Chapter 17-456: A New Day (1/2)
Shvaughn looked around as the Veil rippled, and a score of males in dark garb whose eyes had seen far too much of this shit seemed to rise out of shadows all around us.
Pawlie Blakhamar stepped forward, his Hammerpick Deep at the ready. “Lady Traveler, we’ll make sure nothing survives,” he said quietly, but the absolute steel of that promise was not to be questioned.
I gestured up a flight of Disks for them, the silver of the Force Magic fading to translucency and thus darkness. “A horrid thing for a horrid people, then. Together.” I held out Clavus, and the skull of an Old God gleamed readiness, swirling with the unwhite fire of vivus and the necroic black of banefire against the undead.
A tight Chatbox shimmered in Markspace as the Grim Fellowship was formed silently. Tactical displays and Maps fed into it instantly, and points of attack, jobs, teams, and defenses.
Idiot, Burn, and a score of Named Weapons, all burning white and black with mine, crossed over my Staff. Then the Brothers slid onto their Disks, and I popped my wings with Legion and Shvaughn. An illusion shimmered in front of us, displaying clear air where we would be flying, and all three of us, none of us looking like angels at all, swooped down to within ten feet of the surface and towards the dying city that was going to die today.
Above us, the sun broke, and any possible connection to the surface faded with the Curse of the Sun.
“Dreams of the wind at dawn, a new day has begun.
Light chases back the dark, and the future lays before us.
Will it be something bright and new?
Walk the road before you now, and leave the night behind,
Today is a new day, and the light comes to warm you all.
Let go the shadows, and behold the sun!
The Light has come, as ever it must.
Behold the new day!”
The Salute to Aru trailed off, words like light flaring and dying into this eternal twilight that had never seen the sun.
“An insult to the Land, where stones groan and moan, and doom falls,” whispered Pawlie into the quiet of our very rapid yet almost windless approach, as we diverted all the windburn around us.
“Their time long passed, death walking and talking, their death calls,” intoned the deep voice of an urukhar whose biceps probably outweighed me, as did his Axe.
“Feed on the living, spirits damned, the life and strife, judgement yearning,” a gloomy, skinny young man wielding a ghostly long naginata added quietly.
“Fires are coming to claim you, Feed now the Land, and set souls to burning,” finished the dark-haired man with the long sword trailing the multiple colors of a rainbow Helix.
“Tremble, oh, ohhhhh, oh, tremble, we are coming...” came the chorus of quiet voices from the rest of the Brothers, and as the words dropped into inaudibility, even the turgid waters below seemed to become more still.
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Once they’d been free-willed Deathborn; living, growing, and dying in their own dark ways, operating on a different paradigm than mortals of the world; close to undead, yet not.
Then the Shroud came down, and made them slaves and anchors to this world as the ghouls came from above, overwhelmed them with numbers and strength, and Doom claimed them with an eternity of slavery looming before them.
Perhaps it didn’t actually mean that much to them. Negative energy thrived on negative energies, so the anger, spite, despair, and dread brought on by their situation were just part and parcel of being who they were.
But a New Day was coming now, in a place that had never known the morning. And in this Light of Day, neither they nor the undead were welcome as the black and white fires came for them all.
I had Detect Evil up at VII, and could see them through ten feet of stone. The whole area was awash in Evil with the Shroud here, of course, but the Spell’s ability to enhance and filter improved with its Valence. I painted up targets for everyone and myself within range of the spell, not that my targets lasted long, and I had to keep moving.
Shards fell from the sky, went through open doors and windows, zipped along hallways, turned corners, went up and down stairs, and found their targets inside, exploding with an additional +4d6 of Kicker damage from my new Feat to bring them down. Survivors were marked and taken out by someone else... or a second Shard from the Fastcast follow-up.
I didn’t take out the larger crowds so much, because Legion just breathed on them, and 20d10+14d6 of dragonfire+Wrath basically toasted them all, so I didn’t have to worry about clusters of them. Watching that solid wall of light and fire coming out of their mouth like a plasma waterfall was pretty impressive...
No, I cleared out everyone with an accessway I could send Shards into, and Einz was reaching out, opening doors, lifting sewer covers, flipping windows open, and the like to give me that access. His Hexar, the hexagon-shaped adamantine hexagon Shields he could manipulate for offense, were spinning around deflecting the occasional arrow being sent my way, while his Telekinesis did its thing opening roads for me in every building.