BECMI Chapter 296 – Names are Important
The towering Avatar of Surt spun around far more quickly than would be expected of something so massive, burning eyes actually flaming in His head as He stared at me in shock and fury. He looked like a furnace was spilling off of His beard as He slowly stepped towards me, supported by the boiling lava rising up beneath Him, and He bent down towards me, totally confident of His power and awesomeness, since He was radiating it to beat the band.
The Fire giants over there? They were all on their knees, even as they cheered and prayed in equal measure that His burning eye not fall on them and find them wanting for all their failures.
“It was unwise of you to remain behind,” His voice rumbled from not fifteen feet away, His head taller than I was, straight out of Hell’s furnaces and loving it, playing to His crowd. “Do you think you can challenge me, little thing that cannot even commit to the fire?” He sneered at me.
Oh, what a hypocritical shit. I knew perfectly well Gulguz liked to present Himself as a master of fire and cold, and Thyr was one of His other guises!
“Well, you’re pretty easy to fool, half your brain playing at being Surt, and the other at being Thyr.” He blinked at me, and the fact that I’d just informed all of His startled worshipers of the fact. “You spent a grand display of strength and power slaughtering a bunch of illusions, and now you’re talking to me instead of actually doing anything constructive.” I just crossed my eyes beneath His immortal gaze, completely ignoring the spiritual pressure He was attempting to ladle upon me.
“Also, you’re in just the right place to appreciate this,” I added as an afterthought, even as His hands landed to either side of me, the black stones melting instantly at His touch. I didn’t look at them. “Feel that, Gulguz?” I asked Him.
He blinked at me again, and then it hit Him from below.
Hard. This time, I did bounce back and away, as something even bigger than Him came rising up out of the caldera in a massive rush.
It was huge, four sides sharp as knives plowing up through the molten stone of the lava lake, directly underneath this monstrous bastard, and Gulguz screamed.
That tends to happen when a monstrous spire-spear comes right up your Titanic arse and into your insides, driven by literally the weight of a rising mountain.
I totally did not look over to savor the sight of His worshipers gaping at the sight of their god impaled on a stick up His arse.
He wasn’t small, and He wasn’t weak, but a three-hundred foot Pyramid assembled and finished over a year ago, waiting for this exact moment to do the one thing it was designed to do, was completely beyond His ability to resist. The monstrous diamond-hard spike went up His Immortal rectum from below, impaling Him and lifting Him off His feet as He scrabbled helplessly, the spiral blades gutting Him from within… and the Interdiction and Stillflight going off making sure He couldn’t use other methods to get free of His fate.
Red-hot sheets of thick molten stone flowed down the sides of the Pyramid as freely as water, revealing the many stones and tiers of the Pyramid… and the skulls carved upon each and everyone one.
Giant skulls.
Giant skulls that opened their mouths, screaming. Tongues of black energy leapt forth from them, in their many, many levels and tiers and mouths, and converged on the impaled Titanic Avatar of Gulguz up top of them, focusing on His arse, and the mouth that the tip of the Spike was just jutting through now.
They lashed and tore, ripping free His Immortal Power. The Immortal fires dimmed down to ashen remnants, fluttering and dying in a dark wind, cinders pulled off of Him and flowing down to those many, many Skulls, which devoured them and grew brighter for doing so.
Brighter. Much, MUCH brighter.
Time for me to go.
Hyperdraft, the Panic Button. Three hundred mile-an-hour winds caught me and blew me skywards, my skirts hard as steel and effectively a reverse parachute. His burning eyes, now much, much dimmer, followed me as I was blown like a weightless leaf high, high into the sky, while His attempts to fly up, use Telekinesis to wrench free, turn incorporeal, alter His form, or even wrench His soul out of that Avatar and flee, were all impossible.
Immortal Power poured out of Him, drained by the Pyramid with frightening efficiency that seemed to be ignoring or bypassing His Immortal nature to do so, slicing right through His resistance to rip His Immortal Power free and plunge it into the ready stones beneath Him.
Said stones weren’t really designed to and rather incapable of holding true Immortal Power, despite the amount of stone and magic involved in its construction.
My Staff Dread, on the other hand, was sitting down on the Causeway there, waiting, waiting…
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Yeah, I'm waiting, too.
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I was a couple thousand feet above the Pyramid when it blew off, overloaded by Immortal Power it wasn’t designed to store, only free up for the Megalith of Nown to absorb and make use of.
Oh, and Dread, who was also storing a single specific spell that slashed into Surt’s mind as the Avatar blew apart, took all the sympathetic magic in the area with it, and unleashed the full fury of the volcano there instead of restraining it.
Already moving extremely quickly, the explosion just shoved me and the Force Bubble I was in away even faster and further, while protecting me from the spear-like ammunition of stone and molten rock being hurled past me even more quickly as they hardened and flew away.
The Truename Seeker tore into the wounded mind of the Avatar before it and the volcano and His greatest temple on the world was obliterated by Firemouth going BOOM below me, while I rode the shockwave and blast-plume of superhot ash and gasses up, up, and away.
-Golthaagusum,- Dread /reported to me from below, also sent flying by the explosion, but also sucking in his own share of the expended Immortal Power, growing once again as an Avatar of Gulguz died in his presence.
The second of the True Names of Gulguz!
I was amassing a collection of them, it seemed. One Name was more than enough to cut through Immortal resistance to mortal magic unerringly, if you knew what you were doing. Combined with Pierce Any Defense, and it destroyed any other Immortal immunities in place, too.
I was a High Cryptomancer. I definitely knew what I was doing. I knew Gulguz had four Truenames, and the Talisman for Him was already made. Now I’d be adding a second one to it.
When I had four, I could most definitely kill the bastard.
Just like when I had all six of Thanatos’s Names, I could kill Him!
I looked around, oriented on a specific Ring now that I was out of the residual Interdiction from the Pyramid, and Linejumped to the horizon thataways.
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The entire giant-slaying force had gathered on a plateau there, air-lifted by Cloud Trapeze in joint Casting and spirited away while Illusions subbed for their presences at the Caldera.
Had to make everything look good, after all.
I held out my hand, and there was a crackle of magic as Dread materialized in my grip, thrumming with another small increase to his total Capacity of Immortal Power.
“Aww, now, Lady Edge!” the hyn Jace piped up from near the front of the group, grinning madly. “Ya done blown up the volcano, instead of letting us loot the place clean of all the greatest treasures of the kingdom!” he protested, faking his grief at the situation well.
I turned around to look at the mushroom cloud flaring out from the volcano forty miles away, the ash flaring red and crackling with lightnings in many colors, the top of Firemouth completely blown off and spreading itself all across its neighbors and for many, many miles downwind.
Lots of Immortal Power being dispersed there. Why, it might even spread the Taint of Fire and become a Charland someday, who knew?
“Tilt your heads back, look up at the sky, and wait for it,” I told them all.
Confused, they nevertheless followed my instructions, looking up at an evening sky that was now being kicked up with winds blowing away from a certain somewhere, stars just starting to wink on to the east of us.
Heaven or Reality or something looked down and done said we done a fine job here.
Eyes nearly popped all around as three years of fighting came to a close, and the Quest Karma, a Glory Award, came thundering down as the job was finished.
If there could have been a light show attached, behind me fireworks would have been going on as Levels tinged and rose. Stunned Daisho teams and adventurers nevertheless had too much discipline to do other than instantly apply One a Day as they could. They stewed and wondered over their choices to be made, an unexpected and very gratifying full Level, maybe two, for taking down a whole kingdom of giants, likely the biggest of its kind on the planet.
“This is the first step,” I Whispered to them, but they all heard it, and if eyes popped at the Glory Award coming down, they outright gawked as they heard my words now. “On the Other Shore, this kingdom of giants has established itself again around the Firemouth,” I pointed at the volcano spewing its little heart out in the distance, and then shifted further south, pointing at another volcano where a Fire giant kingdom had also risen and been put down, “and the Firejaws. Their pissant Immortal Patron has never forgotten what He lost here, and is going to attempt to rebuild it again, in cold and in fire.”
I turned back around, rising up far enough off the ground that all of them could see me.
“That is why you are here from the Far Shore. People of Darkmoor, that is why you were given this fight.
“You were told when you reached Ten that King Antius was sending people to the Far Shore to colonize it. What you were not told is that the Far Shore is very far away from here. To be exact, it is four thousand years away from here, in a timeline where Darkmoor was obliterated by the hands of Immortals.”
There was a lot of swallowing among the natives.
“You are now being cleared to emigrate to the Far Shore and escape this fate, but this twat of an Immortal has designs upon the land we have chosen to settle in. A Wolf Winter is coming in that land, bringing down hundreds of giants of the Frost clans, who will meet up with giants of the Flame clans. They will attempt to re-establish what they lost thousands of years ago, and now you have the strength and the power to lead the fight against them.”
I paused to let that all sink into them.
“Go home. Gather your families, those who will be allowed to go with you. You will not speak of your true purpose, because Immortals might hear. You need only tell them that your reward is the chance to expand to the Far Shore.
“In truth, you are preparing the ground for the mass evacuation of Darkmoor that is due to happen, probably within twenty years here. On the other side, we may have as little as two years or less to get everything in place.
“We picked this fight because the giants were going to come for us, and so we came to them first. I gave you this fight so that you could become strong, as we are going to need that strength on the Far Shore.
“Join me now, as we return to the Great Seal of Darkmoor, and there start making your plans.
“In one month, you will return to Darkmoor City, and we will head to the Far Shore with whatever you can carry on your backs, and no more. Give away what you do not need, hold onto nothing that is not dear and important to you, and be ready to fight once again.
“Come! You have a month off to make your plans, and then you continue the fight, as only true heroes can!”
That got a rousing shout from them as I came down, and magic began to swirl in the air.
Every Wizard there, be they elf, dwarf or human, knew how to Teleport. Soon enough they were all bound up and tied to my spell, and I brought them unerringly back to Darkmoor City.