The Power of Ten

Chapter 8-231: The Central Spire

The last two mountains had been entertaining. Liches, wights, and mummies had started joining the throngs of undead trying to stand in our way, and all of them were spellcasters.

They all belonged to a human or humanoid race, it was hard to tell which (what with them being dead and all), of great and slender height, ghostly pale skin, and rather enlarged heads that bore the signs of being molded from birth. Such things were done by magically and psychically advanced societies with no care for their young, possibly as a way to force Powered status into their children by forcibly attuning them to the background energies of the universe... and inevitably such children weren’t sane by human standards. You listen to the insane sounds of Mythos all your life, and sanity is just a byword for unenlightened, right?

They were all still undead, and they didn’t have range on me. Indeed, they didn’t really have range on my Detect Undead, although some tried to conceal themselves with Aural Wards of various kinds.

I was sure the locals had all kinds of names for this central mountain, with appropriate fear and dread attached to it, but all it was for me was the location of a Shroudlord, who, if the condition of the decent clothing on these Caster undead was any indication, had killed an entire living population of their kind and made them into its servants.

Shroudlords couldn’t tolerate the living under the influence of a Shroud, and I was sure it would have swept out to conquer the world... if sunrise hadn’t sent them all right back here, and they couldn’t Teleport around while Suncursed to just return back to wherever they’d already advanced to, either.

An army of unkillable undead spellslingers could indeed wipe clean this world... and gone marching across the void to ours, too. The Leng ghouls had probably dispersed themselves enough so the Haze couldn’t pick one to form a Shroud, and were trying to kill off the random undead so as to avoid a critical mass scenario. Ghoul Sage Woodward had actually been working with the living, although exactly what kind of living things I wasn’t sure of. Beastfolk of some kind, or fey spirits, more likely, who could tolerate him and wouldn’t have real food issues, either.

Invisibility couldn’t hide the undead, Eagle Eyes could pick them out from quite some distance away, and if they didn’t have an Aural Ward, I didn’t even have to be able to see them to kill them. Shards burned out, Chained if they came in clusters, and undead died.

There were no living creatures here to worry about, save for a few Fiends of various unwholesome derivations that had been enslaved and were driven forth like dogs to attack us.

Holy Magic loved Fiends like it did undead. White stains along our backtrail continued as we continued towards the mountain.

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From a distance it hadn’t looked like much, but up close this passageway into the mountain was tall enough to admit a Titan. The shape of the doors and hinges had an inhuman aesthetic, so I was sure no humanoid of any size had actually made them. The images on the door were of a great apish beast with fur like icicles, and a many-legged insectile thing with a burning crest that resembled a much-too-large remorhaz.

They hadn’t managed to close the doors in time, although they’d tried. I’d flown ahead, and simply Shaped up a massive wedge in front of the one as it closed. It had ground to a halt, unable to shut regardless of how many slaves were pulling on the chains to make it so.

A lot of undead came stumbling out of that door, trying to stop us. The vast majority were skeletal remains of the over-tall humanoids, flesh fallen from their bones, their misshapen skulls even more obvious in death.

A necromantic society would doubtless have extensive catacombs, and when the Haze came, they had doubtless all risen up at the same time and invited any living people to join them.

The numbers that were being disgorged into my face were extensive, likely representing millennia of ossified residents of their catacombs.

I got a lot of testing in using Alchemical Bombs as material components, more than enough to satisfy my curiosity and provide some statistical backing, while I patiently accumulated more rep counts of Metas and blew my way through the flood of undead coming out of that door.

A mortal host of warriors could not have endured the constant rush of reinforced undead, especially with the Congregants, Fiends, and Constructs attached to it. It was the first time I’d seen such large numbers of Constructs, mostly made up of stone and bone, the latter obviously using the remains of the dead that weren’t intact enough to form undead themselves. Given Constructs were even more durable than most undead, that wasn’t a waste at all.

But, I had a Golembane Scarab for a reason, and I knew how to Cast Orbs.

Orbs were one of the four initial basic Spell Templates. They were medium-ranged, decent damage touch-attack spells; they often had secondary effects attached to them, and might Burst in a small area at higher Valences.

But, from a Caster’s perspective, that wasn’t their main job. Their main job was to kill things that were mostly immune to magic, like, oh, Golems.

Most spells gathered together mana of a specific source and type, actualized it, and hurled it forth. So, a Fireball spell was actually composed of magical fire.josei

Orbs didn’t do that. Orbs gathered together REAL energies. Fire Orbs, for instance, gathered heat from their surroundings. Cold Orbs actually pushed heat away and formed balls of liquid or even frozen gasses. Lightning Orbs gathered static electricity and compressed it.

Force Orbs gathered the pressure of wind, the weight of falling footsteps, the grinding friction of stone layered on stone, the energy of motion and effort and weight and molecular vibration, and condensed it down into an Orb of shimmery force waves, which I let fly.

Delimited, and with all the bells and whistles, of course.

Reaving the undead around them, the lines of simpler, basically just Animated Constructs were actually easy to reap with Shardrays, exploding as the Golembane effect shredded them and they blew apart.

The true Golems stood out by being completely unaffected by normal magic at all. But when I condensed the force of ten thousand footsteps into an Orb and slammed it into their insectile, reptilian, humanoid, bestial, and amphibious-carved forms, well, that wasn’t much different than hitting them with a really big hammer, and they blew apart rather emphatically.

I was only getting +3 per die, but that was still 130 damage an Orb, on average, and the biggest one that came lumbering out, a massive dragon’s skeleton animated as a Golem (a drolem? Hah!) still only took two shots before its head blew apart, its spine conducted the remaining force down the length of it, and it disassembled violently enough to embed some steel-hard bones in the stonework.

The tighter they packed themselves, the faster they died.

It turned out I could add Alchemical Bomb damage to the Burst effect of a Good Spell of the same Element, as long as I was using Blessed Bombs. Since I was defaulting to Fire and Lightning here, that definitely wasn’t an issue, and in tight quarters, the ChainedBursts were taking an extra +4d6 off the undead that were flying in every direction when the Bursts went off.

So, the effect wouldn’t work with Bolts, Lances, Storms, Cones, Comets, Rays, Orbs, or Fans, but it would work with any kind of Burst effect.

At least until I got Bombs that did alternate area effects, maybe?... La, la, la...

Pointedly, it would work with Pyroclasms, although I only did that once, as I wanted more rep counts, not mass extinction so quickly.

I’m sure the undead thought they had me when their forces started pouring in behind us, especially after we entered that long hall past the door. I was flying, Sleipner’s bike was Itemized, and Master Fred was dual-wielding him and Idiot. Zipping Alicorn Lances were flashing out non-stop to poke undead getting uppity, girt with some Wrathfire for basically instant kills. Swathes of fire were exploding up as Walls of Fire here and there to really irritate the undead with double-damage Goodness, and basically make the area behind us impassable.

They were also not happy when my Casting Rate doubled, and then tripled. I was allocating Shardrays to their Casters, Shards to their minions, and Repeat Spells were streaming backwards nonstop to take care of the undead coming in behind us without fail.

They also didn’t like the way I could Shape the stone around here, which foiled trap after trap they tried to spring on me. I sealed off slits in the walls, locked up pits, reinforced ceilings and falling blocks, wedged tight closing walls, and either threw open concealed chambers or simply walled them over in passing. One of my thoughtstreams was wielding my Duskstopped Stoneshape at VII smoothly, taking advantage of the fact we were inside a mountain brimming with cold Earthpower and using it against them constantly.

Even magically reinforced stone bowed to the Shape Stone at VII, and if I could only do forty cubic feet at a time, quite low by my standards, that was still more than enough to mess up everything that needed messing.

I don’t think they were very happy when they finally did get some Bolts and Bursts of lightning, fire, acid, cold, and their negatively-charged variants through, and found we had Spell Resistance of 41, and we were almost as unstoppable to magic as their own Golems.

Perhaps they despaired, perhaps they welcomed the coming chance at death... because they didn’t think it was permanent, and who knew which way they regarded it when the unfamiliar vivic fire took them, and burned them so clean the Shroud couldn’t bring them back.

The stone of the mountain was dark and deep, but my path along it was soon blinding, brilliant white, touched by many unwhite flames having a good ol’ time of uncounted bones and long-dead flesh turning to dust beneath it. In front of me or behind me, I made no distinction, and Killed Them All.

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Their traps were locked up.

Their minions were exterminated.

Their spellcasters were useless.

Their magical defenses had been ripped apart by Dispels and Spellflares more potent than a score of their Casters working together, the feedback disrupting and destroying defenses that had stood for ages.

Their wise and powerful dead elders, returned to lead them, had exploded in unwhite fire that was giving them uneasy vibes.

Their Constructs and Golems and Animated guardian minions had been blown into rubble.

The mad song of the boreal wind was having no effect on us, nor was the chill.

The holy starfire was coming, and with it a Song that was burning along the threads of magic, with a power none of them could remember ever seeing.

Too strong, too pure!

Bright lights in the darkness, changes in the Song as vivic energy thrummed on the wind, and the necroic power on it blazed and ignited, sweeping forth out of the long entry tunnel that led into the ancient necropolis of the people here.

They did try to focus their attention on Master Fred, perhaps thinking that breaking the person with less offensive power would swing the odds in their favor. That proved incredibly hard to do, as massing up just drew my attention, and not massing up meant they couldn’t use cooperative Casting to try and break through his impossible Spell Resistance. Trying to avoid my attention long enough to do that was not easy, and impossible once they started Casting and I noticed the effect on the manasphere.

I swept through the (un)living areas, Shards swooping through the maze of tunnels and caves, Seeking all the undead hiding within them. Unless their caves were sealed shut, the Shards could find a way there and extinguish those hiding. If they were sealed, that simply meant I had to Reach out with Shape Stone and make a hole for them to enter and do what needed to be done.

The conduits of command led me onward, and Trailfinder kept me on the path even if I couldn’t follow the areas of greatest traffic through the labyrinthine depths pretty easily. Traipse the same roads for thousands of years, the difference is obvious...