Chapter 8-233: Come Unto Me! (1/2)

I could naturally completely fix the dome at any time, even if the Shroudlord’s bony arse started pounding through it. It needed to do 16 points of damage to exceed the stone’s hardness before it could start inflicting a single point of real damage, as it wasn’t using tools designed to chop stone, always a nice requirement when you are trying to Sunder something. Hardness is indeed a thing.

The Greysphere wouldn’t stop its supernatural connection to its horde as its leader, but it would totally suppress the active link once I Cast the Protection from Evil Area Effect around the dome. That meant its +10d6 negative energy damage boost from its status was not in effect. Oh, how terrible for it...

Telepathic connections had been instantly severed by the spell, as good as having a five-hundred-foot circle around it. It forced the undead to come to it!

To come to ME! Cue Extremely Effective Mass Dead March Slaughter Tactics 101...

Satisfied with that, I walked to the center of the chamber, and the gaping hundred-foot hole there, with a single walkway of stone and circle extended perilously out over a howling abyss.

The place was so cold and dry there was no moisture, no ice, and a hurricane of wind was coming down from above into this place. The pit was reaching up with soul-chilling cold to meet the wind, and thence was sent shooting in all directions out from the many passageways going in all directions.

Tainted. This was a Well of Frozen Souls, the primary Cold Node for a whole planet. I sniffed despite myself, and then I Blighted the whole Damned thing... using Heavenly Wrath to do so.

The whole Well ignited with a howl of protest as I wrenched the flow of Cold magic away and sucked it into myself and Master Fred.

My blood shimmered as Cold flowed through me with terrible serenity, met the Fire beating at my core, and mixed and merged as only two energies that were actually the same damn thing could do.

Master Fred’s share blew into his Heavenpact, accentuating the clear serenity of the High Heavens to its power, and bore down on his Hellpact. Even the Hellscars he tolerated so stoically dimmed before the incoming Elemental power bolstering the power of his Pacts. Perhaps the silver in his nonesuch eyes was more crystalline now?...

His skin didn’t turn blue, which was the normal result for someone going through this Ceremony. I was sure that the process was incredibly painful, which meant he just accepted it as one more short-term ache to work through, instead of a soul-chilling terror threatening to shatter his spirit to shards...

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The occasional undead was starting to stumble into the place, heading directly for the Rune-scrawled hemisphere being pounded on ineffectually by the lich within, now doubtless regretting not learning some martial techniques to increase its melee damage.

I pulled out two Staves I’d made from the femurs of undead Fire Jotuns, while Master Fred deposited a bunch of minor magical items left behind by the abrupt demise of a lot of Casting undead on the Disk floating next to me. Said Items became the sacrificial fuel for the Permanent Wall of Fire I Cast with all the Buffs up next, anchored to the black Jotun Bones.

I set the Firebones next to that walkway extending out over that pit, and the Wall of Fire extended all the way around the Pit, up and around that long walkway and the circle out there, and back to me.

It was Cast at Fifty, with all the +1’s I could toss on it, Consecrated to complete the Holy Metas, Snowcasting topped off with everything as Cold and Fire shared all the power this time, and I lit this damn place up like a sun.

A roaring pillar of super-heated vivus blew up to meet the incoming super-chilled air. The entire pit was basically blazing as the necroic energy from below ignited in the area affected by the Wall of Fire ringing the pit, and a massive 130ish-point holy flame rode that ignition into staying around and having a real effect on the world.

The subzero temperature of this place began to rise almost instantly as the compounding effect of two huge sources of Cold suddenly became a meeting of superhot and supercold, neutralizing one another before rolling and getting shoved out in all directions, just like normal King Thermodynamics instructed the world on proper behavior to do. A nigh-cyclonic whirlwind of temperature exchanges was rising above us in reaction to what was going on.

I had a distinct feeling that this world wasn’t going to be quite so cold in the future. Neutralizing the effect of the Node didn’t shut down the far vaster source of Elemental Air coming in far above, but the compounding effect was going to be gone; a negative was now a positive acting against the mammoth cooling effect of the eternally cold winds about this peak.

Once the vortex started up, the incoming undead didn’t really have a chance, as vivus-filled air currents were basically everywhere in the chamber, and incoming undead began to burn and disintegrate as they were helplessly compelled to head in this direction. Every path they took to get here was now going to be like walking into corrosive holy acid or something, so it was only about waiting the whole thing out.

The Extended Greysphere I’d Cast would last for thirteen hours, and I could re-Cast it to keep it going.

There was only to loot, monitor the situation, and wait for every damn undead thing under the Shroud to get pulled into this mountain, burn, and die.

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I Hallowed the cold manaflow to remove the Blight, which did not make whatever the source of Death mana was down there any happier.

This was still an Ice Node, and the flames I’d put up actually had no effect on that fact whatsoever. The fires were carried away by the winds, out into the world, not affecting the ley line below that I had now Consecrated to the Powers of Good, doubtless NOT what an Old God keyed to Death wanted to happen.

I was completely unsurprised when the first roars came in, sounding like hagclaws on Hardened slate screeching up from deep in the Pit of Frozen Souls. I turned to the Wall of Fire, burning as hot as any lavaflow ever, fueled by the very purity of the Cold mana here, golden glory spraying vivus into the winds at the heart of this world.