[Be Gone] Ch 9 – It’s Alive, It’s Alive!

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            “Magnus, fetch me its pincers.”

            Telekinesis has quite the range. Feature guiding the effort, my Ring reached down there and without ado pried the two battered fangs off the front of the massive spider’s skull for trophies, then brought them whisking back up the slope in our direction.

            I looked to the right, the direction the landscape wanted us to move in, and pointed left. Feature began to sidle along the mountain ridge that way, our eyes never leaving the scene below.

            The ground opened up like a fanged maw as multiple tentacles rose in all directions about it, weaving a writhing net over the fliers that didn’t allow them to escape. The tendrils slammed down like great fleshy whips, pulping the screaming creatures almost instantly and adding them to the mass of flesh being sucked into the ground.

            It had been waiting for us to make a move, and when it was plain we were going to avoid it, it had finally acted to secure itself a twofold meal, dead spider and scavengers together.

            One of the bats almost got away, but a slender tendril whipped up, smacked it in midair, and it went tumbling away limply, clearly broken. Other slender tentacles were extruded to meet the carcass as it came down, passed it back towards that mouth, and tossed it in before the stony maw closed. The ground rippled, the tentacles withdrew, and nothing looked out of place at all.

            Even the scattered legs of the dead spider had been hauled below ground, and there was only some smears of ichor here and there, attracting smaller bugs who probably didn’t fear the huge thing down there.

            Primus grimly said that it was paralleling us down in the valley below, although not moving quite as quickly... but just like before, the ridgeline suddenly wanted to start turning and merging into others and send us back the way we’d come.

            “Lightning Shield up top,” I directed Magnus, who rotated the Shields to put the Lightning Rod-imbued one up top of us. “Dive and scoot. Primus, deflect as much as you can.”

            Mortus Dius was humming in my hand. I wasn’t worried about being able to hurt the thing, as it was still brimming with Sin, and Greater Soulbound Weapon plus Bane of Legends on top of Bane/Evil and Enmity/Evil meant my Staff was effectively +X against this thing. The Spear of Four Seasons slid out of the Baneskull at the top, humming with some awful, reality-cutting power that was leaving a burning trail of fire, lightning, and vivus behind it as Feature drove down the slope at speed.

            It wasn’t actually moving down the valley and pacing us. It WAS the valley, and it was just recentering its consciousness. However, it was having a hard time focusing on us too precisely, so it was relying on something else to target us adequately.

            And that troll over there looked like just the thing, given how it was watching us tear down just above this slope, gliding like a flying serpent at breakneck speed, yet in absolute control as we hit terminal velocity in plenty of time.

            I flicked thirteen Shards from Wand in its direction, just so it didn’t feel lonely.

            Its long-jawed green-hided face had just enough time to drop open before the burning salvo slammed into it and obliterated its upper body completely with the flaming impacts as Wrath and Windfire exploded out of the Force Magic and tore it completely apart.

            The whole valley below us writhed, convulsing from below. That gave us a very precise idea of how much area this thing controlled, and we hit it at speed, zigzagging smoothly with absolute flight control about ten feet above the ground, all of us watching the center of intelligence bounce around and try to home in on us.

            Stony tentacles and spikes erupted out of the ground, but we were moving plenty fast, altering course with the ease and care of a snake’s motions, and the lashing, pounding, and impaling display of terrain control couldn’t quite catch up to us or get ahead of us before we were heading up the opposite ridgeline and leaving it helplessly behind us.

            The Doombolt coming down from above slammed into the Lightning Shield, and was completely soaked in by it. Black voltage scattered harmlessly to the sides of us as we headed uphill, our diving momentum gone but flight speed still intact, and we left the living landscape behind.

            This is a cruel place, Feature noted, and for a snake to say that, it meant something.

            “You know it, buddy.”

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            The rolling ridgelines that spiraled towards doom at the center finally gave way to open and trackless plains. A whole side of the mountain tried to fall on us as we zipped down it, and we simply glided further away from it as the rocks bounced and tried to reach us, falling short as we slid down the air, not really flying. Primus kept the Air Spirits at bay as we did, Feature stretched out to full length and spread wide into a great gliding ribbon like a flying snake as we swooped down through the air and left the Murder Hills behind.

            The hills below us were still rolling, but they were rounded and much gentler in slope than before. Still, we bypassed a couple miles of them at least, finally alighting atop the last one before it descended into trackless black plains.

            Well, Black, too. The grass under our feet hissed and was eaten away by Wrath. I was pretty sure if I laid down on it, the roots would start growing into me and turning me into compost.

            Nevertheless, the grass ahead of us was between four and six feet high, and it wasn’t golden in the slightest, varying between crimson and black; I didn’t know what the criteria was for the color changes. Negative energy flows through the ground, possibly? Crimson sort of looked like the base...

            You could also hide a freaking army in that thing...

            I found myself smiling very darkly, indeed, staring at the Black out there, and bringing to mind that old Stephen King tale of the Children of the Corn.

            “Feature, Primus, if you ever wanted to start a wildfire in the truest sense, now is the day we do it.”

            My Ring of Prime Elemental Command was very eager to go. Feature wrapped himself into a circle for me to sit on, I brought up the Wrath around us in Evil-eating golden glory, and down we went into the sea of grass.

------

            I expected the grass to be alive, and it was. I expected it didn’t think normal fires could hurt it, but Wrath+Holy+Vivus was a terrifyingly dangerous combination to anything Tainted with Sin.

            It Burned. Not only that, the fires spread as the unleashed vivus brought the essence of the others along, and found eager tinder in all directions.

            We were moving across the plains at the head of a great big V of fire, trailing and growing behind us into a walking, then running, then racing inferno trying to keep up with us. Boiling clouds in warring black and white colors rose into the sky, hot winds were blowing at the sheer amount of Elemental flames that were building, and Fire Spirits were beginning to manifest in the inferno.

            An inferno shot through with vivus, made up of pure Spirits who wanted nothing more than to burn anything and everything Tainted around them in glee and happy feasting.

            This place was indeed totally trackless. It was waves of grass, black to red, and that was it, no landmarks of any kind whatsoever. If I couldn’t see the fading Black on the horizon and constantly correct course toward it, we very easily could have been led in circles here endlessly.

            Oh, with the small problem of us leading a wall of wildfire behind us, and capering Elemental Spirits that were soon at freaking war with everything.

            Fire and lightning boomed in the sky as pure Fire Spirits and corrupt Air Spirits had it out. Demonic beasts hidden in the grass fled before us, and Elementals gave gleeful chase, tongues of living fire in the forms of beasts and humanoids racing all over the place, extending the wildfire. Winds chased us and built into a firestorm, building and raging behind us and to the sides, and we even saw the twisting spirals of flaming tornadoes raging up and down as Elementals went to it.

            In this fight, Fire had the advantage in Elemental Dominance, especially with vivus raging through the groundfires. The Black around us was replaced by the black of ash and white of oblivion as whatever demonic force permeated this place was being eaten away with terrifying speed and hunger by the Elements and Vivus shaking hands in a gluttonous dance of destruction.

            Primus was helping spread the fires as much as he could, coalescing fire Elemental after Elemental out of the purer flames and setting them free to do what they did best with a mere “Burn the Taint” command.

            It was a totally acceptable method. Burning extremely corrupt lands to ash was one of the best ways to free them of Taint of any sort, part of the Duty of Fire.

            More to the point, pretty soon we were driving freaking hordes of demonic creatures ahead of us.

            Some were obviously once herd animals of massive size, visible above the grass. Some were hunters that slunk through it, using the grass for concealment. Some were fliers, able to stay above the grass and swoop down on their targets with impunity... until it came time for themselves to land, and they took their chances with the rest.

            All of them were running now.

            The fires were raging with completely unnatural vitality, blazing thirty feet into the air with Hues that were definitely Higher on the Thaumic scale than demonic or natural. Pillars of multi-hued smoke swirled up to the sky, as if chasing one another and fighting, and then they occasionally came back down moving even faster and roaring as fiery twisters brought holocausts back down to the ashen plains.

            It looked like the apocalypse was coming behind us, the wind blowing from behind and driving the flames forward, forward, like fiery fangs and teeth, eating and feeding on the crimson and black grasses, and anything else that was unfortunate enough not to be able to get away.

            I had a Fiery Heart, and qualified as a Creature of Fire. With Primus on my hand, I qualified as a damn powerful one, too. I could feel the flames exulting in this freedom and devastation they were wreaking, the burning of Sin and Corruption from the Land, and they were happy to follow me and my example toward the horizon.

            The corrupted wildlife was tough, but the flames were totally tireless, the winds were strong, and Feature was moving us at a very good clip as we blew across the sea of Black grass. The fleeing animals eventually ran out of endurance as the miles they ran made no difference, and the fire certainly wasn’t getting tired. Indeed, it was only increasing in speed as the heat it generated fed ever more calamitous winds.

            The Corrupted beasts faltered, they fell into the fires, and they bellowed and roared and shrieked and screeched and howled as they died. The Elementals quickly converged on anything living and dancing in the grasses and helped take them down even faster, instant bonfires and fireswirls created as the vivic-fed carcasses were consumed.

            The Blackness swirled with fear and hate, but what could it do? It was a huge sea of grass. It could swallow whole armies and eat them with its waving stalks, but to the fires, it was just a huge mass of tinder, all the way down to its roots. Behind us white oblivion followed, not mere ash that would fuel a new generation of these plants.

            I wasn’t sure what would rise behind us, but it was going to be vivus-fueled and probably fairly resistant to Sin, at least at the beginning. In the end it would still be Corrupted, given the endless source of the stuff dispersing into the Land hereabouts, and it would have to be Burned again, but that was for the future.

            For now, it was just a heavenly Hell come to this world, purging the Black of this plain, and taking it all down to ash.

            The horizon beckoned, and our course arced as we stayed centered on the fading Black in the great distance. It was slow and somewhat erratic, but there was a definite curve as we moved towards getting out of this Damned place and to some place we could really rest.

            Of course, when the huge giant form a hundred feet tall made out of grass heaved itself out of the plain and turned a shapeless head in our direction, radiating disapproval for what we’d done, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.

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