Chapter 16-420: Throat and Den

The wind was bitingly cold, but none of us felt its force or its chill. Force Armor kept lower-level winds at bay, both Legion and Shvaughn had Storm Pacts, and we were all immune to cold.

“Hasn’t changed much,” Shvaughn said, looking out ahead of us, “except for the rot scampering around.”

There were things moving around down below, heading toward the walls of a fortified hilltop in the distance. We all knew that at the center of it was a long pit heading down into darkness.

Screaming magical fireballs were being launched by siege engines, swerving in mid-air to crash into tree-like, twisted things leaving trails of corruption behind as they moved behind the faster, mutated forms of Mazed werewolves, who despite their ferocious howls and demeanors, were letting the forms of the eel-headed scurves, corpulent forms of Enthemas, and other aspects of the Shattered take the brunt of the fighting ahead of them.

I Sent a cool Message out ahead to a certain puffed-up Borea, my eyes sliding over to the tendril-ridden forms of the prachas he was so puffed-up about having killed. It didn’t allow for a return Message, but I didn’t care about that.

Shvaughn flicked out her hand, and her Claymore Burn blossomed from flames into her hand. She used a MorphingMain-Gauche Weapon, Bound, in her other guises. Black angel’s wings and dark horns smoldered into existence, and her eyes went black and crimson. In contrast to that, icy winds began to swirl coldly about her, and a terrible fey beauty descended to accent unholy appeal and Amazon perfection.

“No fox stuff,” I said before either of them popped the tails and ears, and Shvaughn made a displeased face for a moment.

Legion’s draco-demon wings simply unfolded and expanded out of nowhere, their frill gained more color and grew larger as curling ram-like horns regained their proper place. Human eyes faded into the glowing paint of a Tatted Mask on an eyeless face, and human feet were replaced by hooves. The air about them grew heavy, as if straining to hold back some awesome power.

“We have this,” Legion stated, and the way the world reverberated confirmed it.

“Kiss-kiss!” I waved my hand as my Teleport took me off to the Den of Usarimak, and the wind filled in where I’d been.

“Shall we?” Shvaughn smiled, reaching out with one hand as Idiot’s holy fires lit up in contrast to the smoldering dark promise of Burn. Her voice promised a terrible ending for all concerned.

“We shall.” The two touched, different energies somehow mitigated and mixing through fey power and hellfire’s dancing doom. Wings beat, trailing fire that sent them into the air with far greater speed than any wingbeats possibly could.

-------

The Mazed were perfectly happy to let the corrupt minor Aspects of the Shattered take the brunt of the fighting ahead of them. I was perfectly happy to take them out first.

They didn’t seem to appreciate my generosity much, but hey, them’s the breaks.

Shards reached down and slaughtered the mutated Mazed werewolves, generating ki that I promptly blew on Call Lightning after Call Lightning. Rings of holy power rose from me and drove into the thickening Haze above us, currently replete with rumbling crimson hate lightning that was reacting to the corrupting power and the necrotic existences of the Aspects roving about below with flashes of yellow-green rotlight.

If the Shards were Chained out to harvest the weakest of the Aspects, it was just a bonus.

A blizzard of corrupt and twisted magical power rose to meet me in a myriad of forms and displays, ran into Spell Resistance at 49, and evaporated, while I dodged the stuff Spell Resistance couldn’t deal with.

The priggonus over there looked like a tree made out of meat and slime, a trail of steaming, fetid filth trailing behind it marking its path over the landscape.

It didn’t like it much when one of my Shards set the slimy trails all over the place on vivic fire, and unwhite flames dashed along them like trails of gunpowder. Soon scores of Aspects stupid enough to leave vivic fuel behind them and oozing on their skins were burning unwhite and screaming as they did so.

A couple flights of flame hit the main fighting at the entry to the Usarimak Den, and the dissolving corpses and acidic fumes there basically ignited into a nice whitestorm of vivus, eating into the Aspects wildly and devouring the fallen with massive speed. It raged into the tunnel, chasing after all the corrupting energy and dark powers, and the Aspects reeled back from the conflict, wailing and gnashing their mandibles as they burned.

Of course, they were running away backwards, right into me, and I wasn’t any more merciful. Aberrant Banefire worked on pretty much everything here, given the warped nature of the Shattered and its servants...

Rings of crackling holy elemental power flared around me repeatedly, and the crimson hate lightning hissing up there by default and the yellow-green responding to the corruption of the Shattered began to be replaced by silver-edged flashes that cut at the eyes of the things below that saw it.

They could feel power building up above, building, building... and they began to try to flee.

Whoops, failed that there morale check, they did...

The Mass Interdiction spread out over the entire battlefield didn’t help with matters. No phasing away along the Veil or simply quitting the mortal realm for these things. They were stuck until they got outside the sealed area... and on one side of the zone was the great fanged cave in the side of a mountain, and on the other side was me.

The Borea were pushing out of the cave now, maybe because of bloodthirsty savagery chasing after a routing foe, but more likely because I’d said I was coming in to pop the Seals, free the Bane, and then entirely blow the shit out of the place, and they didn’t want to be in there when I did that.

The Haze up above should have been getting lighter as all the corruption below was vivisized, but instead it was blacker and thicker than ever... except it was all edged in silver, and the thunder that was coming back down as silver threads crackled and arced within the clouds sounded like crystalline chimes and solemn church bells sounding to ward off Evil.

Raised the hackles of everything there, including the Borea werewolves.

The writhing mass of the guiding priggonus, which I made sure was the last to fall since it was forcing the lesser Aspect minions to stay close and protect it, came crashing down in unwhite flame with a casual side spell as I drifted forwards, making a proper purifying bonfire of itself and its slaves.

The Borea were all juiced up and slaughtering what remained happily... and they all got the fuck out of my way as I headed for the great cave that was the Usarimak Den. My eyes did not invite discussion, and I had specifically informed Elder Damarovitch that if any Borea got in my way, I’d treat them as Mazed and kill them on the spot.

He’d gotten the word out, and the crystalline, judgmental edge to the Haze above, along with the misting white fires spread across the hills and ground below, burned with the proof that they didn’t want to mess with me.

I passed inside without contest. The Heavens above drew breath as I did.

-------

The Den itself wasn’t very complex. The Borea had carved living and storage chambers out to the sides, but the place was the original home of Usarimak, and literally its lair.

One of the Great Packs that was actually good at Sealing, nobody remembered which one (and the Borea loudly proclaimed it was them), had trapped the lair and Sealed the Shattered Beast there. Ever since, it had been a place of power and violence, taken by the Borea at some point and protected by some of their greatest warriors, while the Mazed continued to attack it regularly.

They’d overrun the outer walls and defenses, tearing them down with the Shattered elemental beings they brought in, but there was no doing that to the Den itself, whose Wards weakened them and where the werewolves could use teamwork to kill them. Not even the priggonus’ writhing bulk had dared enter before those Wards went down.

I blew apart their anchor nodes in passing, and they collapsed. Outside, I’m pretty sure all the Borea spontaneously howled in anger and fear, especially when the first wave of corrupted influence surged forth and beat at their little howling minds.

Ignoring the side chambers, I proceeded directly to the lair room. I did, after all, have the memories of the lilithi that had been riding their dead Witch Queen to draw on, and so I knew this place quite well.

Dispelling each of the Seals promptly shattered them via the increasing pressure from below, and incidentally freed up the restrictions on the surrounding terrain. I slapped some Runes on the ceiling of the place as the thing below the ground woke up, probably a little bit shocked that its Binding had been broken so completely and abruptly, and despite itself needed a few moments to recover its power.

Then the ground broke open, stone shattering as an immense paw covered in spikes tore through it like paper, the air curdling around it. An immense, deep basso roar built up, shaking the ground like an earthquake, and the mountain outside rumbled and split in various places, starting several avalanches as Usarimak proclaimed to the world that it was free!

The Demon Bear and its endless appetite had been a great threat at one point, and I doubted its power had fallen, given the remnants of the altar that had been removed from the center of the lair and the lingering odor of innocent blood and damned souls in the air.

I simply waited near the top of the place, standing on the air, as the bulk of it tore free of its prison.

It was massive, at least two hundred tons, and when it stood up on its back legs, rose to sixty feet in the air. It had random spikes and tendrils, scales poking through the mange on its fur, mismatched horns, protruding tusks and fangs, and an absolutely incredible Aura of rot, corruption, and total hunger I had to Ward away or be physically overcome. Ugh!

Thunder resistance took care of its roaring, and it finally took notice of me standing there, all silver-on-jet patterned demon wings and horns, its primitive intellect juxtaposing a demonic appearance with the alien and hostile holy power it could feel on me with some confusion.

Before it could decide to eat me as a snack or ignore me as the instrument that had free it, I triggered the Runes, and brought the ceiling down on it.

Rock to Mud converts an absolutely massive area of stone to mud, times eight when Widened. Multiple ones layering up with Repeat Spell and Residual Metamagic cover even more.

Properly Shaped, they can do things like leave hollow spots in the middle of the effect, and drop a few thousand tons of stone on giant Shattered Aberrants of Hunger.

The giant Aberrant bear was slammed to the ground in a bit of surprise, clearly not expecting to be hit by something as simple as a lot of mass. At the same time, a deluge of thousands of cubic meters of mud poured down from above, instantly filling the chamber and starting to drain away through the lair’s entry... at least, until the first Dispel hit it and returned the bottom half of the flow to stone.

The flow from above continued to fall, building up higher, and basically ended right below my feet as I hugged the ceiling. I Dispelled that, too, and then flew on up the new hole there, which led right to the surface outside.

Below me, the rock began to groan, crack, and shift. I could feel a LOT of power being expended. This was different from being Sealed, which had forcibly driven it into the ground under magical weight, and so would almost drag it back up when the Seal was breached, not taking much power.

This was pure heavy Reality 101 on top of its head, and it had just blown through a huge chunk of Health Qi to prevent itself from being crushed flat. Now it had to break apart the stone and dig itself up to the surface of the rock, while overhead a massive vortex of inky darkness was rotating high in the Haze, and silver lightning was crackling around it in readiness, the constant flickers from the maelstrom in the sky illuminating the depths of the pit below like constant strobe lights.

Crash, crack, crunch, rumble, groan, thud thud thud. Stone protested, split, and Shattering power suffused the air, prompting me to wave my Rod Spike about and paint the air with vivus to eat away at it. I watched the stone below heaving, cracking, crumbling, and sections being thrown into the air and eroded from below.