BECMI Chapter 295 – Everything to Ash
I had been planning this for over three years now. The fighting with Jotunbrul had never been decisive, because we didn’t want it to be decisive. If they bunched up, we inundated them with magic and killed bunches before running away, to repeat it again the next day. If they came after us one on one in wide groups, we killed them one on one, day by day, much to their disbelief and demoralizing annoyance.
They couldn’t match our mobility, Teleport and Dimension Door totally capable of pulling everyone out of danger in mere seconds, turning a charge at our lines into a charge at thin air. They could throw rocks a long distance, sure, but Protection from Normal Missiles could ward them off, and spells could out-range them.
They had size and strength and toughness, but that’s all they had. We weren’t playing to their strengths, we were playing to ours.
The Fane of Eternal Ash had been the final goal right from the get-go. It, and one of the neighboring mountains, had other names in our timeline, on the Other Shore.
Firemouth and Firejaws. They were the two volcanoes that formed the Arch of Fire, and were clearly wrought so by Gulguz. Doubtless he had used the Fane as the anchor of the effect in the future, even if the giants had been run off or killed by the Doom of Darkmoor or the vengeance of Darkmoor’s military or something similar. There were vague tales collected by my Sims that an army of giants had marched on Darkmoor, and might have been nuked out of existence. Nothing was written down, so it was hard to tell.
No nukes this time. Old school magic and steel, and relearning why skilled elves and wizards were feared across the centuries, combined with a lot of training, preparation, and the right spells.
We had farmed giants like a crop of Karma. We had cut them down in single combat, squads, even large companies. We hadn’t taken a fight onto the battlefield in mass combat, because we had no need to. If giants gathered tightly, they made targets for us. Individually, they were just challenges, challenges these Giant Slayers were more than happy to take.
Just the potential +5 to hit and damage from the Master of Favored Enemy: Giant was probably enough to really turn the tide on individual combats, but the Titan Slaying Feat did more to keep my people alive than they knew, and of course Dodge Missile made dealing with the thrown rocks a cinch.
I had spent thousands of Wishes upping the Stats of the Daisho teams and the other adventurers helping out with this effort. Almost all of them were Grandmasters in at least one weapon by now, with Named Weapons and magical Armor making them ever harder and harder to hit, while their Oathrings protected them in other ways. The loot and plunder and their own efforts had combined to fuel the creation of hundreds of magic items of all kinds, from the warlike to the whimsical, and they were truly adventurers of the highest caliber, fighting the last of an enemy worthy of all their attention.
Thus, the fire giants were not happy to see this company of under-sized mortals come marching down the causeway over their kilometer-wide lake of molten lava, ignoring the forge-worthy heat and the fumes of the caldera. Even the winds and heat shimmers did not deter what looked to be a field of pale blue flames Warding us from the lethal effects.
I was floating along in front, naturally completely unaffected as a Child of Fire. I could walk on the sun, a caldera was just a swimming pool to me.
They did try tossing some massive rocks at us, but strangely enough, the boulders taller than I was couldn’t seem to hit the massive fifty-yard-wide Causeway at all, the boulders splashing impotently into the lake of lava below the arched, elevated road of volcanic stone. The fact they were all pre-sighted and pinpointed and yet still missed wildly was naturally rather frustrating, and when the rains of boulders hurled by some mighty arms started tossing them, and still couldn’t hit us properly, well, gnashing them black teeth was all in vogue.
Fickle Winds was such an annoying spell, and basically invisible in the raging heat draft of the caldera.
They should have been happy. I could have let myself get hit by hundreds of the rocks, and sent them flying back twice as hard as they came at me at their tossers. It would have cost them some powerful siege engines and likely a lot of knocks to the skull.
We stopped about three hundred yards from the tower, far enough away that only the best of throwing arms could reach us with their head-sized stones, not that any could seem to find a target, calmly overshooting or spinning off-course before they ever reached us.
Three hundred pairs of mortal warriors waited behind me, a number considerably smaller than the surviving fire giants within the fortress of the Fane of Eternal Ash. The black magma of the Fane’s walls was carved with hundreds of scenes showing the domination of Surt and His victories over greater giants, dragons, magical beasts, and even agents and servants of the Immortals themselves, all falling to the great Club that had defined Him and His reign.
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What had finally cost Him that throne was not, however, displayed. I personally believed the Immortal Patrons of the greater giants had basically forced Gulguz out of His happy new mortal empire with threats of reducing it to storm-chewed ash while annihilating Him with their own Avatars. Thus, He had vanished into myth and legend, leaving only His Club behind… and daring thieves had made off with the Club, foiling Gulguz’s plans of keeping the giants united and forming a great empire in charge of the other races.
This was still His greatest temple, far grander and mightier than that which the Khirifi had worshiped Him at in Gulguz’s other guise.
So I drew up before those walls with everyone behind me, magical glows of their Gear obvious if you knew what to look for, yet restrained and controlled, which showed dangerous discipline of you were smart enough to realize that.
But Jotun society was based on Stature, which was showing off that which was obvious you had: height, strength, wealth, power, station. Being discreet was for the weak who didn’t want to draw attention, and would have their wealth taken from them by the strong.
Different races, different values.
“Are you going to send out your champions to challenge us, or do we simply come in and kill you?” I offered in Magevoice, which expediently cut right through the rumbling of the stone and nigh-tempest of heated air swirling violently up the caldera all around us in a rush of super-heated winds.
The scattered thrown rocks coming our way from the great forms standing atop the massive walls far away from us trailed off as they heard my voice. Yes, yes, great and powerful magic, it really was not. Just the Voice of the Mage Mastery, thrumming and carried on the Chords of magic, right to the ears of those I wanted to hear it… and I wanted everyone to hear it.
There was motion atop the gatehouse, and the Priest-King of Eternal Ash stepped forward, scowling hard at me.
He was nearly head and shoulders above most of his guards, his hair and long beard burning as brightly as the lava below, clearly a Lava Giant progenitor. He had on a spiked Crown of black iron simmering red with heat on his head. The black diamonds on the tips glittered with a fell and terrible red light of their own, proclaiming his noble and favored status with Surt, and woe to all who would oppose this divinely-appointed king!
At least he wasn’t another Avatar, but that just confirmed what I believed was going to take place here.
“PUNY ELVEN WITCH!” his Voice came roaring back at me, actually bending the winds and assaulting me with brimstone breath from three hundred paces. “DO YOU THINK YOU CAN BREACH THESE WALLS SO EASILY?” he sneered at me, and the watching giants hollered and taunted us, hefting rocks bigger than my head and weapons that weighed more than I did in challenge.
“I’ve breached five others and more that said the exact same thing, so, yes, I can,” I replied aloofly, coolly, my voice not loud, but cutting through all other noises with the eminence of magic.
He just sneered at me. “THIS IS THE HOLY GROUND OF SURT! YOU THINK TO TRESPASS UPON IT WITHOUT OFFERING UP YOUR PALTRY SOULS TO HIM?!” he bellowed at me, raising his gauntleted hand up in powerful gesture, as if straining at something.
I could see the magic at work, especially flaring on his Crown, which was definitely an Artifact of great power.
“Trespassed before, trespassing again. It seems to be a bad habit I’ve gotten into. I usually fix it by making the ground my own, and no longer holy to anything, or anyone,” I shot back coolly, and watched the faces of the Fire giants over there all grimace badly in reaction.
He was opening a Gate. I felt the surge and breach in the Veil as it opened, and a powerful force used the excuse to step on through, perfectly allowed to do so by the intervention of a mortal. He surged for the surface.
“YOU ARE NOTHING BUT AN OFFERING TO MIGHTY SURT! DIE NOW, AND FEED HIM YOUR SOULS!”
With a thunderous roar of rage and triumph, a titanic figure emerged from the causeway directly beneath the company of mortals, riding a massive plume of lava that tore right through the stones in an unstoppable fire fountain. The figure was at least sixty feet tall, the size of a Titan, looking like a club-armed fire giant with a beard blazing like the depths of Hell. The spiked tetsubo in His hand burned like the molten heart of a volcano as He struck out in a mighty sweep through the hapless mortals sent flying into the air by His emergence.
Yes, this time Gulguz had shown up directly, in front of His worshipers, so all might see and behold His magnificence and power. It was not being subtle or sly, it was not prevented by His fellow Immortals, it was not sneaky.
He was here, He was awesome, and He was going to show it to all His people as He personally crushed this bunch of impudent mortals who had slaughtered so many of His servants…
Impudent mortals who were flying away in all directions to a man, not falling helplessly into the eager lava, nor really burned by his explosive attack?
The causeway was falling down around the Avatar of Surt, cloven through by His emergence, its magicks disrupted, and totally unable to hold itself together. The little mortals, conversely, were all just flying up, up, and away, their cloaks like sails that had caught the torrential updraft of the caldera and were riding it upwards as if they were completely weightless, streaks of blue fire rising toward the mouth of the caldera far above and beyond Surt’s reach.
His bellow of anger at this extremely wise and pragmatic move was not enough to stop them. He waved that Club, and a sheet of fire raged upwards for everyone there, blocking the sight of all those below as it covered the entire sky in a raging wall of flame far, far more powerful than anything a mere mortal could generate.
When the flames faded from sight, not a single rising blue light was visible.
For some reason, that didn’t seem to reassure the brute at all that He’d managed to kill them.
“You should have waited until we were on the Fane,”I noted to Him, where I was still standing just above the causeway, whose stones had melted and fallen into the lava below, stopping just inches from my toes.