The Power of Ten

Chapter 9-268: Judgement

I gave Master Fred twenty Disks to fill up. She departed with Idiot in one hand, and Sleipner riding her Grit in the other.

I went in the other direction. We went looking for those people with the crimson and/or purple souls who’d arranged for this to happen, and then we gave them Mercy, brought them back there, and impaled them on the Hellstar Pattern, so they could scream and feed the Ward protecting the island.

I found the temple to Huul they had erected here, guarded by a bunch of nervous men in blacks and reds who were not happy to see me. The gaping people in the area watched me come, and blow through those bastards explosively, destroying their temple, walking right through their spells and gunfire and explosives and grenades and charging warriors.

They watched me scatter their guards like chaff, blow open the entry of the temple, and head inside.

They watched shining multi-hued explosions erupt all over the place, blowing out windows, walls, and ceilings in sprays of stone and fire.

Then they watched me come out with dozens of clerics of Huul and Rath and Rue piled up on my Disks, and the guards outside were added to them as I soared back towards that new pillar of black light with crimson inside it spreading in the sky, stealing down like spoiled and weeping blood, forming their precious Ward.

A few minutes later, new pulses of darkness went up, and that beam grew even thicker and more turgid, the sky black as pitch, lit up only by flashes of scarlet sin raising the hackles of all who watched it.

I didn’t particularly care about their excuses or their power. The Auras of those Hellbound Warlocks had all been Good. I had an excellent idea as to what they’d been doing.

The devils had made up that Pattern for them to use, having found and incapacitated the planetar somehow. They made it seem like a civic duty for Good people to swear a Pact and help power the Ward, not informing them of the cost for them to do so. Indeed, they could simply make all of their political rivals who were Good swear a Hellpact ‘to help save everyone’, while they fought off the Cultivators and consolidated their grip on power in doing so.

Torturing Good souls to protect the craven and the cowardly beneath, getting rid of those who spoke up against their authority and their tactics.

Master Fred came back, towing Disks heaped with men in armor and martial uniforms, all of them thoroughly wrecked, and simply watched as I sent them hurtling up off the Disks and onto their very own nails, there to contribute their souls and pain to strengthening the Ward, hellfire doing its thing to leech them of pain and Sin and turn it into power their Ward could use.

“Shvaughn is very angry she is not here to see all this and gloat,” Master Fred finally said, her voice triple-layered and unique as she spoke, with multiple accents and inflections all blending together with arrogant power, confidence, and subtle temptation.

“Using all of their voices?” I asked archly.

“They stopped screaming once I did,” she replied simply. “I’m letting them voyeur, I hope you don’t mind.” She stared at the souls of the servants of Hell burning there without blinking. “You didn’t explain further, but how badly did they mess up by burning the angel, instead of trying to heal and follow it?”

“Well, among other things, planetars are the equal of Archpriests, and can Cast their own Miracles.” I surveyed the room, inclined my head back out, and we flitted that way, our wings humming with energies that didn’t actually require us to flap them, that was just for maneuverability. “He could have set up this whole thing by himself, and just powered it all up with a Miracle a day, no problem.”

She rolled her quad-color eyes up with a resonant groan. “So, total idiots.”

“Total idiots who stayed in power for who knows how many years, enjoying the worshipful support of the people they were ‘saving’.” I grit my teeth. “Their Auras were crimson. They took complete advantage of their power for all the wrong reasons, because they could, and they knew what they were doing. They deserve to burn.”

“There’s a lot more where they came from, and they are going to be desperate,” Master Fred judged calmly, not refuting the fact. Eyes of Heaven at V could certainly see every Damned thing they’d done, imprinted on their souls. Lust, greed, abuse of power, pride, hate, arrogance, self-justification, racism, sexism... it was all there to be read with a long glance that could make any person fat with Sin squirm.

“Shall we go find some more?” Master Fred asked flatly. I had to say, that voice was very attention-getting, like repeating your own words thrice all at once in multiple ways for emphasis.

“Try to focus on the faithful of Hell, of course. Any issues with the templars there?”

“No. My damage reduction is extremely high right now, as is my energy resistance.” Well, no shit. Amazon half-Strength bonus +15, plus erinyes 5/Holy, plus Warlock 5/Holy, plus Crystal Shield 11/-; Master Fred was rocking at least 35 points looking like that. She could wade through pretty much anything a straight Six could put up with complete impunity, unless they had Smites or something to bypass it... and any of those people would naturally be the first targets.

“Call if you need help. I can reach any point on this island instantly.”

“Yes,” she agreed calmly, spread all four wings, and took off like a shot, Sword and Grit out, trailed by a line of crystalline force Disks that doubtless looked like nothing more than offering plates for the Damned she was coming to harvest.

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When I arrived back at the mountain after the next run, I took our side route in, because why not? The main entry was probably set up as an ambush, which sounded so tedious right now. Besides, the unconscious and traumatized Damned, plus three doppelgangers and two lesser devils (a Scriptor Devil and a Viletongue) didn’t complain about the tight accommodations.

The stone parted in front of me, and a whole lot of heads turned my way as the scattered men around the Hellstar, including a couple with burned hands that looked like they had wanted to breach it and rescue someone or something, gawked at me.

I gestured, and one stout fellow in black armor screamed as he was slammed back through the air, made a short arc... and then really started screaming, and didn’t stop, as he was impaled.

They were panicking and fumbling with their firearms as the line of Disks behind me glided out, some with very inhuman bodies on top of the humans beneath them.

“Shoot her! Shoot her you f-Ahhhhh!” the other officer added to the screams as he arced into the raging area of hellfire, his skin corroding and Sin flaming dark around him, before plunging onto the four-foot razored spike waiting for him.

There were a lot of automatic rifles pointing at me, but for some reason, they weren’t firing as they backed away quickly.

One after another, the unconscious men, women, and inhuman things behind me went sailing through the air, and got themselves impaled on waiting spikes eager to burn some Sin for Great Justice. The Disks stacked up nicely off to the side after the 3-4 people on each one of them were tossed into the display, and I dusted my hands off.

There was some firing outside, some crumps and screams, roars of flames, more shouting and screaming, and then some rather abrupt silence.

The men here were very quickly plastering themselves against the walls as Master Fred glided in, her Disks heaped somewhat higher than mine had been. I waved at her cheerfully, and bodies began arcing their way through the air to begin the end of their days as power sources for cowards.

“Ugh, the smell of cordite and gasoline! What are they thinking?” I waved away the lingering odors about her as she swept a quad-colored set of eyes over all the men here, who cowered back from the two of us. “Nice haul,” I approved.

“I wasn’t destroying temples and shrines and things so much,” she admitted, watching the prisoners arc through the air one after another, Sin converge on them, they were impaled, and the harvesting begin.

“There were only four of them! It was chasing the rats down where they ran that took so long.” Two priestesses of Rue had joined his collection, but there were no Amazons with them, which I didn’t comment on, because I didn’t have to. There were at least six different voices woven into Master Fred’s words just now, and probably nine, it was hard to tell.

Pacts taken out of play.

Master Fred turned to the circle of Hellbound, still floating on their Disks, Scorn still coming out of their hands, burning unwhite, and power still flowing to the Circle. “It looks like they were smart enough not to interrupt the Hellbound. That could have been messy.” As in, the Hellfire would have surged out, filled out the room, and likely dragged them all inside to burn away hotly. At least they wouldn’t have had to get their souls burned away.

The men looking on as we totally ignored them all swallowed at that. I turned my head to take notice of them, and the ones I was looking at all shook so hard they could barely hold onto their guns.

Actually I think it was Master Fred’s Aura of Menace, but whatever. “You boys can just march on outside, and leave this wide open. If any Cultivators want to come racing in here, why, you just roll out the red carpet and usher them right inside with smiles. I imagine any and all of those body-stealing alien butchers are going to walk into this room all determined and fired up, and the Hellfire there is going to sit right up and smile at them. No need to worry about security.”josei

The men all looked at one another, back at us, and then decided that sharing a room with two demonic women who were tossing their superiors onto the flames of Hell to scream for who knew how long might be a bad idea.

First one elite trooper broke for the door, then another. Soon the whole company was getting out of there as fast as they could, happy to be alive. In not much time at all, they were all gone... except for one salt-and-peppered fellow with a blue Aura, who paused at the door and turned around.

“Why,” he managed to ask aloud, “are you doing this?”

“Oh, we are saving your lives,” I replied cordially. “The angel that these Hell-worshippers were burning to power your Ward has been rescued, so it needed an alternate power source. They had the hellfire all set up, so I just changed the configuration so it would burn Sin instead of Virtue, and there you go, a convenient power source of damned souls was all available to be used to save the rest of you, currently including three devils and three doppelgangers used to murder and impersonate those speaking out against the ruling junta!

“So, don’t you fret now. We’re going to go through the city and drag out a bunch of Damned and fix your little Ward up nice and proper for like years.” I gave him an easy wink. “Off with you now!”

Stupefied, and repeating the words “angel was burning” and “from Virtue to Sin”, the older Chinese fellow hurried himself out, to look at the sky and realize why it was weeping putrid black slime to defend them...

I eyed the still only semi-conscious Hellbound, tricked by guilt, duty, and possibly coercion into accepting a Pact. The aid of a Celestial could probably break a coercive Pact like that pretty easily when it came time.

“Bey ‘Azzar!” I spoke up loudly and smoothly.

He decided not to manifest physically. Smart fellow. The hellfire would have gobbled him up like tinder. “Yes, my Lady?” he asked, very cautiously, voice coming out of the Genie Prison now hanging down in front of me.

“I Wish that the planetar being currently Sealed by me be subjected to a Greater Restoration.”