Chapter 9-264: Hell and Heaven (1/2)
I reached out and caressed the edge of that Ward. My lip curled at the sensation, and I’m sure my eyes were blazing.
Master Fred extended his hand out, passing it through the Ward.
Golden angelfire and black-red hellfire promptly erupted over his hand. He pulled it back, his face grim.
-They said they couldn’t get close enough to see what was going on?- he /asked calmly, letting the field ripple in the hostile colors over his hand.
“No.” I was looking at the interplay of magic harshly. “But the Heavenly power is not in resonance, although it is capable of working with anything, even hellfire. It is being forced into this configuration.”
He tilted his head back, looking up, forward and back. -What could generate this much Heavenly power?-
“There’s not a lot, but they found something... and they are using the power of Hell to control it.”
His knuckles cracked. -Multiple Hellbound, continually cycling over...- he /repeated what we’d been told. -There’s a Pact Grantor here.-
“Probably two.”
He considered that a moment. -The Amazons?- he /asked shortly.
“He specifically said whip-wielding Amazons. Those are only found among the Despotrix branches, and generally only the Amazons of Rue or Voyd would bother with it. As we’re dealing with Hellbound...”
-Rue.- The Queen of Pain was like all the bad parts of Eryl magnified, throwing in masochism and sadism to complete a very sinister picture. She couldn’t actually recruit Amazons, she had to tempt them from their former Patrons... but more than a few Eryllians were susceptible to that sort of thing, and Eryl actually didn’t mind all that much, as the Amazons of Rue had more of a hate relationship with the Good Amazon Patrons, and generally didn’t mind those of Eryl at all.
Evil Eryllian Amazons almost inevitably got fed up with the fact Eryl didn’t go all out in taking over the world from those dastardly men, and Fell to Voyd or Rue... or got bribed by Ruilvei, but that was less common.
-So, our mission is to find out the truth of this Ward, not to contest with the Cultivator factions in Guangzhou. -
“And I don’t expect to like what we’re going to find at all.” I pointed to the tallest peak of the islands Hong Kong’s Ward covered. “It’s projected up from there. Stealth mode all the way, I want to see what is making this thing.”
Sleipner huffed calmly, and began to roll forwards. As we were not Cultivators, and being Shroudborn and Hellbound, there was no reaction from the Ward as we passed through.
That was likely not a good sign, either...
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The false dawn was coming in, but the spotters were definitely going to have a problem seeing Sleipner with the illusion of the empty sea I was holding in place around us, given they probably had people who could see the invisible. Layer that with seaspray and morning fogs, and there was basically no chance they could see us.
There were alert people watching in multiple locations as we rolled up to a sheer cliff area and Sleipner calmly rode up sideways to the top of it. He didn’t stop there, continuing up the mountainside and staying off the roads and just above the trees, while I constantly adjusted the illusion about us to display trees or stone as needed.
He hove to behind an outcropping at the military post at the top of the mountain. There was a great black stonework Projector there, carved in the cruel Runework of the Infernal and gouting up an unending, burning display of hellish power in the thaumaspectrum.
There was also a full company of guards around the Projector, accentuated by a dozen Powered and Warlocks, and commanded by what looked to be two Amazons, having the requisite perfect figures, but rather too much spiked leather for any woman’s proper taste. The Wards here were multi-layered, and I assumed the firepower showing had enough ammunition even after all this time.
Master Fred looked back at me calmly.
“Take us down below their line of sight,” I said calmly. The side of the hill was plenty steep, and while it could be seen from below, that didn’t much matter with what I was going to do.
Communing with a local Nature Spirit was much easier than The Land itself, after all.
Duskstopped Shaping Stone at VII followed, and the rock of the mountainside flowed smoothly away from my touch. Sleipner rolled silently into the tunnel revealed in front of us, and it mostly sealed away behind us, a thin sheet that was enough to fool anyone looking, and which could, if necessary, simply be rammed right through by the motorcycle without any harm.
I had a very clear picture of the internal structure of the mountain, especially of the conduit from above and the room it led to. The actual entrance to the chamber was located on the far side of the mountain, and even more heavily defended than the top, naturally enough.
I was going to be unpleasantly surprised, or not surprised, depending on how you looked at it, but there wasn’t much I could do at this point. The people of Hong Kong had let Queen Rue, the Dark Knight Rath, and the Tyrant Huul into this place, and made of it their own grim little Hell on Earth. I hadn’t toured around to see the life of the civilians living here, but I assumed they were little more than slave labor and conscripts doing whatever these Hell-worshippers thought was necessary to hold off the Cultivators.
Stone peeled away from us smoothly. Not even seismic sensors could have felt us coming in, as there was no vibration or anything as we proceeded down and into the mountain at the speed of a human trotting.