[Be Gone] Ch 16 – You call Demons, I Call Tigers
Added 2025-03-29 01:49:09 +0000 UTC« Chapter 15 | Index | Chapter 17 »
That did put us in spell range of them, of course, but the flaming Wall of Wrath was burning twenty feet high, was not semi-transparent from their side, and I, of course, was firing back.
If they looked tough, I gave them Split Shardrays and Chained them off into weaker things. If they didn’t look so tough, I gave them one of the two Rays, and Chained it off into weaker things.
If they were just weaker things close together, I scattered the eight Shards and let the Kicker damage blow a hundred and fifty of the things out of the sky in bright fireworks, patient and thorough. Bright electrum Ward Walls of force provided cover against the barrage of twisted Elemental and Sin energy attacks coming down, and Primus spent his 1/day Wall of Force in an arc just above us, basically providing complete cover from attacks at their height... including some devastatingly powerful fire spells that came blazing in from those three aspxix, howling Demonic Spirits beating on the invisible Wall of Force above us as they tried to get through and couldn’t, and I simply ignored them.
That was about when they realized they had to get on the ground and charge us, right through the burning mess of dead demons that had been set alight by vivus from the arrows streaking out at them. With a great droning buzz of command, all the demons descended to the ground, or as close to it as they could come, and surged towards us.
Now, I wasn’t particularly worried about that approach, either. Freed from having to worry about blocking spells with the line-of-sight issues of them advancing up the slope of the bridge footing, I could give full power to the Wall of Wrathfire... which was a piddling 60-70 +9d6 damage or something.
I.e., it was vaporizing incoming arrows and spears before they could hit us, let alone mere flesh and bone.
The lesser demons charging into it were basically annihilated instantly. It also wasn’t just Fire, being Sacred Eldritch energy, and any lesser resistance to Fire they had just didn’t apply. A true demon of fire, and there were a couple flamer species among the crowd pressing up here, might be able to ignore some of the damage, but the rest of the oni could not.
Guess who I began picking on?
Attempts to unmake, control, bend, break, and shatter my nice Wall of Wrathfire came in repeatedly, made sad hissing sounds against a Caster Level check of 43 + Girding 10, and nothing happened.
Most of the demons blew into white ash before they even touched the Wall, and those who did reach it also earned some point-blank arrowfire rewards as the best targets. Feature was also quite happy to lunge out, spit them with his nose-blade, and toss their burning carcasses onto those behind them, spreading the love.
Hundreds more demons died before the rush towards me stopped with some angry buzzing.
A flurry of attacks of Death and Sin came raging in for us, along with bunches of negative Elemental Attacks.
My Hexar Shields were hanging from Feature’s scales, and drank down all those Elemental spells without missing a beat. He blithely intercepted all the Death/Sin attacks, and the Death Ward I shared with him from being Heavenbound completely ignored all of them, much to the amazement of the korobokru his coils were protecting from such nonsense.
It dawned on them that the demons couldn’t do much of anything to them while they were protected by me and a dragon, and they kept shooting accurately and excitedly, spurred on by the humming in the air that seemed to be drawing lines between themselves and their targets to follow and shoot forth...
No such arrows could get near the creatures that strode forth up and out of the mass of demons. The aspxix certainly had a fearsome amount of Dark magic about them, the Elements screaming that such things could even exist. Truly, they did not belong in the mortal world.
That was fine. They didn’t get within sixty feet of the Wall, because the white vivic flames were visibly bending towards them, blazing over the rapidly-dissolving corpses of the demons who had tested it, and oozing slowly in their direction...
“YOU CANNOT ESCAPE!”
What a horrible buzzing voice. The power of it cut into all the korobokru like mental knives, letting them know doom was upon them, despair, despair...
“Are you talking to me?”
The magic was slashed through by the Heartsong and my light, dismissive response, looking down on this literal bug, as if surprised that it dared address me. The Horse clanners gasped as Hope was restored.
“You were actually talking to me.” My surprise was audible, thrumming on magic. “Wow, color me purple and call me a Sin-sucker. Didn’t think things like you had the brains or the courage to actually attempt a dialogue. Are we going to have a verbal joust, now? I’ll have you know that I normally don’t like fighting unarmed fools, but in your case, I’ll make an exception.”
Valor was thrumming, and all the korobokru were grinning despite themselves.
The biggest of the three wasp/bee-demonic humanoids raised a hooked triple-fingered claw at me from its safe distance from the Wall. “Leave this one, and the rest of you can live!”
Again with the Suggestion magic...
“Lies,” I replied blandly, Truth ringing and startling the korobokru from sudden threats of self-preservation. “My presence here is bending your whole demonic assault to this location. You’re going to try to kill anyone and everyone who ever saw or heard of the vivic fire now.” My words rang with devastating clarity over them all, and the smarter demons all tensed, wondering how I knew.
I idly worked up a Windfire orb of swirling interlaced windblades as I continued. “Who do you think you are talking to? You can’t even bring down a Wall I can bring up effortlessly and endlessly. You don’t have the slightest idea what you are dealing with.
“Well, let me give you an idea.”
Magic thrummed as Mortus and my Rings all stroked the ley lines, notes in the Sublime Chord ringing out and shaking earth and sky on the backs of a Caster Level at WTF Is This.
“I Bring your Last Day.
The Land is screaming for your hearts and souls.
Abominations that dare walk upon Her grounds.
Life and Death are intertwined, and they walk with Me.”
The way the Wall swirled into black and white circles certainly didn’t help them. The aspxix attempted to speak, and its words were just swept away as I continued, land and sky declaring Who I Was.
“I Bring your Last Day.
When the undead raged across a world entire
Endless millions I fed to Her.
When they brought forth the Fiends to battle for them
I sated Her Hunger on the Damned.
Dark Magic rose with all the power of Sin,
And I burned it down as an offering to Her.
Dragons came, and dragons screamed,
Dying to feed her with dragon’s dreams.”
Yeah, you fuckers, keep listening to the Fascinating power of the Heartsong, keep crowding in, the last of you racing to catch up and join the horde...
“I Bring your Last Day!
Worms of the Abyss! Foul dreams that forgot to die!
The Land stirs! A Feast calls to Her!
The Table is set! The bell rings!
The Tiger Roars!
And YOU ARE THE MEAL!”
Feature took my nice little ball of windfire and exhaled it, laden down with dragonfire. It shot out into the middle of the staring bunch of bug-bastards, and blew apart in a grandiose Burst of wild flaming blades, glorious and huge, very eye-catching, and incidentally also extremely disruptive to their telepathic unity.
The Fascinated sots also totally missed the fragile covering of stone that had been Shaped over the footings of the bridge behind and around us before it collapsed. Human figures in colorful armor, wielding blazing Weapons and rising magic of a type and style I was familiar with (and currently getting either a +4 or +8 Caster Level modifier) stood revealed.
Illusions wouldn’t do to conceal them, see. Lots of demons had True Sight to look through such things. But that was real stone giving them concealment, not an illusion!
With an impossibly harmonic roar, the House of the Tiger went for the entire horde of demons.
The korobokru stood there in paralyzed astonishment as everything ahead of them exploded in some devastatingly powerful combat magic. Dozens, scores, even hundreds of figures moving with inhuman speed tore right past and between us, bouncing off Feature’s artfully placed coils, a hundred arcs of steel and chi rising and coming down on demons in all directions.
The ground jumped as they landed. Demons shrieked, and demons died.
The enemy couldn’t fly away. They couldn’t Teleport away. Burrowing away wasn’t likely with all these fliers. The Archer fire was a wall of tracers going over our heads and carving out paths of merciless accuracy through the horde, bracing all those Dragon Warriors going totally apeshit with the Area of Effect Forms and chewing through their landbound foes with reckless and infuriated abandon.
I lowered Mortus Dius, the Staff of the Last Day, Gorgriespiel’s Baneskull blazing like a dark star as I let the Wall fade, having nothing to fear.
“I BRING YOUR LAST DAY!
DINNER IS SERVED! THE REVEL HAS BEGUN!
THE MUSIC SWELLS, THE DANCERS HAVE THEIR FUN!
THE CROWD ROARS!”
Prodded by the Heartsong, the Tigers Roared again, battlecries laden with Chi and Heartsong and magic, and timing and attacks converged impossibly into a single moment of incandescent violence as spells, arrows, and AoE attacks went off at the same time, impossibly coordinated, incredibly precise, damnably lethal.
The demons reeled at the shock and the slaughter, mad fear and panic spreading through them, despite all their masters’ will and threats.
“THE MAGIC SOARS!”
The Split Shardrays hammered into the two smaller wounded aspxix, punching through their seared carapaces and inside, finding interesting things to be anathema to, especially with my Wrath added onto them.
“GLORY CALLS!”
Forks and Chains worked together, and the big guy in the middle got both arcs. Half damage, x2, is full damage.
Plus double the Kickers! Save against this, bastard!
“YOUR CURTAIN FALLS!
“THIS IS YOUR LAST DAY, AND YOUR TIME IS DONE!”
They went out with some pretty big vivic bangs, clearing the space for twenty paces around each of them of anything demonic. What should have been a foul eruption of Sin and corrupting energy instead become serene white oblivion as they Fed the Land.
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