BECMI Chapter 303 – A Spindle of the Firerose
It took nearly an hour to descend all the way to the ground, moving with stately control and power. Fire burned about its black stones, chasing away the winds approaching it, making it clearly and dreadfully visible through the burgeoning winds and fury of the winter.
At last it came to a stop, directly between the black and cooled volcanoes of Firemouth and Firejaws, balanced on the razored point of the lower half of what was now a massive spindle of black stone. Two Pyramids base to base were separated by a mere foot of fire that was so hot merely looking upon it stung the eyes, for all that most of the heat was radiating from the skulls carved upon each and every block of stone, wrapping all of them in floral signs and lovely fireroses.
The top of the Firerose Skullspindle rotated clockwise, the bottom counter-clockwise. Each side was a twenty-step Pyramid with twenty-foot blocks, so the total was eight hundred feet high, and the remnant power of the Arch of Fire was caught between its halves, radiating out from its stones and turning the ground beneath it slowly molten as it floated there. But there was no massive seepage that was enough to create a massive charland like the Archlands had been.
To the Elementals that hurriedly came upon it, it was both a balm and an alarming discovery, for they knew what those roses of living flame signified!
This was a thing of the Lady Firerose, an Elder Elemental of truly frightening power. If they wanted to go home, they would be indebted to Her, and that was no small thing!
They even knew what these Pyramids were, momentous creations carved from the corpses of earth Elementals who had warred against the Lady and Her domain in the realm of Fire, turned into massive, deadly defenses against them on Her borders. They were things that struck fear into all the creatures that looked upon them, enemies turned into weapons against others of their kind!
How two of them had ended up this way, no one knew, but they also knew that the mere existence of this Skullspindle now meant the land around here was claimed by Lady Firerose, and they stayed here at Her whim!
The residual heat and power radiating from the Pyramid was a mere fraction of what the Arch had loosed into the mortal world, but it was still enough to chase back the weather and chill for a few miles, re-heat the landscape gradually, and make this place tolerable once again, if only a true Charland within a mile of two of the Spindle itself.
The Archlands were gone, and all the creatures of fire that had roved the lands freely were dead or freezing to death if they did not converge on the Firerose Skullspindle.
Those were now the lands of the Firerose!
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There was a lot of butchery of giants going on. Girdles of Giant Strength didn’t just make themselves, you know.
Sama was a master at the task, able to unnerve even the strongest-stomached watcher as she tore into the corpses of giants, sending half-frozen bits flying in sprays of steaming blood and gore, the essential parts slapping onto a Disk beside her while somehow none of the blood and guts managed to get on her at all.
I wandered up to her, all the teams involved in that most important of tasks, while I merely gathered up heaping piles of metals and gemstones engraved, carved, inset, decorating, and rendered as ornaments all over the place. There were hundreds, if not thousands of years of mining and tribute and gifts to the Fane, all to be heaped up, or rather down, into a quickly excavated pit for a Widened Tapestry, which I and a few others involved in the looting of the usable stuff were filling up.
Just goldweight. Spread out and used, it would be gone in mere days.
There was hundreds of pounds of metal involved in each of the giants’ plated suits. The dwarves were eagerly looking to melt it all down and make useful things from them… which meant there was actually two raised smelting pits powered by Primal Walls of Fire going in the Fane, both of them for the express purpose of having suits of giants’ armor tossed into them and melted down into metal that could be repurposed and retasked. I’d actually brought in a work crew of dwarves to start the process of pouring the heavy ingots, the cold atmosphere helping considerably with the cooling process, along with mages using Cold Reserve to help freeze them up and make them ready for transport.
It was going to take several days to clear the Fane and its fortifications of everything useful, at the least, more workers being brought in via the Mirror-Portal to help the Phantom Servants and many, many Disks pile stuff up for transport away.
Sama’s fingers, covered by the Golden layer of her Vajra and looking like spidery razors, were busy slicing into one of the dead temple guards with what looked to everyone like wild abandon. Skin split open, muscles and tendons went flying, bones cracked, vital organs got out of the way, and blood spattered and hissed and flew everywhere as she worked, the crimson steaming stuff not daring to cling to her even stripped down as she was as she worked through the massive giant corpse with breath-taking speed.
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Funf politely made sure none of the blood got on me, either.
It took Sama less than two minutes to strip a fire giant of all the needed parts and leave the gory, broken remnants behind, the violence and skill of it just awesome to behold… and really upsetting, if you pictured it being yourself.
Hags were REALLY good at taking things apart. A Black Annis Hag could tear apart and devour most of the meat and organs of a grown human male in about a minute, and Sama was much, much more dangerous than a mere annis.
“How long have you had that cute trick ready?” Sama asked me, stepping up out of the chewed-apart remnants of the fire giant’s torso. “Bundle them up, Comis, and clean up that Disk.”
The young Coral Islander Alchemist standing there looking away from the mess leapt to his job, a leather pouch coming out of the bag at his side. It unfolded into a simple leather hide, which the alchemist speedily took the giant’s bits to and arranged the hair, tendons, ligaments, key muscles, and a few useful bones and the heart upon before speedily rolling it all back up and stowing it away, leaving the Disk free for Sama to step to the next guard’s corpse.
I idly blasted vivic Darts the length of the carcass, starting the process of setting it en vivus. The skull was already gone to make a potential Baneskull, although we had many of them at this time. If nothing else, they could be put into reserve, or be sold off or traded for other useful items.
“I sent the order out about two thousand years ago. The Sims had plenty of time to get things into place. Those particular Pyramids have been on the Plane of Fire for a few thousand years. Time goes anywhere from six to ten times faster there, depending on where you are at. Firerose is going to be filing a very angry complaint with the Elemaster of Fire that that incompetent bastard of an Immortal stole two of her Pyramids when His stupid Arch collapsed, and now she is going to have to deal with having a Wormhole leading from the mortal world right to the borders of her realm!”
Sama snickered, my answer in English so those nearby didn’t catch the meaning… which they understood was for their safety. Firerose used a much sleeker version of Pyramids than I did, and paid a lot more attention to the aesthetics than my coldly pragmatic style, so nobody was going to mistake her work for mine.
Actually, while Firerose wasn’t much remembered here on Nown (and the Freir of House Tilian wanted it kept that way), on the Plane of Fire she was very famous for her magnificent command of her territory, and for the Pyramids which bordered it and overlaid it with nasty deadly effects against invading Earth Elementals and things of Cold raiding into the Realm of Fire.
Yeah. The blocks of her Pyramids were made from the corpses of dead Earth Elementals. She had a wickedly ruthless reputation in Fire that was totally deserved to anything that called itself her enemy. Even Gulguz wasn’t going to mess with her if He didn’t have to.
I could only imagine what He was going to have to pay after having the temerity to steal two of Her famous Pyramids, forcing her to rebuild them from more Earth Elementals who might well take the opportunity to invade through the gap in her defenses.
No, I’m pretty sure they would, and she’d blame Gulguz for that, too. He’d openly managed to make Himself a powerful enemy in Elemental Fire, and how could He say it wasn’t His fault, with His stupid Arch collapsing and all that Immortal Power being thrown around? Seriously, such an idiot.
The irony the Wolf Winter He’d arranged for had been such a useful tool for disrupting the Arch He’d also made would either fly right past Him or make Him grit his teeth in frustration.
“Apologies for not leaving you the head or Crown or anything.” The Blackfire Crown had been somewhere on the bottom of the Pyramid as it hurtled up into the sky, and when they came together, it was part of the big boom of everything going off as the Arch was compressed down to a thin line, everything there came apart as plasma, and Eislas’ biggest tourist attraction finished its grand displays.
Sama wagged a finger at me before starting the process of disrobing the next giant’s corpse of its armor, either detaching links or shearing right through them, sparks sometimes flying as Tremble cut through metal and made the process easier. Sama had no problem moving around the weighty limbs, but then, neither did most of the combatants, as Girdles of Giant Strength were extremely popular items among them, only eschewed by the pure Wizards who could not use them. “You owe me the next skull!” she just chuckled, shaking off the loss stoically.
The Spindles had fed well, in the end.
But everybody wants extra Immortal Baneskulls, right? Sama already had one from her trip to that temple in Sind, while Briggs had one from that Roaring Demon who had blown up in Siricil. She had used Baneskulls against Fire against the Titanic Avatar, as it was an extraplanar of Fire, but hey, everyone likes backup.
“Any special word from Briggs?” He was issuing a steady flow of orders in Markspace, streamlining the logistics of looting this place. The Fane was not a small place, and the tunnels below it went deep into the lands below, meaning things were going to come up and out of them repeatedly.
She glanced away. “You should take a look at the demolition plans. He wants this place leveled and gone, not to be a problem in the future. Or at least, for some time into the future.”
“An Earthquake a day keeps the umber hulks away,” I mused aloud, making the wide-eyed Comis snicker at the very idea… until he realized I was being serious and just how much destruction that was going to unleash in this area. “So noted. Anything special in the treasury?” I knew Briggs had wandered into the place to oversee plundering it.
She just held up a finger silently, and I shook my head and sighed.
Another damn Artifact to worry about. They were coming out of the woodwork.