[Be Gone] Ch 8 – Doom and Ill Luck make Fine Companions

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I came out of my recollections with a sigh, patting Feature to let him know I was fully awake and back. I was never a hundred percent immersed in memories, always having awareness of things going on outside, and could have dropped it all and risen to the attack with breathtaking speed if required.

            It was morning, pallid wimpy light that it was.

            I ticked over my Purity/2 Mastery with great satisfaction as what passed for night in this place began to fade and lighten up.

            There’d been Spirits and things thinking to investigate the area, but just the slightest whiff of Holy fire guarding us had been enough to dissuade them. Instead, they all seemed to be having a great and exciting time outside, judging by the roars and shouts and clashes and explosions that had been going on out there.

            Nothing really tried to come through the earth and walls after the first couple of Spirits got themselves terminally fried, and I made sure they knew I could see their Black forms coming the whole way, attention that was rather off-putting despite themselves.

            What passed for the sun rose, and Natural Renewal stole across the land. I certainly wasn’t going to use my normal Highmoon Renewal here, on an alien world fallen to Sin, and so I sighed as the breath of morning wafted in, however much it stank. I quietly Saluted Aru on this new world where He was doubtless not even known.

            Still, it was kind of surprising that something hadn’t come in to tussle with us. Feature flowed towards the entry and poked his head out to take a look around, wary of an ambush... but I was sharing all that Behold Evil stuff with him, so he was perfectly aware of all the Auras in the area, and nothing was close enough to do jack to him.

            Kinda a shame. Was waiting for him to Dracoform and go all Heavenly serpent rage on their asses, but we hadn’t run into anything that dangerous.

            Boss?, he asked, as he shared his eyes. I blinked my hollow sockets, decided that we should get a better look, and stood up, stepping along the length of his body to come to the mouth of the cave.

            In the interests of a better view, Feature and I rose to the top of the small rock that held the cave to take a better look.

            “Uh huh...” I muttered, while Feature just studied it all with glowing silver eyes.

            There was nothing alive outside the cave. There was a whole lot of stuff dead. It was... rather amusing? I could see the wild and tangled ripples of fate (doom) and luck (all bad) rippling around in complete agitation, the waiting, not-quite-expended power of the Curse Magic here that Aelryinth had been grinding off and discarding into the environment having a dire effect on anything wandering into the area. As I was not bound to either profound force (tyvm Beyond Law and Chaos!), the released energy couldn’t get a grip back on me, which now enabled me to see the resulting hilariously lethal instances of bad luck.

            An ogre-thing had impaled six goblinoids, one after another, on its spear, like a great shish-kebob… and then somehow stumbled and impaled itself upon the weapon. There it was, lying on its back, a pole stuck out of its belly with six little goblin-kebobs twitching to the black flies above it.

            Six wasp-moth-demons looked to have collided in midair somehow, and had impaled each of another one’s left eyeballs with those nasty tail stingers…in a circle. Really bad choices in flight paths?

            A top-heavy muscle-oni looked to have swung at something with such force it had ripped its own arm off. The severed arm and club had bounced off a rock and rebounded to crush its own skull. The clawed hand was still holding onto the spiked club wedged into its thick skull.

            At least two dozen skeletal demon riders looked to have been trampled under their own mounts, which were all screaming from somehow having broken all four of their legs and were still trying to crawl around. A Tainted ooze creature swallowed the last of them while I watched, then some sort of necromantic reaction lit up from the dissolving bones and some magic worked into their saddles, and blew the huge slimy thing apart in a boiling black cloud of disintegrating goop.

            Some fumaroles had erupted out of the landscape, filling the lower area with hallucinogenic gas. There were at least a thousand dead things of various species in there, looking very much like they had enthusiastically butchered one another and themselves with great vim and vigor. As I studied the area, a bunch of lizard-like fliers on the other side of the carnage saw us and came swooping in, breathing fire.

            The resulting eruption was big and loud, but the heat didn’t do much to them as the gas in the air ignited. However, all the lizard-fliers lost flight control from the concussion of the blast and landed on weapons sticking up out of the ground. They twitched and screamed and that seemed to draw the interest of some scavenging skeeter-bat-rats, who came swooping down to enjoy some fresh carrion... right into a secondary blast igniting off the fumaroles, and were themselves pancaked and fried for their hunger.

            There was the soil-bulge of one of the worm-borers that had been digging through the areas with more dirt, jutting half out of the soil on either side of a fumarole, split for about ten meters down the middle like a stick of butter and burning with a truly horrid stench. Methane and Tainted mega-worm, ugh. A heady bouquet, to be sure.

            It was kind of surreal as we started moving through the landscape, watching how bad luck and sudden doom was catching up to everything. There was no doubt this was some nasty magic at work, and it had no more sympathy for demons than for humans.

            Evil enjoyed feeding on itself, the tiny bits of super-potent Curse magic dissipating further out into the landscape as they preyed indiscriminately on everything in the area tied too tightly to the Sin here. Feature and I looked at one another, and very carefully avoided everything, watching all the interplay of doom and bad luck and staying away from it as it kept expanding, and would continue to do so until it just became part of the background odiousness of this place.

            I could have set something on vivic fire. I considered what was probably going to happen if I did, given all the Sin that was now getting concentrated here, what kind of a ruckus that was going to make, and all the kind of attention and trouble it was going to draw.

            If that Killing Tree was any indication, this was the territory of some other really powerful demonic creature, and I didn’t want to draw that thing’s attention while I was unable to lay out the uber magic.

            So, no igniting the mess and really adding to things here; we’d leave this behind like we had the forest.

            Staying a foot off the ground so as not to be sensed by the things hiding under the ground, Astral Warded so they couldn’t sense us coming without me flaring Wrath to wave a shining flag at their souls, we headed in the direction we needed to go, where the Black was fading to less on the horizon.

------

            It was obviously a long way to go, and while our course didn’t change much, I didn’t go out of my way to make trouble, attract never-ending runs of attention, or make lots of Karma for myself.

            Oh, and I could take a Feat. My second of the same kind, actually. Extra Traits, again.

            I’d taken the Feat yesterday, and somehow wasn’t surprised when the Traits picked themselves. Like a Talent, it had to be something endemic to you, I was guessing.

            Favored by Faith. +1 to all Sacred Bonuses received. Basically, it was reaffirming my belief that I worked for a Higher Cause, and they had my back while I did the ground work.

            All you could wish for, right?

            Sure, the bonus was small, and much more significant at lower Levels. But, hey, would ya look at that, I had Sacred Bonuses to Saves and AC via Magnus, and to pretty much everything else via my Blessing Stone. A little more never hurt.

            Undead Killer, because by Mithar and Sylune, I had fucking earned that distinction, I had. Of course, so had a hefty percentage of the people alive back on Terra-Luna. If there was a go-to list to kill for Karma, undead were at the top of mine.

            Today’s Traits were much more direct. Breaker of Doom and Soul of Experience, +2 Trait bonuses to Concentration and Initiative, respectively.

            I knew I had another set to take, but I also knew that one was going to be Aelryinth’s to take. No use going for the truly magical Traits when I didn’t have an intact Matrix. They could all be wound up as he re-established and began to rebuild our magic from an end-user paradigm, instead of from organic growth and a video game’s interpretation of it.

            I was expecting big things, and had no doubts in him.

------

            The new change landscape ahead of us was a lot of ridges, rising up and down without becoming true mountain peaks, like sand dunes made of stone.

            Going up and down them was hypnotic and drew the mind along. I found myself continually having to refocus on the horizon and not move along the ridgetops as their angles to my destination kept seeming to first go the right way, and then led us astray.

            The Black over to the ‘south’ definitely had something to it that I didn’t want to see, so no, we just kept levitating up and down the ridges at speed, outrunning whatever was trying to follow us on land, and shooting down anything in the air that came too close. Our destination stayed the same, and that’s the wonderful thing about not having to trudge: I could set a course direction and stick to it, regardless of what awkward angle for going over those ridges it set.

            It was with great interest that I noted that this Sin-infested land about us wanted to kill shit.

            Sudden rockfalls were a thing, trying to catch me from above... and when they didn’t, always taking unlucky bounces into any pursuers, if I had any, which I usually did. Slopes of stone would suddenly be revealed to have razor edges, winds would come up at awkward moments that could tear us off the sides and into lethal falls, and creatures that were immaculately concealed would spring out of nowhere to surprise us.

            Whatever creature was the boss here had some involvement with the landscape. Some sort of corrupted Earth Spirit-?

            Whatever. Primus dealt with the winds, Magnus kept the Hexar Shields up to deal with sudden rockfalls or sprays of grit and the like, and the concealed creatures weren’t, running into Windfire Orbs of Wrath that generally were capable of heavily wounding them, if not killing them outright.

            As their burning bodies fell down the slopes and triggered deadly landslides, the demonic ogre-types and beasts behind me inevitably changed course to enjoy the easy-to-catch prey.

            Huh, smarter than I thought. They were waiting for me to spring the beasts and then they’d simply fight the winner. Either way, they’d feed.

            There were things that tried to come down at me from the air, but I had complete spherical sensory coverage without turning my head, while Feature was focused ahead for dangers, borrowing the same spell, and both of my Named Rings and my Staff were keeping watch, too. My Hexar Shields were never put away, Magnus staying very on top of things, and intelligent magical items didn’t have biological creatures’ problems with fatigue and staying focused.

            It was Primus, however, who sensed the next big thing, feeling the huge amount of Elemental energy in the earth underneath the next ridge in front of us.

            Forewarned, we hove to just below the lip of the ridge, while another massive spider got a face-full of Wrath-laden windfire, was smashed off its eight legs, two outcroppings crumbled with cruel timing as it attempted to hook onto them, and down it went, bouncing heavily back and forth, starting an avalanche that went pounding after it enthusiastically, and raised a lot of dust and debris as it did so.

            The residual burst of unnatural flame spreading said it had died somewhere in its thousand-foot tumble, tree-sized legs smashed and scattered all over the place. Scavengers were already swooping in, looking to feed.

            Whatever was down there was beyond precision Detect range, but there was definitely a lot more Black in the area than was appropriate. Hunger must have been making the creatures stupid, as they should have realized something was wrong at this point.

            The flocks converged on the van-sized corpse of the spider, as well as the scattered and broken legs. I stayed up high and watched through Feature’s eyes as he borrowed the Eagle Eyes added to my Mask of Clarity, currently useless for me, both of us waiting patiently.

            Blood vultures, murdercrows, and some form of bat-like thing all came swooping in for the big meal over the course of the next ten minutes, tearing at the corpse, ripping it open, and even diving into it for their share of the more delicate innards.

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