BECMI Chapter 280 – Such Beautiful Music
Immortal Power was yanked out of the Door blocking our way to Pearl’s lair at great speed. Clearly, despite its size, it was not a powerful Artifact, more endowed with a temporary reservoir to enable it to strike with power exceeding mortal limitations, much as I could do with Dread. It certainly didn’t have the sapience or power to contend with Dread’s appetite for IP.
With the Immortal Power drained, I directed Briggs to hack there, there, and there on those glowing Runes, which were helpful in instructing me as to right where to hit.
When he was done, I swatted Bjorn Skiffnerson as everyone stepped back.
With a swirl of magic, the Northman grew thirty-six feet, towering over forty feet high and capable of looking down upon a storm giant. He bellowed and flexed cheerfully for effect, earning some whoops and cheers from those watching, then set his hands against the rolling doorway and pushed.
A titan we needed, a titan we got.
A thousand tons of stone moved aside in some protest, magic flaring, sparking, and shorting out as it did so, and the way before us was clear.
Everyone drifted up to look at the legendary hoard of the Ruling Dragon of the Chaotic Dragons.
“That is a LOT of gold,” Sir Horn gulped, still splattered with the smoking blood from hacking through the neck of the second Amber great wyrm of Pearl’s entourage, staring at hills and mounds of gold stacked and swept up higher than he was.
“There’s no copper in that. The largest volume is silver under there,” I reported. There were flashes as several of those present snapped illusion pics of it. “And there’s an Artifact in there of some kind, and certainly more traps about it.”
Oddly enough, nobody was volunteering to go in first. Even the massively-sized Bjorn had not the slightest urge to step in and tempt fate here.
I waved him back down to normal size, letting the spell expire. He actually looked relieved as he shrank back down to normal dimensions, as if I was going to tell him to go in there and start scooping out the gold sprawled over the wall-less lair, the borders of it looking over some cosmic chasm and endless, seething energies writhing below a sea of moving nebulae.
Naturally her body had led us here, a place that no normal scrying magicks could ever locate, nor open the way for.
Not so hard with the head of the Moon Dragon doing the job for us… and nearly two-score of the strongest men and women of the Northern Alliance, including King Antius and his friends, King Brucall, a score of Briggs’ and Sama’s students, and the best of my own Free Company.
Behind us were scattered the bodies of her entourage, taken apart by one team each as they appeared, ruthlessly hammered down and erased from the world, no need to avenge their fallen Ruler.
“How many spells to get rid of?” Sama asked for everyone, staring at the display of wealth from across the world, tribute from multiple Dragon Kingdoms, hoards claimed from great wyrms come to challenge her, and the like.
“At least three hundred, but they are in layers. It could be as many as five hundred, and there are a lot of Curses.”
The faces of everyone behind me grimaced. They all looked at one another, and then in unspoken unison, every single one of them took a step back.
“Best be getting started on that Blue’s hoard, methinks!” Briggs’ dwarven follower Grimbol said cheerfully, swatting the ogre Groundpound and trotting away, the massive brute hurrying quickly to catch up to the dwarf.
There were quick and assorted urgent calls that they all needed to be hurrying back to work on the other great wyrm carcasses, eventually leaving Briggs, Sama, Duum, and I alone there.
“This is going to take a while, isn’t it?” Briggs asked rhetorically.
“I think you should be happy Permanence is a VIII and not a VI here, or this would be even more of a headache,” I agreed evenly. “But you don’t get to go anywhere. My most useful spell here is going to be ‘Briggs Smash’.”
He could not help smiling as he shouldered Endure, which beat a solemn acknowledgment of its importance here. “She anchored them to things, and so we can just pop those things,” he reasoned.
“The ones that aren’t attached to things that are too valuable,” Sama cut in with a smile. “I assume there’s ones I can Null Strike through?”
“That’s going to be my second most-used spell. It’s still going to be a LOT of Dispels.”
I looked at her, and she just shrugged, Tremble tapping the three black diamonds on the Bracer on her right arm, matching the three black diamonds on the Bracer on my left. “You never draw on me if you can help it, so I don’t have to go crazy weak rebuilding my Matrix. You draw what you need, and make sure it all sticks.”
This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The two of them towered over me as I interwove my fingers, and to their great amusement, flexed my fingers, popped my knuckles, and rotated my neck for a few more pops. “Let’s tear us down a bitch of a Ruler’s thousand years of traps and Curses, shall we?” I proposed calmly.
Boulders shattered and rocks split as the two of them replicated everything I’d just done much more loudly, and in unison! “Let’s!” Sama grinned widely.
---------
“Suurivayina’s Nightingale,” I identified it, studying the artificial Bird, a foot tall with a tail twice that in length, wrought of flowcrystal gemstones that glittered like a moving fortune of unparalleled complexity and beauty. “It is believed to be gifted to one of the Avatars of Liisana, stolen by a jealous rival, and entered the world as the result of some epic theft by an Immortal Aspirant. It hasn’t been seen for nearly a thousand years, but there’s little mistaking it.”
It also had a Sound Bubble up around it, because the beauty of its song was unnatural, powerful, and very distracting. The four Curses on its cage were no small things, either.
Briggs was bent over to look at the thing, scrunching up his nose. “Damn, that is some impressive gearwork on that. I’d love to see the specs on it.”
“It’s fully sapient and probably wants out of here. It’s going to be real trouble unless we can take control of it, and the havoc it can cause is no joke,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, this isn’t a thing made for mortals to have,” Briggs agreed with me. “How do we subdue it?”
I made a show of looking around thoughtfully. “Sama, I think it’s time you and I went and took a break, inspected the others, helped move some stuff away. We could come back at this time tomorrow.”
Sama and Briggs both looked at me, with Sama then looking slyly at Briggs.
“I’m going to put a stone wall across the lair entry. I will knock before we return.” Briggs blinked, although he wasn’t afraid of being locked in or abandoned. Endure could easily get him out of even an extraplanar lair… especially after a Soul Crystal core filled with 40 IP now occupied part of the Wand Chamber in Endure’s long haft.
It didn’t recharge freely, but Dread could take care of that slowly and steadily, and charging up such devices was his biggest ‘downtime’ duty, which he did faithfully all the damn time, moving full Soul Crystals into and out of my Portable Hole with Prestidigitation.
I had to put all that scavenged soul crystal to some use, right?
“Briggs, I Cast Serenade the Nightingale.”
He looked at me, and then the biggest grin I had ever seen on his face spread across it.
Sama, in contrast, wisely looked nervous suddenly. “Going!” she exclaimed, and like a weightless gazelle, was suddenly sprinting across the hoard, not disturbing a silver, and out the door and of sight.
“I’m going to Sound Bubble all of this, but you might want a long-term Silence on that door. Just have Sama knock when it’s time, I’ll feel it,” Briggs instructed me confidently.
His grin didn’t fade as he turned on the Nightingale that was singing constantly, battering at the Sound Bubble enclosing it.
It might have been a Construct, but even it knew it should shut up when Briggs slowly turned to stare at it.
I decided to execute the better part of valor, and get discreet.
Rather than put a wall up across the Door, I directly took control of the Runes on the door now that we’d broken it, and hauled it back across the entryway. Then I wove up a Silence Rune on it, and a Sound Bubble to complement that.
Duum was waiting outside resting. I took one look at his long hairy ears and shuddered slightly. “You need to leave, right now. Portal for one!” I called out, and a moment later the small Mirror Portal opened. Duum took another look at me, I pointed, and he shrank down to the size of a small bat and zipped out through the Portal hastily.
He did not want to hear what was about to happen.
------
Two hours later, the lair of Pearl was empty, except for me and Sama. The corpses were gone, all but Pearl’s hoard was gone, and we were very much alone.
The crystals and veins of metal in the walls seemed somehow moody and agitated, depressed and sullen and completely out of sorts somehow. Instead of dancing with chaotic energies and profound emotional resonances that brought to mind the magnificence of dragons and transience of existence, they somehow felt and looked… jarred. Jarring? Uncomfortable?
Nauseated?
“I have to admit, the effect he’s having is bloody impressive.”
“He’d ruin so many songs forever if I had to listen to that,” Sama agreed with me, sitting on a Disk with me at the very far end of the lair, and making extreme efforts not to touch the walls or floor.
Kind of like me.
“He is singing his bloody heart out. I’ve never heard him truly let loose, but he’s so caught up in whatever he’s singing right now, you’d swear the Heavens were coming down to hear him.” Indeed, the emotions coming off his Markdoor were strong, brimming with vitality, even a touch to it giving that feeling of Thunder in the soul, celebration of life and joy and love and all the glory of being, finally given voice by a master who appreciated all of the arts for what they were, and life for what it could be.
The way that even this far from the music the whole cavern was shuddering at some level was a pretty good clue that was not what was actually happening.
“You never brought it up, but I did notice he never participated in any singing, nor did anyone expect him to.” I pointedly turned my back on the great entry to the cavern in this demiplane, the slabs and arrays of crystals around it starting to shift colors in a disturbing way.
Sama eyed them, glanced at me, and turned around as well. “You’re right, the crystals are responding to the ambient sound, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.” She reached into her vest, and brought out a couple decks of cards, earning a raised eyebrow. “Spite and Malice?” she asked with a smile.
A Hexar Shield zipped out of my sleeve, grew in size, and turned over its gnurled face to present the flat backing. A bottle of wine, two glasses, a plate of crackers and another of cheeses quickly joined it as I scooted up. “I shall crush you with scorn and elegance, and you will enjoy it!” I stated calmly.
“Good luck with that,” she grinned back, taking the cards out of their packs with one hand each and shuffling them with enough dexterity to make an experienced cardsharp cry.
I poured the wine, and we tucked into playing cards.
Nobody disturbed us, and nobody disturbed Commander Briggs.