[Be Gone] Ch 14 – The Battle Comes to Me

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“It’s not considered wondrous from their side, but yes. What you are calling white is Sin being reduced to raw energy, purifying the soil it has infected, which then permeates into the Land. It will fade by tomorrow to normal hues, but the ground will be pure until the Sin can spread into it again.”

            They stared at the white trail in shock. “Master Aelryinth, if this is true, it is very important that you make it to the wall!” Taicho Uverhua blurted out urgently, clearly agitated.

            “I’ll get you there,” I smiled slightly, and she belatedly remembered who was helping who here. “Tell me where we are going.”

            She turned around and squinted into the distance with the others. “That is Little Teakettle,” she named one of the rounder mountains. “The Forty-Klik Teakettle Fortress is close if you proceed as I direct.”

            “Certainly. One more minute to stretch your legs. Work your arms and legs, jump up and down a few times.” Feature turned his gaze backwards, and hissed. “Oh? Nevermind, everyone on board!” I hopped back onto his back. The scouts were all well-conditioned, and the snapped command had them all jumping back onto the Disks, the Taicho onto the lowered Hexar Shield.

            A breath later we snapped into motion, moving with great speed and like an arrow in the direction the taicho was pointing.

            “Did the dragon see something?” Taicho Uverhua asked politely.

            “Perhaps I shouldn’t have left such a white trail. Something smart enough to realize what it was has swung onto our trail and is leading a bunch of stuff this way.” I paused significantly. “You sure you want to lead them to this Forty-Klik Fortress?”

            “Swing south!” she replied urgently, pointing, and Feature obligingly veered right. “We will have to make it to Teakettle Fortress itself to withstand a strong assault! Can we make it there?”

            “Twelve kliks, forty south... only forty-two kliks. We’ll be there in an hour.” Feature hissed. “Yes, I’m aware they can take a shorter vector, too.” My utter lack of worry calmed them all somewhat. “Some of their fastest might catch up to us, but not the main force.”

            “But Ael-sama,” the taicho protested quickly, “you are still leaving a trail! They will know you have changed course!”

            “Well, of course. You wouldn’t want them to be attacking some place that wasn’t prepared to face a major demonic assault, would you?” I smiled back, perhaps a bit eerily.

            “If this vivic fire is as powerful as you say, Ael-sama, every soldier there would gladly give their lives to see that knowledge of it reaches the Empire!” Taicho Uverhua declared firmly.

            Her Aura was hard Blue at those words. Her troops believed it, too.

            I just smiled softly. “But that is not the point of what is going to happen here, is it, taicho?” I said gently. “It is whether I am willing to have them die, when I can arrange things where not only do they all not die, but the demons get Fed to the Land.”

            She would have taken a step back at the determination in my voice, and Magnus had to shift another Shield to stop her.

            Feature glanced back, borrowing the power of my Eagle Eyes through our link to judge distances.

            Magnus, give me that Sending spell, I told it.

            The First Ring gleamed and retrieved the spell, readying it for me to Cast.

            I visualized the face I’d only seen on the television over a decade ago, but it had struck me back then, and it was more than enough focus for what I wanted.

            +Korbald the Ironskull, this is Aelryinth the Ringlord from Terra. En route to the Little Kettle Fortress with airborne demon force following. Bringing vivic fire. Aid requested.+

            And I Sent it off.

            It was a Divinatory effect, not Elemental, and not susceptible to interference from that angle.

            I had no eyes to close, so I just kept my Awareness all around us, watching the Black that had faded to a faint haze and occasional tendrils and wisps that Wrathfire was setting ablaze in passing.

            The Land was trying to fight back the Sin, but didn’t have the intensity of energy and power to do so. It didn’t have vivus to infect this Sin, countering the Taint that was infecting the natural Elemental energy of the world.

            But I was here. Feature was here. I had my Rings, my Staff, and a few Wands. Did I actually need much more?

            Well, sure I did. And I had a Masspack with a decade’s worth of knick-knacks inside that I could expend if I needed to.

            The auto-reply to the Sending came in a minute later.

            +We’re on the way. Semper Fi.+

            I turned to look back in the direction of the incoming demonic fliers with empty sockets, only able to sense a pinprick of darker Black out in the distance. The Baneskull I’d made from Gogriespiel began to blaze with the black Banefire of Fiends, and my smile was probably as white as the vivic fire in response.

            That terse reply was all I needed to hear. Oh, those demons were in for a bad time...

-------

            Forty-some kliks to the fortress the taicho mentioned. We were burning and quite visible in the distance if you had good enough eyes, and really, there was nothing else that burned in quite the glorious hue of Heavenly Wrath. They were originally tracking us by the white trail on the ground, but soon changed course once they realized where the little dot of fire in the distance was going.

            Feature didn’t slow down, and was streaming over the landscape with speed and focus. Anything random we encountered was clawed down in passing, no stopping, and blew into white ashes behind us. A few mutated beasts, some undead, a stray demon or two. No course deviations off the line, just death in passing, and if they looked tough, I just softened them up ahead of time with Windfire’d Wrath-shots of solid air on Heavenly fire.

            In the meantime, that dot of blackness behind us grew.

            I smirked on seeing their progress. Whoever or whatever was driving them on was really in a damn hurry, probably killing them with whatever magic they were using to impel them along. Of course, if they could kill me it would all be worth it, but that wasn’t going to happen, either.

            “Ael-sama, they are sending their swiftest fliers out ahead at us!” one of the keener-eyed men among them shouted. The way they were seated left them no room to draw bows, except for Taicho Uverhua, who actually had her bow drawn.

            “Yes. They could have provided cover for the tougher stuff if they held them back.” My laconic reply clearly indicated that I knew that, watching the streaking flocks of four-winged and clawed hawk-things with skeletal heads and stabbing beaks coming closer swiftly. “They’ll catch us within a mile, much to their sorrow.”

            We could see the blackness of the River Corpus ahead of us, winding through this barren and lifeless plain, scarred by Sin and the lingering energies of death and violent combat. The backtrail we were leaving was rich and white, finding the blood from a lot of fighting here, and bones from nothing natural were scattered everywhere in clusters and lumps where bodies had been tossed, or immense corpses left to be burned when they could be.

            Vivus was chewing through them somewhat more permanently, and I was tossing out shots of Windfire basically non-stop, starting little bonfires of vivus all over the place as I did so.

            See, we’re right here. Watch us purifying the Land! We very dangerous we are, come and stop us...

            Fluctuations in their Black Auras indicated they were pretty tired, but it didn’t stop them from coming at us. That was fine. I watched the clouds come in, subdivided them into clusters, and when the nearest of them was a hundred yards out, I began butchering them.

            Flocks are considered Swarms, operating on a group/pack mentality, and that makes them uniquely vulnerable to certain effects. More specifically to Swarmbane, if you have it on your Weapon, or for those of us who didn’t bother, a Swarmkilling Clasp.

            The funnest thing is watching the effect of a blow ripple through the whole Swarm. From a magical standpoint, Swarms are one entity with a bunch of Health, and don’t break up until you exhaust the Swarm’s Health, which kills most of the creatures within and shatters it. When you are dealing with somewhat larger creatures, that meant the threat might not be over, but in this case, it meant they were wounded, and wounded fliers generally don’t come to good ends.

            My first Shardray coalesced from eight Shards and zipped past the lead elements, who reflexively parted around it. It zipped into the back of the formation there, slamming into the trailing flocks, which were actually the biggest and strongest.

            The lead four-claw basically disintegrated, and the Chain went out, except in this case, it blew through the entire Swarm, spreading out the damage of the Chain among every potential target, not just twenty of them, and not incidentally all the Kicker damage, too.

            Black, white, and rainbow flames became demon-killing fireworks, and dozens of four-claws either blew apart or went into death-spirals of doom at speed.

            It didn’t stop the rest of them, and I didn’t expect it to. They weren’t really looking back, anyway.

            But the next expended charge from my Shard Wand was Split so I could target two flocks at once, and Residual Metamagic kept the Chain in effect.

            The lead elements were still catching up, straining to get within reach of us as the trailing elements of their massive flock blew up in pairs, targeted by Detect Evil VIII, and great explosions of magical fireworks followed behind us.

            The Shugenja got to his feet on the Disk, supported by the other korobokru, and called up a nice headwind from his ringed staff, blowing directly into the faces of the demons and slowing them down, giving me time to kill the rest of them.

            Magnus sniffed on my finger, but I wasn’t about to tell the little guy we didn’t need his help, and just kept cycling bright chains of Swarmkilling Chains of Shardrays that lit up our backtrail and spread vivic flames all over behind us.

            The last two Swarms may or may not have realized they were the last, and were almost above Feature’s undulating tail as I leveled Mortus Dius and let go.

            The last two fireworks exploded on our back trail, and the demonic creatures, nice and fat with Black, burned and went white as Force energies tore them apart with Holy power, vivus, Soulfire, and Banefire, and down they spiraled, splattering themselves in little unwhite fireballs along our backtrail.

            All the korobokru let out reflexive sighs of relief. Taicho Uverhua lowered the bow she hadn’t used, showing great discipline. “You cut that very close, Ael-sama,” she observed calmly.

            “I certainly hope that they thought so, taicho.”

            She glanced at me, my unconcerned expression, and doubtless was wondering if I was somewhat mad, or just that confident.

            “Very nice use of the wind, Okopik-san.” It had been, playing over the four-claws and forcing them to zig and zag about, breaking their pell-mell charge and forcing them to slow down, buying me time.

            “It was... much stronger than I am used to wielding,” he admitted, glancing at me in careful curiosity. “Did I hear you... humming, Ael-sama?” he asked respectfully.

            “You did, indeed. You are familiar with the Sublime Chord?”

            “I... cannot say that I am, Ael-sama. We of the Asperaii are familiar with using magic to convey spells with power using song and music, but this sounds like something more like that used by the, ah, Bards of the Tiger Clan...”

            “It is called the Heartsong. It operates on a very simple principle: Music is Magic.” I hadn’t stopped Humming, and now I let it rise and spill out into the visible world.

            Frayed lines of magic threaded through the skies above me, brought together and humming vibrantly as they did so, creating a kaleidoscope of colors in two spectrums that was totally out of place in this dreary landscape.

            It was singing a mournful dirge, utterly captivating the korobokru staring up at it in awe and wonder.

            “Rot from the Black, fat and heavy with Sin

            Coming to sup on mortal souls,

            Unknowing of Doom they flew into,

            And a Hunger long stirred and wakens into the White.

            Come! I bring your Last Day!

            “But a wanderer from far places,

            Yet demons fear where mortals dare to tread!

            Come! The Sun beckons! The Land Wakens!

            There is a new day aborning, and the Light Rises!

            Come! I bring your Last Day!”

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