The Power of Ten

Chapter 13-357: A Legion at Work

Legion slid smoothly through the gaping crack in the door, quite a bit bigger than the others, mostly because they were more annoyed after having to crash their way through a score of golems that Wrath couldn’t harm, immune to magic as they were.

The golems weren’t immune to Strength 68 and Might 75. Even they could hardly believe how strong they were together. It didn’t make them invincible, of course, but the cumulative effects, especially once the lilitu racial bonuses became the standard, were just unreal.

As an experiment, they’d tried to lift the door while it was down. It wasn’t that it was too heavy, but the screw-style counterweights had too much friction. Instead of lifting it, their hands had ploughed furrows into the stone, which couldn’t resist the upwards pressure.

Tossing around golems weighing a ton or more was easier than throwing hyn. They just didn’t weigh anything anymore.

Traveler had aptly called their status a ‘world of tissue paper’, and the simple fact she had a term for it said all sorts of things about the world her knowledge came from.

Legion considered the hovering spirits of what looked to be lizard folk of some kind, also Animated into scores of undead of various types there, all staring at her with eyes lit by necroic lights of one kind or another. It seemed to be below the threshold for a Shroudzone, or maybe there was something about this Pyramid that prevented such a thing from happening.

The undead charged Legion, and Legion just raised a Wall of Fire about themself to stop them.

The Purified Wall, doing 132 damage to the undead before any Kickers, basically blew through the whole assortment of undead and pounded them down into vivic dust instantly. When the undead halted prudently and didn’t race on into it, Legion simply formed a new Wall on top of the hapless things.

It took thirty seconds to clear the entire central chamber of the Well of everything, and they were in no danger the entire time.

They lifted a Mask-eyebrow at the nigh-identical layout, albeit right and left seemed to be reversed.

Once again, not wanting anything totally hostile to come out behind them, Legion moved to search the other rooms.josei

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They opened the door to the Summoning Chamber here, prepared to thoroughly wreck a very expensive Summoning Diagram, and paused.

The diagram was active, and trapping something, which came rapidly to its feet upon seeing them.

Multiple memory paths went searching for it, and found its identity readily enough. Demons didn’t have much problem identifying one another, especially the prominent ones.

Queen Rayetiz naturally knew what the hulking niorgriz was. It looked like some brutal combination between a black-bristled bear and a mandrill, with a second mouth in its hairy belly braced with snapping, scissoring pincers. Massive tusks crossed up and down from its muzzle... and it could unhinge its jaw far enough to use them, too.

And that wasn’t a tail behind it, but a third arm, even bigger and stronger than its two primary ones, bearing a hand with two opposed thumbs. Spinal spikes poking up sparkled with electricity. Despite its brutish and primal appearance, there was great cunning lurking in those eyes, for the niorgriz were greater demons, strong and ferocious, born hunters who built great and primitive kingdoms among the lesser demons in the jungles of Demonium.

That said, they weren’t normally something that mortals bothered with, unless they wanted to be eaten.

The niorgriz seemed to be rather startled to see them. It was about to say something when all the pricey Runes in the walls flashed red, and Legion looked back in time to see a Rune-festooned doorway sliding across the way out, leaving the secondary Binding on the room intact.

Unconcerned, they turned back, also just in time to see the blue-red flames on the Pentagram binding the niorgriz snuff out.

“Take one step out of that Pentagram and we will butcher you where you stand,” twenty-five voices said together.

The heavy paw about to surge forth faltered and wavered, and the great brute, towering twice as tall as they were, heaved backwards suddenly, feeling a broadcast threat and absolute sense of death looming over it. Ambition and desire didn’t go away, but the fear of instant death overrode them, and the demon brute checked itself from moving.

Totally intimidated, it watched the lilitu in front of it half-glide, half-stalk forwards, all terrifying grace and control... and it could feel every step she was setting down ringing through the floor like a greathammer striking an anvil, for all that she made no noise at all.

Astutely, the brute retreated as she advanced. A lilitu was already a higher-ranking demon then it was, incredibly fast and dangerous if it came to fighting, and very, very willing to do so.

It had never wanted to rape something so much, and the conflict between desire and lethal threat was making it shudder with self-restraint.

She paused at the edge of the Pentagram, her left hoof just touching it. Golden flames poured out from that lethal black hoof, totally out of place, and the aghast and shocked niogriz watched the power of Heaven fill the Pentagram back up with energy, and Bind it inside once again.

Instantly it felt some of the incredible desire it was feeling looking at her tamp down, and knew it had been subjected to an incredibly deadly enchantment effect. Its hairs all stood up as it realized how helpless it had been...

Her other hoof shifted slightly, came down, and a pressure as if that footstep had weighed tons rippled through the floor.

The snarl about to erupt out of its throat was swallowed. Instead, it studied her intently.

“The dead fools said there was something coming and that I would be released to fight it.” Its deep voice was startlingly urbane in the Abyssal tongue of The Pits. “A Heavenbound lilitu? I do not believe such a thing is even possible.”

“We are indeed Heavenbound, among other Pacts, and Queen Rayetizvisha is one of us,” they replied evenly, and watched it grimace in recognition of the name. “We confess to being unaware that the niorgriz were upon this world, but then, we were not informed of this Hollow World until a very short time ago.”

The brute’s grin was fearsome to behold, but naturally didn’t disturb them at all. “It kept out poachers,” the niorgriz replied shamelessly. “Not a Heavenbound to be found here for over a thousand years!” it boasted.

“Indeed. We are impressed. It is something that will be rectified in the future, but I am not here to start dispersing Pacts. I have a single question for you. You may choose not to answer it properly, and I will butcher you on the spot as you stare helplessly in desire and adoration.” The blue, purple, and green skin on the sides of the niorgriz’ face rippled with unhealthy shades. “If you do not answer me most helpfully, I will let the Axiom Runes in this room stand.”

Legion held up an elegantly clawed hand, which glittered with electrum Light. A large number of Runes carved into the walls were suddenly revealed, standing out and pulsing sapphire at the touch of silvery gold radiance.

“They are designed to send you off to Axiom when the Pentagram falls and you touch the walls here. Of course, with the Shroud up, that simply means you will simply be sent into the Shroud, and eternal torment there... unless you are pulled out as the slave to a Shroudlord.”

Although unsurprised at the perfidy, the niorgriz still growled at the duplicity. “What do you want to know?” it replied easily enough.

“Are there Shroudzones in the Hollow Land?” Legion asked calmly.

The expression it gave her was peculiar. “There are two,” the niorgriz admitted. “Why is this important?”

“To bring down the Shroud on this world, all Shroudzones must be destroyed. If we do not know of a Shroud, that complicates matters, does it not?”

“You seek to bring down the Shroud?” the niogriz half-guffawed. “Even I can feel the power of it!”

“The process has begun and is well underway,” they replied calmly in all those voices. “What commands the Zones?”

“Tuatem-Khat the Mummy Prince commands his legions of bones and ushapti constructs from the necropolis of Phatet-Ap. Hoargrim the Wraith King marshals his Wailing Host from the Tomb-Barrows of Gomness-Griann,” the demon brute announced loftily. “Not even I dared enter their lands lightly before the Shroud, and they are far more powerful, if trapped, now, sucking in the fallen dead from all across the Hollow World to bolster their forces. Were they not trapped in their Shroudzones, they would have marched across the Hollow World and destroyed all, swelling their forces beyond imagination as they did so. Even trapped, their forces grow every day, and with it the darkness of their realms...”

It was watching the face of this Heavenbound lilitu carefully, and her body language, and the complete lack of surprise at his statements was impossible to miss. He wasn’t saying things of fear and horror, he was spouting things she was expecting to hear...

“Wonderful. That means I have to go find them,” Legion sighed, unsurprised. “Okay, time for you.”

He was about to ask what that meant when their Grits popped into their hands and roared with heavenly Thunder.

It had three hundred-some Health, and was facing two Mighty Grits with full Purity on the Wrath attached to them. The first two rounds punched completely through its hairy chest, and the next two blew its tusked head apart as if cannon rounds had smashed into it, double-tapped as fast as it could blink from both Guns.

Bursting into vivus, the corpse of the niorgriz fell somewhat stiffly to the ground as superhuman muscles reluctantly relaxed. Tellingly, the containment field of the Pentagram slowly died away as the natural reaction to a supernatural creature within it faded with its death.

The niorgriz had clearly been here for centuries. That meant it had formed a jungle kingdom with demon-blooded apes out there, a kingdom that would be built on bloody savagery and war in the demonic style.

No Heavenbound meant no Good gods were followed here. That was all kinds of ominous about what kinds of societies had developed here.

The demons all agreed that was totally normal operating procedure. Getting rid of the situation would likely involve genocidal warfare against one or more kingdoms of intelligent demon-blooded apes and their pets, at the very least.

This thing had probably had kingdoms worth of intelligent beings sacrificed to it and devoured their beating hearts for its enjoyment, because that was how the niorgriz rolled.

They put Fred’s and Legion’s Grits back in their shoulder holsters, which promptly moved the firearms around to the back and out of the way of their arms.

Idiot came out again, humming expectantly as it transformed into a heavy Maul.

There was, after all, no reason not to totally mess this place up. It wasn’t like that door coming down was going to keep them in here, after all.