Chapter 19-479: The White Road is Built! (1/2)

It didn’t seem that fast, since the Stormbound were taking care of wind resistance, but we weren’t that high up, so the ground a hundred feet below began to start moving by very quickly. I started hearing murmurs as we passed a hundred mph, and didn’t slow down the acceleration at all.

We had over a hundred and twenty miles of ground to cover to get past the blast lane, currently full of superheated vivic dust and de facto not under the Shroud simply because of the amount of vivus there.

Then we were going to slam into the rest of his defenses, which the Shroudloud was no doubt urgently mobilizing to try and pour in front of us.

We were going to sell this, and sell it hard. The last desperate lunge to stop this world-ending event from happening, what was not to believe?

Four hundred mph, the overlapping Wardwalls all around holding back the screaming winds and superheated air that was soon boiling past us with streams of sparkling vivus falling hungrily to the ground. Legion just bulled through it all, and the Disk Train followed in a flying cone of superhuman warriors checking their ammunition, healing Potions, and other resources urgently, while those who needed to be healed were brought to full strength, courtesy of the many Heavenbound and Priests along.

Be there in under twenty minutes. The undead could do nothing to stop us, and then there’d be some fighting.

I watched the descent clock of Guiogg, and tried not to smile. Sell it, sell it! Smother it in the oncoming flood of Destiny spearheaded by Sources, focus on what we are doing, where we are, how hard we’ll be fighting!

“Heavy Magic Amulets out.”

Another selling point. Forty-five goldweight each, the Amulets were removed from their lead boxes, and clasped securely about the necks of those Casters who knew the Ghost-Eating Ki, which wasn’t everyone... but the rest were all blademages or bowmages who didn’t rely just on Casting for their power, and had definitely seen to their other skills.

For ten feet around the Amulets, the Greyfield was cancelled out. You could Cast there, your Buffs stayed active, and if you could Cast Heavy Magic, you could Cast out of the sphere.

Us bringing these out should sell the fact that we had been caught by surprise. After all, if we’d known we were on a tight clock, wouldn’t I have slapped one of these on long ago and pushed deep into the Shroudzone? Our ‘slow and steady push’ had been designed to minimize casualties, with occasional surges, so there’d been no need for these.

Now, they were advertising that we were too little, too late, but we were going to try. In particular, I was going to head straight for that Formation, and it was going to have to throw the book at me to stop me.

Legion and Shvaughn both had one, mostly so they could still fly in the Greyfield, as you couldn’t make Wrath Heavy... normally.

After all, I didn’t have much need for my Wrath. Letting Legion draw it off to wrap around their own was perfectly sensible.

Below us, a white road over a mile wide, formed of craters bleeding into one other and rained on by hot vivisized debris, rolled past as fast as a terrain-following aircraft, swirling the vivus in our wake.

There would be undead watching, and relaying what we were doing.

Sell it, baby.

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The dark end of the whiteness came up with rapid speed. Legion casually spread their wings while Disks tilted up, and we all decelerated at something like eight gravities, smashing us into the Disks we were riding for a few long seconds as we skidded to a gliding fall towards the line of undead waiting ahead of us.

-Scatter,- Briggs /ordered quietly, only grim determination in his voice. He had left most of the peripheral Warlording to those left behind, who had played the game of chasing the Compelled undead and killing them before, and so knew what to do. Even now the Shroud behind us was collapsing by like a foot a second as thousands of undead died relentlessly just as quickly.

I looked at the war Constructs gathered back there, several of them the size of titans, and the Zombie Colossus there, a hundred feet tall and made from the fused corpses of at least ten thousand corpses... and standing in its own Greyfield.

Like a fine sculpture unfolding, the Disks spread about, and their riders dropped away, falling to the ground in their teams and squads. Weapons flared to black and white life, and a bunch of other colors and energies, as vivic dust fell from the sky and sparked at the magic.

Some of us stayed up in the sky, magic gathering about us, but notably The Mick and Amaretta were down below, Blood Magic best delivered in person.

Endure began to beat. Tremble began to Sing as Sama moved up next to her man, and he bent over for a kiss from her on the cheek.

“The end of the world, say you?

The Reaper come to take His due?

The heroes’ hapless ride, once again too late?

Death whelms again to devour Fate?

I name you a fool who only knows naught

Of mortals who have ever striven and sought!

This is the path all legends have strode