Chapter 18-478: The World-Ender (1/2)
I listened to the umpteenth report of undead troops hidden underwater in a bypassed lake, no doubt meant to ambush us from behind. Necrotech guns didn’t worry about jamming, since they didn’t really fire bullets, anyways.
The strategy backfired when the Deadzone moved too far, too fast, and the undead were forced out of hiding and compelled to follow after it, thereby exposing them to the patient squads nearby set up to mow them down. If they exited early, well, that just meant even more squads were close enough to do something.
No, we didn’t swim across the bloody waters under the Shroud. If it wasn’t under the Shroud, we simply stayed on Disks and someone flew or darted across the top, towing the rest. The mechanized artillery and cavalry lagged behind anyways, there to contribute firepower more than anything, and whole fleets of trucks were racing back and forth, lugging fuel and ammo for those fighting.
It was a lot of ammunition. The enemy was right in front of us, and we weren’t sitting around, after all.
I was in my downtime during the day, when matters were safest. Fifteen days in, and we were coming up on the edge of the original Shroud, meaning that we’d churned through the hundreds of millions of slain Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, and their once-buried dead, and were about to engage the Pentaran undead. I could see them in the distance, with their monstrous fliers, none of which dared to move out from under their Shroud lest the Sun get them.
There were reports from around the whole world that the Haze was getting thinner and thinner. There were no Shroudzones left anywhere save here, and that obviously meant something. All the native negative energy had been taken, converted by vivus, and eaten by the Land. Even sleeping, the world was fighting back against this smothering invasion.
Now this Shroud stood truly alone. No Shroudbound Undead, and Fiends didn’t count for keeping it here. As Soulborn, they’d just get sucked along with it to wherever it was withdrawn to.
Use it all, spend it all. It was all going boom anyways...
The ley lines trembled.
I was always subconsciously humming to the Sublime Chord. Perhaps someone else wouldn’t have noticed it, but my Meditation and Concentration were in the realm of Dat’s-Unbelievable-Wot, and I noticed the quaver as they shook instantly.
ALL of them shook. As if something had just started to pull on all of them at the same time.
-I AM OPENING THE SKY!- It wouldn’t have the power of a Ritual, but I didn’t care. It didn’t need to last that long or extend that far.
Silver Magic blew for the sky, bearing a Dispel Magic at way up the scale, blazing through the Haze’s resistance here, and the Control Weather followed right on its heels, shoving the weakening Haze out of the way.
The Shroud didn’t budge under its Greyfield, but I didn’t care about that. The view we were getting was enough.
The Shroudlord was filling the Pattern with power even under the Greyfield. Given it was powerful enough to attract Guiogg the Devouring Moon right through the Shroud, I wasn’t surprised in the least.
The night sky opened suddenly and violently, ripping open for ten miles around me, raging silver flames eating it back to the horizon. It would only last until the morning, but that was fine. It wasn’t the night sky I was looking at.
Even the undead turned their heads to look as the Haze opened up above me, and the edge of the slowly retreating clouds formed a black wall above them and us.
That churning wall of silver-chewing-at-ink didn’t block the image of the murderous moon hanging out there, twenty times the size of the other not-Luna moon that had been accompanying our world since whenever we got here in the distance.
It was black. It was veined with lines of burning yellow-green and diseased purple, forming a huge parody of an inhuman face radiating gluttony and endless hunger, all centered around a terrifying round maw glowing with a terrifying furnace light, as if it was going to inhale and devour everything before it.
Fear hammered down on everyone at the sight. Men clenched up, barely up to think, let alone act, at the horrible sight. An entire world was coming down on them!
-FINALLY GODDAMMIT.-
And just like that, the fear popped on the edge of a Silver Magic knife, burning away with the fear with something even more deadly.
Expectation. Lethal, waiting expectation.
-Briggs, sell it!-
-Fuck, yes,- he /muttered back, looking at that thing through my eyes, juxtaposing it to his position, his view playing over the distances and ground before him of old maps and new. -Coordinates being assigned! One! Two! Three!...-
Sama /broke in on the Overtell smoothly, -All forces forwards! Unload everything, spare nothing! Converge on the central push! Healers right on the edge of the Shroud! Give me a countdown!-
I calculated size, vector, speed, and flicked up a clock in the Overtell and the Heavens-Up Display.
Three hours.
-WORLDWIDE ALERT! SHROUD COLLAPSE WITHIN FOUR HOURS! FOLLOW THE SHROUDFALL PROTOCOLS!-