The Power of Ten

Chapter 9-284: Bombed Bay

Their defensive Dome blew apart, and sent the Arhat and its strongest minions tumbling, first from the feedback, and then as the wind caught them.

The devic guards and their flamboyant, noble metal wings were in particularly bad shape. They were whipped off their feet instantly, haplessly sent spiraling into the sky... but that didn’t get them out of range of my Shardrays, which chased them down and drilled through them without any sympathy for their situation before they could even be sent out of range.

Four of them were out of range of the arcs. They weren’t much relieved about that when Master Fred came whipping down around them out of nowhere, and calmly chopped them all apart while they were unable to dodge.

“You... what manner of creature are you?!” the Arhat howled, as the burning remnants of his frozen Anagami were eroded away by the wind and turned into coldly glowing dust. I was parked there about two hundred feet from him, secure in my own safe zone of air on Sleipner, singing the Sublime Chord softly... and all the magic in the air was reverberating with me.

I just smiled, and cast Boreal Wind, with Vivic chasers.

This is another one of the better long-term damage spells. It lasts a round per Caster Level, but doesn’t have the concentration-duration you can use with Walls of Fire. However, the damage was a nice 20d4 base per round for me, and with +8 per die and Purified and Consecrated making those d4’s into D6’s and Topped out, that was a base 240-damage/round stream of vivisized Heavenly cold slamming into this thing... and not incidentally igniting all the drifting necroic energy in the air.

“The Land would like to thank you for your kind generosity in donating the power of the Nirvanic Enlightenment to it. Off you go, now,” came a thundering fourteenfold voice that even the howl of the tornado died off and paid attention to.

The Arhat in purple and orange was bracing itself, but it was of no use. Fury of the Zealot meant it definitely qualified for Holy damage to burn it, and this was Primal and Divine Cold, not mere Elemental energy. Its immunity to cold didn’t slow the effect down at all.

The spell had a nominal range of ten meters per CL, meaning it was stretching off for nearly half a kilometer in front of me, turning into a great unwhite-flaming ribbon that began to lift and grow and stretch as the power of the vivus was carried out there. All the dead and dying Buddhists and necroic power from the Haze in the air began to make it grow from a thread to a ribbon to a swathe to a blazing curtain of hungry Land-feeding mistfire.

The Arhat was being eroded away. If it lost its Stance, it’d be taken by the wind, and that would also be the end for it. Its splayed, glowing palm, spread to try and resist the Wind, froze solid, was blasted apart by wind, lightning, and thunder, and then its Golden Armor followed slowly, inexorably-

Master Fred came in over its backside, against the howling of the wind, and kindly lopped off its head to put an end to those shenanigans.

The combined power of the Boreal Wind and the windstorm instantly decided that it didn’t matter how fat the thing was. It went shooting up into the sky as if grabbed by a titan and hurled away. It was a thousand feet into the air and half a mile away before it exploded, and sparkling lights were igniting like self-refueling fireworks in all directions.

I immediately directed the Boreal Wind straight up, and the curtain of fury growing at such speed in the air suddenly became a skyscraper wall of it.

Master Fred set down next to me smoothly, a combination of Stormbound wind mastery and simply being that damn strong enabling them to defy the tornado-force winds. They still had the arhat’s head, disbelief and horror frozen in that eternal smile, in their hand.

“Dreadskull?” they asked conversationally, holding it up, while watching vivus begin to wrap through the air and around the tornado still rampaging everywhere about inside here.

They probably would have been mortified to learn that I could push that funnel around a bit, even if I couldn’t directly control it. Control Weather at 50+ has some perks.

Vast ribbons of vivus were streaming this way and that, wrapped by the perky lightshow of Arsehat’s demise, turning the air above us into a super-cooled vivic vortex. One stream touched the tornado, and in a matter of seconds the stream split dozens of times as it was torn apart into dozens of strings and sent shooting up and down the funnel-

FWOOP!

The world washed white, and got very, very bright.

I blinked once, and looked up with Master Fred at the bright shining sky above us, pure and blue, the Haze blasted back for leagues.

There was barely a breeze blowing, the supercooled air was gone, and there were little sparkles of dissolving Nirvanic energy in the air, giving everything a cheerful, happy spring day feel. The air felt fresh and quite invigorating.

Pretty much simultaneously, all the buildings that had been under the Dome, infused with Qi and Nirvanic energy, crumbled down to shards of rock and wood, barely raising clouds of dust as they did.

We ended up in the middle of a rather quickly leveled circle of white ground about a mile in radius, gleaming under the sun shining down. There was pretty much no sign of anything there except for the two of us and Sleipner, who trundled a slow circle around us to look at everything.

I raised a finger. “Yes,” I agreed, answering their question.

“Impressive,” Master Fred said in many-stereo. “Survivors are coming out of the buildings. Is there more work to do?”

The Land and the City were both giving me the equivalent of big stupid grins, which I was sure Master Fred could sense.

“No Qi centers within ninety miles,” I replied calmly, turning my attention to a minor matter. A rough plaza began to spread out from under my heels as the stone and rubble was grabbed and Shaped by me, and a building began to take form.

Warlock and Unicorn watched as walls, stairs, walls, columns, fountains, pools, and a nave began to draw themselves into existence upon the ground, with a simple pavilion roof for the building.

“A Shrine to Sylune and Aru,” Master Fred noted in approval, studying the intricate symbols and scrollwork on the cap. More magic fluttered in the air as I turned, and Eternal Lights gleamed above an amphitheater over there, which began to excavate and Shape itself into being.

“Illusions of my videos, for anyone who wants to sit there and listen to them,” I stated, stopping my Shaping. Yes, I had just done something that might take months by normal workers, especially at the QL I casually worked at, in mere minutes. “Okay, time to head back south, and take out Ceylon.”josei

It would be nice to stay here and help the people rebuild, but that’s all it would be... nice. There were still Buddhists to the north and east, and all of Ceylon had fallen to them... plus I still had to get back to Malaysia and the islands chains to the south!

Hooray for Teleport making backtracking much faster!

“They will not be in danger because of the Shroudzone,” Master Fred agreed, glancing north and west. “Any returning Buddhists would have to cross it to return, so they will be unlikely to do so.”

“Be back in one minute!” I told them. Master Fred nodded. They reached up, grabbed the dark horns coming off their brow, and snapped them off. Instantly the horns burned away to nothing, their wings following suit, and their hair rippled and flowed back to Amazon blonde, while I was gone on the wings of magic, back along my Lived-line, all the way around the world.

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One minute later I was back, but this time I had a dozen shrunken men and women with me, who immediately popped back to full size after they arrived.

Heavenbound, Aruans, Sylunar, and Amanans, to help with healing some of the locals and organizing them.

“We have this,” Starsister Yttri assured me, blinking in a little surprise at the tall blonde Amazon there, registering her garb, and doing a double-take when she realized it was Master Fred.

I turned to Master Fred. “Let’s clear a path along the coast, so there’s at least a partial overland route through it, even if it won’t be safe at night, then make the overland run to Ceylon.”

“Of course!” Their voice made all the new arrivals blink at Master Fred.

“I thought you might get some flying practice along the way, considering how fast you were moving,” I laughed at Fred, swinging up onto my seat on the patiently waiting Sleipner.

“I do not want to frighten the locals any more than you do,” they replied evenly, swinging on in front of me, ignoring the relief force’s gazes. Sleipner promptly pulled away, and began to pick up speed, using my Commune and the vestiges of a Citypact and Landpact to map a fast route out of here.

“That’s true.” Having a dark angel and a demoness flying away after snuffing out millions of Buddhists with an apocalyptic storm... which had suddenly blown apart and away like an impossible bad dream, would certainly rock them.

I’d bring over more Clergy of all the gods of Heaven when they got organized, and could even put up simple Shrines without taking too much time from them. Yes, they had to Consecrate the places, but I had no doubt they were going to find some fervent believers, who were now gazing at the sky in disbelief, certain they were on the site of a total miracle.

If you can’t do it with higher Valences, do it with lots of lesser ones.

Sleipner flowed along the edge of the Veil, and we were heading south. The Buddhists on Ceylon weren’t going to kill themselves, after all, and my Blessed had informed me that they held the nearest cities on the shore of the mainland, too, so we’d have to sweep that on the way.

It wasn’t a problem. That’s why I was here, after all.

The very happy Land showed us all, and we rolled away along the edge of the Veil, bathing in warm sunlight for a few miles, at least...

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Starsister Yttri did call me up to ask carefully about Master Fred and his situation. I explained that to rescue the planetar he had ended up using the Hungry Kiss Pact on several Ruedian Amazons, Hellbound Warlocks, and Hellpriests to get the strength to drag the altar out of a dead magic zone full of hellfire I couldn’t enter.

He was now giving the hellbound women a chance to redeem themselves, maybe, and since they were trying not to burn against his Hellpact, they didn’t want to feel him burning all the time in real life... and they really didn’t mind being an Amazon, oddly enough.

Amused enough at the implications, the matter was dropped as irrelevant, as he was still Heavenbound, which meant he hadn’t violated that Pact. Indeed, if he was trying to redeem them, it could easily be said that he was carrying it forward...

Regardless, our work wasn’t done, and it would only be getting deadlier from here on forth.

As far as most of the world was concerned, I was now the equivalent of a High Queen, and literally the highest-ranking Noble on the planet. The queen of England and the hierophant of every faith on the planet would defer to me, and I was for all practical purposes the Moon’s Chosen of Sylune, very aware of backchannel chatter that had basically elevated my status to sainthood with everything I was doing.

That would be fine, because my real power was basically going to be remaining static for most of a year now. I was going to be enhancing my Ki Reserves deeply, but the vast majority of my time was now going to be spent refining my Skills with Mastery Tiers.

I would be getting my Sagedom’s, finally, then filling out some Metas and other things. But the majority was still going to be spent on Skills... a lot of Skills.

Well, it wasn’t like a year was going to allow me to get done everything that needed to get done...