146 Confrontations And Executions (1/2)
”Just one more barrier.” The dwarf-looking entity muttered. He found himself standing in front of the last barrier between himself and his objective: the outside world. To others though, it would have been the first barrier standing between them and his artifacts.
The artifacts in question included but weren't limited to the objects he held in his hands. A towering shield in one, and a gigantic hammer in the other.
The barrier was a powerful construct that the universe itself put in place to protect him and to protect his divine armory. No mortal or extraplanar being could hope to penetrate it. In his eyes, it resembled a rainbow-hued whirlpool of the life-force that his living-self had once leaked into the multiverse during the catastrophe that ended the mythic age. It had been eons since he last stood here.
He closed his eyes, mostly to keep copper-colored tears from falling and staining his beard. He solemnly lifted his war hammer, using a single hand as if the massive object were a toy despite it being an object that stood taller than he did, and pointed it at the barrier. The ornate weapon was tethered to his soul and was the very first weapon he had ever forged.
The gigantic hammer began to radiate scarlet energy. It coalesced around the head of the hammer and wrapped the blunt head of the weapon in a delicate glow. As it did, he began to smile. He waited a few moments and allowed more and more of the strange, ghostly energy to wrap around his weapon. When it was ready he felt the hammer begin to hum. His lips turned upward in his own oddly mechanical imitation of a smile.
He lifted the hammer up high and then inhaled. Air surged into his lungs for the first time in centuries. The irony that he was ready and willing to sacrifice himself to keep his people alive and that that was what made him feel more alive now than he had in centuries was not lost on him. He then aimed his hammer so that he would be able to unleash its full weight maximally on the barrier while expending the minimum amount of energy needed to do so. When he was ready, he brought the hammer crashing down.
The hammer rocketed downwards, aimed squarely at the center of the rainbow-colored barrier. It crashed into, and then through the barrier with little resistance. The shell of the god's home had been built to withstand any invasion from the outside, not attempts to break it from within. The barrier fell apart, having successfully accomplished its mission of protecting Morehammer's vestige for as long as the echo felt like being protected. Now it was time for the entity to act.
The godly ghost, a divine echo of the past, had successfully shattered the barrier that kept intrudes from encroaching on his home and could now act freely for the first time since he was a living god. As the barrier fell apart, the god took his first steps into the outside world. He shivered as he felt the chilly, dusty air of the bowels of the palace one of his own children had once built.
Having experienced death himself, the godly echo knew that some things were worth dying for. He could imagine few things worth dying for that mattered more to him than the fates of the people he created and died trying to protect. As he considered the reality and heavy consequences he would have to face for doing what he was doing, his mind was already flooding with new information, as trillions of alerts flooded into his soul.
Reading through the alerts, it only took him a few moments to figure out where Puerto Rico was. And only a few more moments after that to divine the location of Oscuridad and its mine, through notifications related to the dwarves who lived in the settlement.
As soon as he figured it out, the deific apparition wasted no time and teleported himself there. He was ready to prevent his people from falling into darkness by any means necessary.
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If I didn't know better I would have believed that the two dwarves sitting with me were twins. They looked eerily alike, even to my eyes. That said, I did know better. Partially because I created one of them. And the one I created had a serene expression on her face.
Aoife's clone had a perfectly peaceful smile on her face. Aoife herself had a confused look on hers. I could tell that she was unsure of what was to come. I turned my attention to her.
”Ava has sought nothing less than your death for years. What she seeks now is something more. She seeks to kill and then control you. Through necromancy.” I told her, speaking truthfully of her sister's machinations. Aoife shivered as she began to finally understand the shape of her sister's sinister hatred.
”But... why? What did I do that was so vile to Ava that she now seeks to do something so.... atrocious to me?” Aoife asked, her voice revealing the depths of her sorrow and confusion. I considered what to say, but was beaten to the punch by the clone.
”Aoife, Ava believes you abandoned her. Her memory of the day you were captured differs from yours.” The clone revealed, now possessing the full story, at least as far as both dwarves remembered. I considered how to proceed from here, but almost immediately realized that there was no point in keeping the truth from Aoife.
I reached out and grabbed the dwarf's hand, and as she gasped in reflexive response to my actions I went ahead and transferred all of Ava's memories into her. Just like with her clone, her eyes immediately began to radiate silvery light and she froze up. This time I was faster with my infusion of holy-energy and began to pour the power into her brain immediately. That kept her from experiencing any pain, though she did tighten her grip on my hand in response to my actions.
I released my hand from her grip with a sudden and somewhat forceful yank. As I did so I turned to Aoife's clone. I was about to speak when my mini-map suddenly... changed. And then I received a notification through my domain-sense power, one pertaining to the death domain, that alarmed me and spurred me to action.
In an instant I teleported myself out of Aoife's home and into the tunnels where someone was enacting a hurricane of violence on my followers.
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The tunnel housing Ava and her allies and observers was a small place that was only barely able to accommodate the powerful and imposing looking undead warriors the necromancer commanded. Tragically, for them anyway, Morehammer's vestige was only the size of a short human. He wasn't uncomfortable in the strange dimensions of the place.
The deity had teleported himself to the entrance of the mine, incorrectly assuming that that would be where he could find Aoife. When he arrived at the mine he didn't find the dwarf, but he did find the scent of a dark-dwarf. Vestiges possessed senses only a tenth as powerful as gods, but his senses were sharp enough for him to be able to sniff out the precise location of Ava, one of the two foes he knew of by name.
He had entered the mine and wandered it, guided solely by his sense of smell. And it led him to the eerie tunnel where he found his foe. She along with a whole host of horrors stood, paralyzed by an illusion. And this brought an uneasy expression to the divine apparition's face.
”How... Strange.” The god muttered, speaking slowly and carefully as if to not alert his foes. When the creatures did not stir or react to his muttered words the god felt a bit better, but not much.
”What is going on?” He wondered, speaking aloud once more. This too didn't stir them from their strange, magical stupor. The god approached them, his eyes focused on the lone dwarf in the group.
Ava was a strange creature. She had dark, almost obsidian-like skin and was clothed in robes that managed the impressive feat of being darker than her flesh. There was an odd-looking blade in a sheath made of shadows attached to a belt at her waist. She had a relaxed expression on her face, but her actual eyes were swirling arrays of multicolored light, reflecting the strange illusion that trapped and paralyzed her.
The once-deity approached her and studied her. As he did so he began to frown. He was studying everything about her, not just her physical appearance, but her personality and her dreams. The child was disappointingly dark, and until this point, the entity had hoped to spare her life. That said, he now knew that doing so wasn't possible.
Without a shred of hesitation or mercy, Morehammer lifted his hammer and rose it to the point where the thing was even with Ava's face. He then moved it so that it was distant from her head. And in a third motion, he swung the weapon at a speed that exceeded the speed of sound and the weapon effortlessly smashed through Ava's head, killing her painlessly and also splattering her skull, flesh, and blood everywhere behind her.
What remained of her head, following her execution was splattered across the strange tunnel she was in and coated her companions with gore, skull-fragments, and brain-matter. The corpse was also thrown by the force of the blow, but even as the corpse was sent sailing away from the place it had once stood, Morehammer flew into motion. The once-deity didn't have the time to mourn the loss of a dwarf life, even though in time he didn't doubt that he would.
The godly apparition exploded into violence. He turned first on the undead ant-human hybrids and then focused on the extraplanar horde behind Ava. He threw himself at them and swung his hammer, seemingly with abandon. That said, he was actually quite careful and precisely aimed his hammer to kill each extraplanar entity in a single blow, crushing skulls and destroying spines with the ease of a practiced martial artist going through drills they could perform in their sleep.
His body in motion was a thing of beauty, even if it would have been impossible for a mortal to appreciate it. His armor caught what little light existed in the tunnel and even the abundant darkness quite artistically, and his movements were maximally efficient even as he performed acts of horrifying violence with an unsettling detachment towards what he was doing.
In his eyes what he was doing was a simple act of goodwill, one that shouldn't be fun in and of itself as that would be sadistic enjoyment of suffering and not a necessary purging of evil. Morehammer's mission was simple: put down the threat that was insidiously on the precipice of forever dividing the dwarven people. There was no enjoyment or amusement in his heart, only a dedication to his mission.
Althos noticed his presence at the same time as the strange entity was bringing his hammer down on the pain-knight who led the cult, and teleported into the tunnel just in time to see Morehammer finish off the head of the newest cult of Althonians. In all, perhaps half a second had passed since the dwarven-god had executed Ava.
Morehammer finished his whirlwind of violence by coming to a stop beside the defeated corpse of the pain-knight who worshiped Althos. He turned to face the youthful god, silently and covered in the blood of Althos' fallen servants. His armor, his face, and his hammer were covered in the slightly acidic blood of evil extraplanars.
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The tunnel I was in was illuminated by the little light that existed in the tunnel, and the light of the portal that led into and out of my tower. In an instant, I closed the portal that led to my home and studied the figure before me.
The figure did not appear on my mini-map or my not-so-mini-map. My senses hadn't detected him either, though now that he was in front of me I could perceive him. I quietly activated a familiar knowledge-domain ability and attempted to appraise him. Thankfully that managed to shed some light on who he was. And the truth was so much weirder than anything I could have imagined.
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[Name: Morehammer (Level 20 berserker, level 20 warrior, level 20 paladin)
Species: Vestige*
Alignment: Lawful Good
Personal Virtue: Diligence
Personal Vice: Pride