the rest of the hard work, while I spent charges to burn down scores of the weak at a time, making sure nothing escaped.

            I set the entire place ablaze with the vivic fire none of them had, either. The Land was going to feed pretty well here today.

            Totally safe with the overwatch fire coming in from above and around us, Feature left me to go ranging through the demons, Breathing at every opportunity to tear apart anything resembling masses of resistance. His scything Noseblade Whiskers sheared through the demons, herding and stopping them as his mass slammed into and through them, preventing them from running away properly as the Melees and merciless Archer fire chased them down.

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            All the corpses were burning en vivus.

            What demons I hadn’t shot with a Shard in passing had caught flames like gasoline ignited off their scattered ichor and organs, turning the entire battlefield into a surreal expanse of rapidly whitening ground. The soil was being burned free of the blood, bones, Sin, and remains of previous battles, returned to pure white dirt that, for a time, could even support green life without problems anymore.

            It was pretty easy to tell if an oni was feigning anything, as it wouldn’t be burning very much. Said demons were promptly decapitated and kicked into the nearest pyre of mistfire spreading tendrils of white across the ground.

            I couldn’t sense anything demonic alive out there. Feature told me that a few oni who had been VERY quick to run and were not hit by sniping Archers had managed to get out of the Stillflight Field and flee wildly, staying low and dodging behind the cover from old wrecks and ruins while fleeing in terror from the battlefield.

            They’d bring word to their masters that they’d failed. Perhaps not how miserably they’d failed, but that they had would be bad enough.

            Feature was back with me, coiled around me and making me a scaled seat to sit on as the Tiger Clanners around us scoured the field.

            The vivus was taking care of most of the clean-up, however. They just had to kick any random carcasses in isolation into a tendril of mistfire, and it promptly ignited and began to burn away. Smaller corpses of demons were already falling to ash, leaving nothing but piles of fine white dust behind of themselves, instead of more corruption that would take magical flame to cleanse.

            Vivus didn’t have a lot of offensive power, limited to being a Kicker as it was, but for clean-up, it ruled anything and everything.

            One of the Tigers had come up and taken away the Horse clanners, ostensibly to get a report from them, but really to get them away from the private stuff that was about to follow.

            I’d picked him out almost instantly, simply because the highest Levels tend to stand out the most in Aural scans, brightest lights in the room and all that.

            He was a Thirteen, and the man and woman with him were both Twelves. The Auras of a lot of Karma unapplied spun about them, finally being spent, and I naturally recognized the Aura of a fellow Monarch upon him.

            He even put on a formal Sash before he came over to meet me. It was probably a breach of protocol that I didn’t go to meet him and report first, seeing as how he had an army and I didn’t.

            But I had a dragon, and he didn’t. Diplomatic niceties and all.

            I did stand up as the Tigers around retreated to give us room and some privacy, most of them actually turning around and heading for the river.

            I held up a hand as the five of them approached. “I second what your forces are doing, withdrawing across the river. I can see you all have lightfoot.” Feature uncoiled to his full length in front of them, hovering just above the ground. I stood right behind his head. “All aboard!” I said cheerfully.

            Cautious smiles and some relief appeared in hard eyes, and they hopped up onto his waist-thick coils.

            Smoothly, the places on his back where they were standing barely swaying, Feature turned and headed for the river.

            Korbald himself was standing the closest to me, naturally enough. As we headed for the river, he reached up to lift the samurai-style helm from his head, revealing the shaven scalp and grim face I remembered from the TV all those years ago, albeit with more scars and wrinkles, and dark depths and memories in those brown eyes.

            He was built brawny and taller than I was. The Aura of Chi about him rang with Crystal, Ocean, and Thunder, a very potent mix that was ideal for the large Axe hanging from his Girdle. He was Caucasian, but his tan was light, probably from the shitty sunlight around here.

            Behind him was Mother Bea, her white robes a contrast to the white, black, and orange Korbald pattern was sporting as he played to his Tiger image. Despite the fact we were outside Aruan Pantheon territory, she still had the Symbol of a white palm around her throat, and that distinct air of a Healer of Amana. Given what Amanans were capable of with Healing magic, she was probably one of the most revered people alive in these lands.

            She was Caucasian, too, silken white-haired and blue-eyed, with the ageless beauty of a Mother’s caring soul. Of the five of them, she looked the most genuinely happy to see me, especially when she saw the Mitharn and Sylune Sword-and-Moon Symbol around my throat.

            Bronze was behind her. The tallest of the lot, his Armor was black, striped white, his two Axes riding at his hips. He was a big man, chocolate of skin, rangy and long of arm and leg, who had rampaged in a Fire Dancing inferno through the demons, Axes seemingly ignoring physics and moving independently of one another.

            Next was Tread, a Spear wielder, dressed in light armor colored white with dark gray stripes. Wind swirled around him, and his lightfoot on Feature was nearly weightless. He had a bronze Mediterranean coloration, with pale gray eyes, dark brown hair, and a wary, contemplative face as he regarded Feature and I.

            Rapman was their Minstrel, and likely would have been pounding out some beats on the Drums hanging from his belt, but I’d taken care of that so thoroughly he hadn’t bothered. He had instead stayed back with the Archers, pumping out shots from an Autobow with everyone else. He was actually even paler than Korbald, with blue eyes and cerulean hair, his armor a patchwork of various colors and stripes designed to draw attention without being dominated by any single pattern or hue.

            They were the core of the people who had built the Ironskulls, the fastest-Leveling Allegiance in the early game, and the heart of the Hardpoint in the Giantdowns area, one of the best high-Karma regions in the main servers.

            I noted that they all had magic Girdles and Gauntlets on, save for Bea, and so did a LOT of their fighters...

---

            “How do you prefer to be addressed?” Korbald asked for all of them.

            “Well, we can do this terribly formal and you can address me as Archtheurge of the Seven Traditions, Monarch of The Steel, Aelryinth of Heaven, Ringlord, Stafflord, Lord of Pyramids, and The Sage of Focus... but if I can call you Korbald, you can just call me Ael or Aelryinth and save everyone’s breath.” I stuck out my hand to him.

            He took it without hesitation. “You would not BELIEVE how prickly some of the people here can get with all the formality, Aelryinth!” he sighed in relief.

            “Said people are generally looking for excuses to fight,” I shrugged, as Feature skimmed over the oily black water below us, Wrathflames blazing across the surface of it and making it flare with white purity. Around us, both ahead and behind, the lightfooters who could do so were racing across the surface of the river, but they still had Weapons in hand. The rest were streaming across an extending bridge of Light arching quickly across the waters, also moving fast and light... and, I noticed, most were Archers watching the lightfooters sharply. “Are you expecting something to attack?”

            “Ready for it, not expecting. There’s some nasty mutant crap in these waters, what with the Taint in it.” His hand returned near his Axe on pure reflex.

            I looked down and around slowly, empty eyes with just dots of silver in them. “Ah. Things like that.” I stuck Mortus Dius down into the water and there was a bright pulse of multi-hued, flaming Shards streaking off and away under the black water ahead of us and to the right.

            The explosion of Wrath and Windfire blew water fifty feet into the air, and something the size of a bus with way too many feelers around its mouth came with it, burning craters all over its slimy right side, festooned with rotting scales and semi-transparent flesh.

            Fire ran through below our feet as Feature changed course and picked up speed, water hissing and spraying up to either side of us.

            If this mutant carp wanted a meal, Feature was definitely the biggest thing around, even longer than this excuse for a fish.

            Feature’s reach was not limited to his jaws, however.

            The Windfire and Wrath blast containing his dragonfire exited his jaws, flashed out, and hit the huge fish right in its open maw, detonating just inside the bony opening between the writhing tentacles that were still twitching with the electrical interference that had driven the carp up to the surface.

            Its head pretty much vanished in the next second as the explosion of flames devoured it. The massive body tore apart, vivus chased dark goo in every direction, bloody steam blew out, and the river for twenty paces in every direction was suddenly blasted perfectly clean and clear, revealing some far smaller things down there which started to burn with vivus, writhing wildly as they did so.

            Shark-sized eels all black and decaying erupted from the surface of the waters, and passing lightfooters generally cut them in two before they could fall back into the oily stuff, adding to the purity in all directions.

            “Impressive,” Mother Bea smiled, as Feature slid past the edge of the steam cloud smoothly, unperturbed, and twitched his head sideways. Whiskers, aligned sideways, neatly chopped an eel-lamprey with vestigial fin-wings in two as it came out of the water, and we watched its twenty-foot body get about halfway out before it fell burning unwhite back into the water. “How are you sensing them?”

            “Detect Evil at VIII.” They all sucked in a breath. “They are concentrations of Sin, so they stand out even in the Tainted water. “Layer it onto Eyes of Heaven from Heavenbound and Inquisitor, and you’ve got excellent range and speed of information.”

            “Damn!” Rapman spoke up from behind her. “I forgot how useful Warlocks could be at times...”

            “No Warlocks here?” Different rules of magic allowed different things in different places.

            “Not a one, and we didn’t have any when we came here,” Korbald said softly, head turned to watch the huge carp-oni burning itself away en vivus on the purified water’s surface, which was physically repelling its Tainted corpse.

            “And if we didn’t have it with us, we couldn’t get it later,” Bronze added quietly.

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