Chapter 13-357: A Legion at Work (1/2)

Legion slid smoothly through the gaping crack in the door, quite a bit bigger than the others, mostly because they were more annoyed after having to crash their way through a score of golems that Wrath couldn’t harm, immune to magic as they were.

The golems weren’t immune to Strength 68 and Might 75. Even they could hardly believe how strong they were together. It didn’t make them invincible, of course, but the cumulative effects, especially once the lilitu racial bonuses became the standard, were just unreal.

As an experiment, they’d tried to lift the door while it was down. It wasn’t that it was too heavy, but the screw-style counterweights had too much friction. Instead of lifting it, their hands had ploughed furrows into the stone, which couldn’t resist the upwards pressure.

Tossing around golems weighing a ton or more was easier than throwing hyn. They just didn’t weigh anything anymore.

Traveler had aptly called their status a ‘world of tissue paper’, and the simple fact she had a term for it said all sorts of things about the world her knowledge came from.

Legion considered the hovering spirits of what looked to be lizard folk of some kind, also Animated into scores of undead of various types there, all staring at her with eyes lit by necroic lights of one kind or another. It seemed to be below the threshold for a Shroudzone, or maybe there was something about this Pyramid that prevented such a thing from happening.

The undead charged Legion, and Legion just raised a Wall of Fire about themself to stop them.

The Purified Wall, doing 132 damage to the undead before any Kickers, basically blew through the whole assortment of undead and pounded them down into vivic dust instantly. When the undead halted prudently and didn’t race on into it, Legion simply formed a new Wall on top of the hapless things.

It took thirty seconds to clear the entire central chamber of the Well of everything, and they were in no danger the entire time.

They lifted a Mask-eyebrow at the nigh-identical layout, albeit right and left seemed to be reversed.

Once again, not wanting anything totally hostile to come out behind them, Legion moved to search the other rooms.

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They opened the door to the Summoning Chamber here, prepared to thoroughly wreck a very expensive Summoning Diagram, and paused.

The diagram was active, and trapping something, which came rapidly to its feet upon seeing them.

Multiple memory paths went searching for it, and found its identity readily enough. Demons didn’t have much problem identifying one another, especially the prominent ones.

Queen Rayetiz naturally knew what the hulking niorgriz was. It looked like some brutal combination between a black-bristled bear and a mandrill, with a second mouth in its hairy belly braced with snapping, scissoring pincers. Massive tusks crossed up and down from its muzzle... and it could unhinge its jaw far enough to use them, too.

And that wasn’t a tail behind it, but a third arm, even bigger and stronger than its two primary ones, bearing a hand with two opposed thumbs. Spinal spikes poking up sparkled with electricity. Despite its brutish and primal appearance, there was great cunning lurking in those eyes, for the niorgriz were greater demons, strong and ferocious, born hunters who built great and primitive kingdoms among the lesser demons in the jungles of Demonium.

That said, they weren’t normally something that mortals bothered with, unless they wanted to be eaten.

The niorgriz seemed to be rather startled to see them. It was about to say something when all the pricey Runes in the walls flashed red, and Legion looked back in time to see a Rune-festooned doorway sliding across the way out, leaving the secondary Binding on the room intact.

Unconcerned, they turned back, also just in time to see the blue-red flames on the Pentagram binding the niorgriz snuff out.

“Take one step out of that Pentagram and we will butcher you where you stand,” twenty-five voices said together.

The heavy paw about to surge forth faltered and wavered, and the great brute, towering twice as tall as they were, heaved backwards suddenly, feeling a broadcast threat and absolute sense of death looming over it. Ambition and desire didn’t go away, but the fear of instant death overrode them, and the demon brute checked itself from moving.

Totally intimidated, it watched the lilitu in front of it half-glide, half-stalk forwards, all terrifying grace and control... and it could feel every step she was setting down ringing through the floor like a greathammer striking an anvil, for all that she made no noise at all.

Astutely, the brute retreated as she advanced. A lilitu was already a higher-ranking demon then it was, incredibly fast and dangerous if it came to fighting, and very, very willing to do so.

It had never wanted to rape something so much, and the conflict between desire and lethal threat was making it shudder with self-restraint.

She paused at the edge of the Pentagram, her left hoof just touching it. Golden flames poured out from that lethal black hoof, totally out of place, and the aghast and shocked niogriz watched the power of Heaven fill the Pentagram back up with energy, and Bind it inside once again.

Instantly it felt some of the incredible desire it was feeling looking at her tamp down, and knew it had been subjected to an incredibly deadly enchantment effect. Its hairs all stood up as it realized how helpless it had been...