Chapter 8-235: A Long Road Outta There

The next few days were very dry and boring in Reality, but as I had thoughtstreams that thought dry and boring were perfect states to be in, it wasn’t that bad, and Sleipner was always very comfortable to ride.

Also, when you have an Allegiance, and Blessings and Marks flying about, there are always people to talk to, advice to give, and things to do on the logistics end.

Quiet Wishes to make, too, but we don’t talk about those around an Efreet who would be horrified to learn I could do that. He came out once a day to grant Wishes on our behalf, looking around in great interest in discovering that we both were and were not on the same world under the Haze. I let him know we were in Hyperborea, and he got both excited and very nervous, probably for the same reasons, and headed back into his safe little Genie Prison.

I guess there were a lot more Old Gods running around here...

We went all the way overland to the shore, no flying, making a solid Lived-Line connection all the way to the sea. Some of the natives did see us in the distance, but we didn’t make any contact, and they could only turn us into wild tales to tell their friends and neighbors.

Once we hit the sea, it was a straight circumnavigation, thousands of miles of riding over the waters, staying within a mile of the shore to chart a pretty exact measurement of the area for a distance inland via Lesser Commune, with landfalls every hundred miles or so for Teleport drop-offs, if I was so inclined.

We did stop to do our Infusing for the day; spending goldweight and converting untrustworthy alien mana to something predictable and useful never ends.

The Allegiance was growing, not the least because the knowledge of Marks and Blessings was starting to spread. I was going to have literally thousands of them to give out when I got back to civilization, and Sama and Briggs were each spending two hours a day making Marks, focusing on non-Powered who wanted to join the fight, become Forsaken, and take the fight to our enemies.

Oh, and to prep for whatever came after the Shroud went down. Everybody was going after Levels!

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The New York March was being eroded slowly and thoroughly. The overeager got isolated, swarmed, and had to be put to vivus. The patient and the careful picked off their targets, pushing the undead back and back and back, the numbers of basic undead falling as precipitously as the incorporeals had.

There was no mass undead marching out to the Walls anymore. Instead, the undead waited for the hunters to come for them!

Spellcasters who could track and sense the presence of undead were nigh-on priceless, and Sir Pellier was spreading the Eyes of Heaven Disciplines as fast as he could, extending the Range of Detect Evil among his fellow Paladins, Inquisitors, and Heavenbound so they could hunt all the more effectively.

Very careful attention was paid to the Shroudlord and any powerful Bishops under it. If they moved, forces were warned urgently to fall back. If the living didn’t, they never got the chance to, as a Swarm of Buffed incorporeals swept over them, and their souls joined the Shroud.

Such fools naturally then informed the Shroudlord of exactly what was going on if they couldn’t be promptly killed, and just made the situation harder for everyone else, which really pissed everyone else off.

The Horde of the Hall, equipped with Death Ward Amulets, and/or Dawnstopped Death Ward spells if they had reached Seven, were naturally the safest people to be around. They didn’t have to fear the life-draining of incorporeals, and they were specifically equipped to slaughter undead. They got their kills first, then watched over the other teams and squads as they cleared more area, ordering them back into reserve positions as the number of daily kills needed to Level and Invest Names was reached, pulling everyone back in good order.

Given the way the undead were rapidly getting organized more intelligently, soon enough none of the Hunter teams wanted to strike out alone. The Eastern and Western teams slowly cleared ground and advanced on the Bronx and Hart island, wiping clean the undead mile by mile as they did so. Advance teams would actually get themselves set up in the zones where the undead emerged after dusk, just so they could be certain of getting kills and clearing specific terrain before the undead could flee, hide, or be marched elsewhere, helping disrupt the undead lines of command and closing the noose.

Naturally enough, the Shroudzone was contracting as tens of thousands of undead were cleared away every night, and the Shroudlord streaming out every night with his cohort of restless spirits couldn’t stop it. With any amount of decent warning, Mass Disks and a flying Caster could evacuate a whole crew quickly, and if the undead followed, they’d just get picked off by vivic Weapons or spells kiting them to clean them away.

All efforts were always made to kill any incorporeals seen. It was far too dangerous to have them running around. Thankfully, being bound to their places of death made it considerably easier to hunt them, and whole districts were being staked out to clear them of undead soon enough.

The first couple days of pushes had gone well, driving the undead presence back, and had set up a nice buffer zone. The stupid died, made the situation worse for everyone, and professionalism took back over from over-enthusiasm. It was a marathon, not a sprint, and every spot of whiteness on the ground, driving back the Shroud, was a tombstone for a dead person finally laid to rest.

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Sir Pellier had firmly moved into position as the organizing voice of the entire campaign, both the military and the Hall’s forces listening to his dry advice and stern commands. Nobody was dumb enough to think a Paladin was a gloryhound, nor that he didn’t want to get rid of the undead faster.

The living are more important than killing the dead fast, he repeated to them over and over. They would kill them all, there was no need to rush. Speed would increase with Levels and Named Weapons coming online, getting stronger and putting the undead down forever.

They watched that happening as Weapons did indeed progress, day by painful day. Ghost Touch, Undead Bane, and Vivic, the trifecta called True Death to the undead, and it only got better from there. Even one Level in Monk was enough ki to get Ki-Bound empowered, and start a Profound Weapon, too.

All little things, all stacking, improving. Tokens, Baneskulls, Favored Enemy bonuses, Necropotence... it all began to add up.

Those who could one-hit an undead with black flames on it were gravely respected if they could do it repeatedly. Helix, especially after stopping at Detroit and getting a Stormbound Pact (a very rare Powered to do so) was popping out 14d6 single shots repeatedly and quickly, crackling blasts of lightning-shrouded arrows that the undead were anything but happy to see. His style of flit-move-flit-move had made him a lot of fans, and with the whole Leveling paradigm named after him, everyone sort of expected him to be an expert in the advance schema... which he just laughed off and asked them if they wanted to trust the advice of someone who had to get wraith-Drained about how to Level properly.

They went and asked other people, leaving him to satisfy his daily Karma before acting as oversight for the teams of people below him.

Two hours of combat, pull out, no exceptions, and retreating instantly if an incorporeal Swarm was seen coming their way. His ability to spot such things, snipe them, and evacuate everyone soon became very well-known, indeed.

He had basically become the most well-known and dangerous undead-killer of the effort. People often wondered why he wasn’t more arrogant and confident about his killing ability.

He would just lift his blue-and-white bowler slightly, get a far-away look in his eyes, and say, “I don’t know the first thing about how to really kill undead,” and walk away.

Maybe someone would remind the person he was friends with Traveler, maybe not. Helix never took it to heart.

He had a build to follow, and he was going to take it to the end.

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Completing the circumnavigation took a day, which meant a night, and a Renewal, before I Waterjumped us all the way back to the island where we’d entered, and we took off on another circumnavigation of the ocean, this one a long circle that soon proved to be following the radius of a roughly 1500-klik circle.

Every thirty degrees another one of those tribute islands popped up. Some were done in inhuman architecture, worn by the tides of time... but they were all definitely different than any of the others. Some were just crumbled and worn away, whether by violent action or just the force of time, it was hard to say.

At the very least, they all still jutted above the waves, and looked like they had once held gateways to somewhere else at their outer edges.

Only two others islands were inhabited, and not by social parties. One looked like some sort of magical society or school, and the other was manned by a tribe of neo-humans with Deep Ones bloodlines... in other words, young Deep Ones, ‘Innsmouth people’, raised here and eventually joining their kin in the depths of the sea.

That one I sighed at, and we pulled over off the sea. I scanned the whole island for any pure-blooded humans, and found none at all.

When we left an hour later, there weren’t any Innsmouth hybrids left, either, and the temple to Father Dagon and Mother Hydra was a burning pit of molten stone.

Let the Deep Ones wonder who did this, as we had come invisibly and left the same way, leaving all the dead once doomed to become soulless Deep Ones burning away in vivus behind us.

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After the Archmage/1 Level, the coming of Hierophant/1 wasn’t that much of a surprise.

Unlike Archmage, it didn’t grant a Theurgic Level. Perhaps because of that, the Gift of Faith it gave didn’t require Spell Slots to pay off.

The first Gift was Divine Power: +2 Spell Power, of course.

The Purchased Feat was Domain Theurgy (Silver Magic): add Cleric Level to Caster Level when spells of the Domain are on a second Class’s List... which much of Silver Magic was, particularly my Shards, and Dispel Magic once again.

I guess it wanted me able to take down hostile magic.

The Purchased Mastery was Holy Scourge/5, finishing out that Mastery: +2 damage per Spell Level of all Battle Magic/Evocation spells. It was a Boost, not a Kicker, but it was damage on the stack, especially with the double Raise on all spells automatic now...

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The next day, as we were finishing up the long circuit of the ocean after a pause on one of the islands at the twelve points that had been abandoned to Infuse for the day, Archmage/2 came up again, and indeed it presented me with the option to take Mastery of Counterspelling: Successfully Counter a spell, send it back at the Caster.

It was a useful High Arcana, costing another set of VII from my Pool, but it couldn’t force it on me, as I had to approve the Pool cost... which I did.

It would be a useful surprise in dueling situations.

Setting it up was Improved Counterspell: Counterspell as a reaction, giving up your next standard action, i.e., you didn’t need to prepare an action to counterspell, it just used your next Cast spell ahead of time, making Counterspelling actually useful.

The Mastery was Water Metas/1, Aqueous Spell, a +1 Meta that allowed all spells to be Cast easily in or into water, able to cross water’s threshold and strike things below or above without a problem. It was something I should have had some time ago, but I hadn’t gone down the Acid tree of Metas at all...

Of course, it didn’t solve the problem of those spells that were neutralized by Water intrinsically, i.e., casting Fireballs underwater required another Feat...

With the circle completed, we arrived back at the rim island with the Road leading back to Earth.