Chapter 18-475: Lighting Things Up (1/2)
And thus a paradigm for collecting succubi from the drow was set up for my next stage. If we wanted to build an army, armies, that could do this job, then they were going to have to be exceptional armies, indeed, as this was going to take a very long time.
Even demons didn’t want to be slaved to the undead, perhaps particularly demons. If that required going against their nature for a time, then so be it.
I received twenty-five Truenames who were willing to fight, and incidentally didn’t want to be burned en vivus as the disposable assets they were. I certainly wasn’t going to keep them Bound for centuries while we all fought the Shroud, just so I could set some demons free at the end. No, no, best just to get rid of them and have them fuel some magic items or something as I did.
Fiendish Baneskulls were an option, too.
Cephalid Baneskulls were becoming popular for the Aberrant version of the things, almost like they were made for the job. Elite Cephalids were even self-Empowering.
Construct Baneskulls from the gearknights and coghounds in the Russian Shroud were also getting the business, and were spreading rapidly as the skulls were salvaged and hurriedly converted into something useful.
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The Blakhamars and the Irish had freed up Kiev, slaughtering all the corpsecrafted undead created by the Ancestor of the Tarantkov. It was a very annoying series of battles, with their elites having to keep the Ancestor and his most powerful servants busy without wasting the effort of killing them overmuch, since they’d just bodyhop to a new corpse as Dark Clergy. All the while, their kinsmen wiped out the baser undead who, although toughened up and stronger than any rote Walker, were in the end still zombies and skeletons of various types, and so were slaughtered with remarkable speed.
The Animated dead of the Tomb Clans were much tougher, of course, but they were put down with no less effort and focus... and the living Clanners were happy to do the job.
They’d already narrowed down the Elder’s spawn point after killing him once near the dawn, and were waiting patiently to track him when he respawned at his occupied corpse’s new ‘grave’, which didn’t have quite all the defenses of his own respawn point. Thus, when he ran and hid, they just camped the spawn point, and when dusk came, lo, the Ancestor was thrust forth from the ground, and his compatriots were all widely scattered, none of them close enough to souljump into.
He died in blood, vivus, and fire, as two crystal Blooded Swords named Smior and Piit cut him apart, and he found two living Blooded were more powerful than a long undead one.
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Minsk was the other major city at the western edge of the Shroudzone with its own Shroud. In the east, the major city was Novgorod.
The European forces ground down the one, using it as practice for the many smaller towns and cities they were likely to have to fight in on the way, and the Chinese teams reduced the other one.
Poltava, Dnipro, Donetsk, Luhansk... these more southern and smaller cities became practice grounds for the African and American forces coming up from below, fresh from closing down Gulagzones forever, and finally shutting down the Istanbul and Ankaran Shroudzones. The African and Middle Eastern forces had come up through Georgia and Armenia, clearing out Shroudzones in Grozny and Rostov, and then joined the efforts against the Russians carefully, actually paying some heed to the advisors there telling them how to fight.
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Down in the Felldeep, in the Strata and off the Hollow World, things and races went quiet in the darkness, without warning or pattern, dying as their locations were run down, and the most elite fighting teams came down to address them and wipe them from the Land.
Yuan-ti empires in sunken jungle caverns died in gunfire and hacking blades. Twice the descendants of Old Gods reared their reptilian heads, drawing Legion in to cover for them and Shvaughn to trample upon mutated blood descendants while their progenitor died.
The drow city of Ulgarazzar had a direct surface extension in the Hollow World, and ruled a proxy empire there that was the center of a sprawling trade in slaves and lives that fed a lot of nation-states in the Felldeep, and inspired slave raiders across the inner world in search of fresh sapient meat to send their way for endless gladiatorial games.
Professor Complearo and his people finished feeding the Headless Wraith King to the Land in but a month, and perhaps the whole savage world might have shuddered if they knew what was being planned when they paused for a week’s rest... and to Burn all the tomb gold from the Shroudlord’s hoard before setting on a new path.
The Mahar that dominated so many lands of the Hollow World were now going to find themselves hunted and their primitive empires in great danger as the Professor began to take his role of driving the worst of the evils from the lands and uplifting the natives into something better much more seriously.
Among other things, war upon the slave trade began with some fervor, and the disruption soon made its way to Ulgarazzar, actually spurring that empire of ape-men and savage brutes out to do more of the raiding themselves, under the leadership of the dark-skinned and becloaked Priests who led them.
In one explosive and brilliant night of magic that made the city as bright as day, all the natives of the city were slain, and only the slaves they’d taken survived to see the dawn.
As for the drow city in the depths nearby below, some slaves escaping from it said a goddess came down and took all the dark elves away, while slaughtering any who dared raise a hand against her. She brought ruin upon the edifices of stone and towers of the dark elves, even as released slaves fled with all the plundered wealth of centuries that they could make off with and bring back to the surface.
Just the libraries that Legion looted were going to keep some experts busy for a long time, although a lot of them had to be checked over for cognition traps, dementia prose, Curses, and other minor interesting items attached to them, as well as subject matter that could threaten the very soul.
Even after what the freed slaves ran off with, there were Tapestry loads of raw materials shuffled off for Burning... mostly donated to Professor Complearo’s growing bands of warriors as they went about their tasks of dismantling an old society and starting up a new one.
The drow vanished from the Felldeep. In the case of the cities that had collaborated with Aberrants, it was almost in silence... and definitely in vivic fire as they saw something their minds could not accept. They died to supernatural, impossible beauty made manifest, and then were burned en vivus.