The Power of Ten

Chapter 8-224: Out of the Frying Pan

The Old Steed burst into motion, his flames going up as he trod on air, and began to smoothly ride the winds as I directed.

Target acquisition was my major concern. Each set of initial targets had to start in the same twenty-meter circle, and each successive target had to be within twenty-meters of the prior one. Blanketing the entire area in burst damage had to be calculated, and the effects centered on the areas where the undead were the densest.

The Chain effects would go off whether I directed them or not. They’d also double, triple, or whatnot-up on single targets, hampering efficiency. To assure maximum spread and efficiency, I had to delegate targets.

That takes a hissing bloody hell amount of concentration when you’re going into four digits of targets, and were rounding up towards five!

The Rays were spent on the larger, tougher undead, mostly monstrous creatures larger than the size of a human. If any weaker undead were nearby, they were blown apart, too. As those Rays were horrendously strong, and hitting for base double damage, even a Burst was something like 9d6+63 base damage, and with the Kickers were fully capable of blowing apart a Ten undead easily.

Thusly armed, I announced my presence, painting manifold targets and spiraling patterns of Chains in intricate webs of interconnected stars on Earth, and began to clear acreage.

I was a good mile away from the old god on His icy throne, who slowly turned His beaked and fanged head towards me, slow and casual, as if not really believing I was doing what I was doing. Cold mana was swirling towards me, getting set on fire, and just a whole lot of Heaven was coming down on His undead minions.

I’m pretty sure He blinked at the flaring of holy light blasting his servants to rotting corpses, and leaving the ground carpeted in eager vivus.

I wasn’t worried when his incorporeals started coming my way. Not only could Master Fred just put up a Wall of Fire around us to burn them up if numbers got too close, they made ideal shots for Rays as they converged in on us.

Wendigos, Elementals, ice fey, frozen undead spirits of the north; it didn’t really matter. When those cold-dwellers ran into those Rays of fire so bright they were lighting up this entire valley easily, they basically evaporated. Only if they weren’t close enough together did the Rays fail to paint a new Seal of burning Heavenly vengeance in the sky.

I was operating on full burners, Concentration going full out with every bit of my +54 modifier as I tracked my shots with one thoughtstream, kept the Sublime Chord going with another, kept track of everything within view and assessed threat status with two others, all while focused on keeping my seat and maneuvering myself and Master Fred as we moved through the sky above this undead horde as acres of them exploded around and beneath us.

Oh, yeah, Allegiance management and broadcasting with two other thoughtstreams, most of the viewers gawking as they watched the show.

My second series was exactly twice the size of my first one, as Repeat Spell and Admixture swapped in with Residual Metamagic, with consequences as might be imagined.

I didn’t need to be gesturing at all, as all my spells were Stilled, but I couldn’t help it, Clavus spinning in a dance of mana draw, pulsing with massive amounts of energy moving through him and the gleaming skull of an undead old fire god, which would become a Dreadskull if I ever got that good.

If you could see the thaumaspectrum, this fell and frigid sky was alive with colors, exploding out of the icy and necro-infused air, consuming it and burning all the brighter as they did. The magical aurora was streaming excitedly towards the burning harvest I was reaping, a blazing sacrifice and feast for The Land... and by the way the Land was responding, it didn’t want me to stop any time soon!

Six hundred Casting Cycles an hour, ‘rounds’. Two spells per round. Two hundred greater undead, incoming incorporeals or elemental beings tied together by explosive, Seeking beams of starfury, while around them the lesser hordes of their kind died in primal heavenly fire.

Fourteen thousand and more at one time.

Eight million undead an hour!

Singing Doom upon them!

Sama had her Trembling Song, and the warriors of the Steel had long hammered it into the Akasha. Anyone who could Sing that song deserved to, and anyone who heard it knew they were in for a momentous can of whoopass when that Song broke out.

Aelryinth didn’t have a Song with verse and refrain, stanza and meter.

He had the Sublime Chord, the Concordance of the Arcane and Heartsong, the primal Music of the Spheres, uniquely ringing with the manifestation of dozens of Metamagicks and the screaming force vectors of Shards... and all the millions of undead who had fallen to them, and the souls who had been freed from the doom of undeath before them.

I had that Song too, playing on the threads of magic, all of Creation around me my instrument. These undead looked up at me, there on the burning steed that used to be the mount of a god, and saw light and life and holiness, and what was left of their souls recognized it.

This was the Song of the Last Day; it was All Hallow’s Eve, and they knew I brought their Last Day!

No words, only song, glory, and the spheres responding and coming to my call with terrible and fell purpose.

It was their Last Day, their release; their regrets were gone, their chance to rest had come. Starfire took them, and as it did, this Shroudzone began to boil and burn and collapse as I advanced, moving away from the old god who I had no need or desire to face right now.

The Veil shuddered at the juxtaposition, but that independent space over there stayed firm even as the dimensions about me locked solid; Teleporting to catch up to me was now impossible.

Fliers were streaming towards me, screaming and shrieking out their hatred of the living, and ran right into ruination. They didn’t have the numbers to overwhelm me, and they couldn’t survive a single spell. The closer I let them get, the more died when I let loose on them.

If the old god was a thinker and a strategist, He would have realized that the closer His minions were, the faster I killed them. I don’t think it really struck Him or concerned Him, or maybe He was just slow to respond or realize the situation. The undead actually started to clump up even closer together as they turned on me, and I was happy to let them.

He did start throwing ice spears at me from a couple miles away, which I dodged with complete alacrity, ignoring them and the craters they blew out in the rock, or the foot-thick ice that covered the impact sites.

Yeah, getting hit by one of those would suck, so I wasn’t going to be hit by one of them. Likewise, if He wanted to keep throwing things instead of doing something productive, I was perfectly happy to let Him, nudging Master Fred out of the path of the things idly when the old god switched targets.

It naturally only took Master Fred a few minutes to earn all the Naming Karma he needed for his Grit and for Sleipner’s purposes, at which point he drew Idiot and started sending out swathes of flames that ended up as Walls of Fire in front of moving groups of surviving undead I left for him to deal with.

Leaving him stuff to kill didn’t affect how many I was killing, after all, meaning I was maximizing his killing speed and mine.

He alternated between using Sleipner’s Alicorn as a Scepter and Idiot, then basically concentrated on just using Sleipner.

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It was wholesale massacre. It was like I had remembered experience at doing this sort of thing, or something.

The Old Steed was moving at a pretty good clip to keep me in continuous range of targets, and the landscape behind and around me was a carpet of vivic flame, blazing cheerily unwhite in the darkness of the shadowed valley, while Walls of Flame exploded up in golden glory to consume undead before receding to erupt elsewhere.

Death ranged out for thousands of feet in either direction, my range completely enough to reach the entirety of the force he had parked around the void at the South Pole, and the Song of the Last Day echoed off the silently watching peaks. Even the hate lightning of the Shroud seemed to falter before the devastation taking place below.

I traveled halfway around the void in an hour, and basically left ruin behind me. Anything that managed to survive in the cracks was caught in a field of burning undead, and basically found itself igniting within a minute or two, probably to join its fellows and crumble before too long.

Inukchuk was finally trying to travel after me, moving on a blowing wind with great speed, and while I could probably have raced Him on The Old Steed, I had undead to kill, so I didn’t even bother.

Instead, I shot Him with two Consecrated Rays, attaching the Holy Metas to the primary Spell instead of the Kickers, and let Him have it.

He was probably a little surprised when 72 dice x 15 damage slammed into him, overloaded his Protection from Fire, ignored his Resist Fire totally, and hit Him harder than He’d probably ever been hurt by a spell, ever.

Oh, yes, I had Toppeling going off on every spell, as it was an awesome chance to scatter flaming undead in every direction and spread the love. The opposed check was based on Caster Level...

Inukchuk flew away like I’d hit Him with a titan’s mallet after the two Rays struck Him in the middle of His Wind Walking and exploded, sending Him spiraling away with massive burns painting the front of His icy armor, lightning and holy energies crackling around Him in displeasure at His existence.

I kept on going, of course, while He picked himself up off the ground, concentrating on His chest and the damage He’d suffered, expending power to reform His corporeal body and heal the damage.josei

It took Him three spells to repair the damage I’d done with a cast-off single spell, merely one pair of a set of four pairs.

His spell resistance naturally hadn’t slowed me down at all. Facing something like Him, my Spell Penetration had another +16 or so to spare.

I had no memories of doing so, but I had it on good faith that +60 would very reliably smack around a Lesser Deity’s avatar without too much problem, completely sidestepping their immunity to mortal magic. There were, of course, many other things a Deity could do to not take the hit, but this old god didn’t seem like someone who practiced a lot of Metamagic, and if He wanted to keep attempting to Dispel something, well, what I saw of His magic was acting at Thirty, was Elemental-based, and he had No Damn Chance of Dispelling my Shards.

If I bothered to Dispel His Wards before I shot Him, mmm, I would probably force Him to bodyjump using the Shroud’s power, and take Himself a new undead body.

I did notice that He was being trailed by several incorps and wind walkers, staying within five hundred yards of Him and one another, keeping Him connected to His fast-depleting March of frozen undead... but what could He do for them?

There were some undead who had tried casting ice magic on me, but I had the Resists and Protection up, too, and could Evade most of it. Anything Casting was automatically Congregant-Level, and promptly going to eat a Ray.

Pure nega-Lances I just ignored completely, and as The Old Steed shared my protection, so did he. They just made clearer targets for me... and I out-ranged them, anyway, so they had to let go at extreme range just to have a shot at getting me. Amusingly enough, even if I didn’t kill them, I set them on fire, sent them flying like leaves, and they’d generally burn to death before they could get off another shot regardless.

Ki flowed in a looping spiral. Magic was radiating all over the thaumaspectrum. Starfire lit up this dark valley at the top of the valley with more Light than it had ever seen in all its days, and vivic fire formed a lovely arc of unwhiteness in the dark behind unending pyrotechnics in all the colors.

A Feast of the Last Day was served for all the unquiet spirits, and they were all invited. I was generous and had room for all of them!