Chapter 7-186: Doing a Bad Thing Very, Very Well (2/2)
A little distracted, he could only watch the vivic Darts plunge into his chest, find that nice reservoir of Qi inside him, and detonate to feed on it.
His appendages went in five directions as he blew apart, and then there were three.
The swordsman in red was the most decisive, immediately abandoning the fight and fleeing for the caldera, followed by the staff-user and the other swordsman in yellow. They wanted to leap into the air and fly away, and, well, Sleipner set foot on the lip, all the Disks were safe, and Briggs Put His Foot Down as he heaved Endure.
The yellow swordsman screamed as he leapt into the air, and an eyeblink later was starting to fall, out of control. Endure struck him right in midair while he couldn’t dodge, and drove him twenty yards through the air, slamming him into an outcropping there. Bones cracked like the shattering stone beneath him, and chunks of organs erupted out of his mouth as he stuck there for a moment, upside down, unable to act.
The lads were sharp. Three of them filled his chest with burning buckshot, and that ended him.
The Staff wielder managed to keep his feet as he hit the ground again, rolling and tumbling as whatever evasion technique he used tried to overcome the fact that he couldn’t fly, couldn’t warp momentum, and basically couldn’t do any better than Ki lightfoot could to move him around.
He also watched the arm holding his Staff go falling away, as Sama’s Sharding got him right as he hit the ground. He gasped and swore, turning and spinning away from the next cutting line of force, then a very bright shot with layers of multi-colored Wrath around it punched all the way through his chest and out the far side. The Cultivator got to feel the alien energies of Profound Powers that were opposed to all that his alien self was blow through and devour his body and inhuman spirit.
Which left the swordsman in red, who was screaming as he fell down the inner slope of the caldera, crashing into the jagged rocks, cursing, swearing, trying to get his feet and bounce and dash and get away-
He actually spun around and deflected two of the Shards, but I was using auto-targeting versions, which left him eleven more to deal with. He was a fire stylist, and the Penetrating Cold drove into him so hard chunks of his body were freezing solid as they hit him.
His defiant scream kind of ended as, unable to control himself, he hit the slopes again, and his legs and sword arm shattered off and fell away, parts of his torso ripped off, and then he smashed into the rocks hard. Bits and pieces of him flew in all directions.
There was a huge fireball from about a hundred yards over thataway, rising and boiling into the sky, getting everyone’s attention. Helix came flying up from under the edge of the outer rim, The Mick’s bat-swarm form swirling around him. Clearly, they had upset whatever surprise was over there, and given the blast had knocked out a section of the rim, whoever was over there was now quite dead.
The Mick swirled down out of the bats just outside the Stillflight zone. After trotting up with Helix, he remarked blandly as he dusted off his white suitcoat, “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”
Oh, right. I turned back to look at the Oriental building that had been built on a basalt island right smack dab in the middle of the burning lava at the heart of the caldera.
Arcane Sight parsed what was going on around it, as everyone studied it through the heat haze of the molten rock, taking in the curved walls, tiled roofs, and the pagoda tower at the center of it all, all looking so bizarrely out of place here, but clearly unaffected by the fury and heat of the volcano.
“The minarets and towers are the anchors for the Fire Qi Transformation Formation,” I informed everyone calmly. “It’s taking the pyric energy right out of the volcano and transforming it.”
Well, hey, it was perfectly visible to ME, at any rate...
There was a rumble, and then a roar as living fires suddenly belched up out of the lava. We all thought for a really bad moment that the thing was exploding on us while we were right here, a really nasty surprise, but then the swirling magma rose up in a Dome that swept over the walled pagoda, nearly covering it from sight.
Everybody untensed after a moment, gasping in relief as we watched that Dome of fire rise a couple thousand feet away from us.
“Huh,” said Sama, walking up with the Whip and head of the woman in one hand, her jewelry hanging from Sama’s hair, and the armored corpse and head of the man in her other hand, his Axe in her teeth. She spat the latter onto an empty Disk right there, dropped the heads and Whip and bangles after it, and proceeded to start taking the idiot’s corpse out of his picturesque costume Armor without looking at it. “That looks like it will be fun to get through.”
I just stared at it, examining the bindings of power about it. “It’s like a Wall of Force made out of flame, regenerating as long as it has the caldera to tap. Should stop dimensional magic, too, by the disruptions it is causing.”
“It’s a taunt.” Endure had literally walk-tumbled end over end on the ground to get back to Briggs’ hand, but come back it had. The shooters were already grabbing the remains of the other Cultivators and taking what was important. The Mick was quick to get some of their blood as the corpses were ransacked and then set alight. “Trav, what’s your read?” he asked.
“You and Sama could probably bash a path into it, but I’m not sure you’d want to. There’s a better way that is more to our liking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks like a way down, there and there, right?”
Eyes turned to a couple sections of the slope that were unnaturally smooth and without random obstructions, leading into dark tunnels no longer being filled with lava, although they obviously had been at one point, and there were at least two other streams of lava floating out of the bubbling fountain of molten rock, and fairly swiftly at that.
There was general consensus on that, and I smiled. “Gentlemen, Sir Pellier, I’m going to do a very bad thing, and I’m going to do it very, very well.”
Eyes lifted all around at my statement. He’d been singled out, so Sir Pellier asked for everyone, “What do you mean, Lady Traveler?”
“One of the reasons I don’t use my Druidic powers is because they come through exercising use of unclean magic,” I stated calmly. “However, that is exactly what is needed here. I am going to Blight that entire bloody area of the Dome, and drive the life of the Land out from it, Cursing it to heck and gone.”
They all looked at me, then at the Dome of fire. “They’re running that there pimple of fire on the power of the volcano,” The Mick remarked thoughtfully. “My, what might happen when there be no more fire t’ draw on?”
“It’s going to start sucking the Fire Qi out of the air to sustain itself, reversing everything it was previously doing,” Briggs stated in grim approval.
Master Fred gestured, letters flaming, IF WE ASSAIL IT, PARTICULARLY WITH VIVIC FIRE, IT WILL CONSUME THAT QI AT AN INCREDIBLE RATE.
“I was thinking a Wall of Icefire made Permanent all around it, and then just shooting it all we could possibly want to,” I offered.
“Me Ice Diamonds!” the Mick moaned piteously.
“Precisely the kind of shit we should be throwing money at to kill. I think this sot’s Armor pays for it.” Sama’s toe sent the now-naked and blood-drained burly axeman’s corpse through the air, landing it on top of the vivic-burning spear-user in purple. Well, it had been purple.
“A moment.” Father Bower frowned in thought. “It will start consuming the Fire Qi. What effect will that have on the surrounding area?”
I smiled widely. “The pressure of the world will drive the Qi back as it is consumed here. Spirit creatures loathe the presence of mana, and this is a heavy pyromantic zone. They’ll retreat with the Fire Qi.”
“Coming here!” Shooter Two exclaimed.
“Coming there and there,” Briggs corrected mildly, pointing at the two paths below...