BECMI Chapter 352 – Doorways to the Nown World
“Wait, that Portal is still open?” Sama asked quickly, eyes snapping over to our point of exit in the middle of the big white circle below us. Waves of vivic flame were racing out enthusiastically, devouring otherplanar energies and substances and making them heartily Prime Plane compatible, an unending appetite that could devour an entire minor Plane without effort!
“Vivus is frying the energies and substance of this world and sucking it backward into Nown. The planet is having a massive feast right about now, courtesy of whoever’s realm this is…” I trailed off thoughtfully, “and that is probably Thanatos.”
My grim enjoyment of the fact wasn’t lost on her as our revolutions slowed from a wild spiral to merely uncontrolled momentum and continued to drop. “That is significant because?” she asked expectantly.
“Because an Immortal can only be truly killed in their home plane.”
Sama’s heavens-blue eyes widened hungrily. “Which He probably has hidden very, very well, and lets nobody into… yet here we are…” she added in singsong glee.
I nodded slowly, jerking my chin as I felt a massive amount of Immortal Power building nearby. “More to the point...I’ve got five of His Names.” My eyes were probably glowing. “Now that I know where it is, He can’t keep me out of here.” I tensed my feet against the Bubble, she matched me, and we forcibly stopped the revolutions entirely, although we were still soaring… but our velocity was falling. “He’s close, and expending Immortal Power to seal the breach to His Plane before this costs Him even more of the Power He’s invested into His realm. The Prime Plane, and specifically Nown, are feasting on His efforts, and He has to stop it.”
The tip of my finger flared silver, and I thrust it through the one of the eyes of the giant ghostly skull making up my Force Bubble. It punched on through, and I promptly wrapped the outside of the entire force-skull in vivus.
Seconds later, our momentum slammed into a sudden dark wall of countering force coming out of nowhere. We braced as we slowed down, stilled, and then promptly began falling back the way we’d come a wee bit faster than gravity.
As we fell, the world blackened behind us, and the vivus thinned rapidly ahead of us.
Darkness was now rising in all directions, writhing with currents of deadly, invincible Immortal Power. It was shoving back the expanding vivic flames like ethereal waters being hurtled backwards, collapsing the lurching waves back onto the source nearly as rapidly as the vivus had forced itself out.
“Looks like ten miles or so radius of utter devastation,” Sama observed happily, studying the curve of the shrinking circle below us professionally as walls of IP-fed darkness worked like massive bulldozers to propel the vivus away at speed. “A decent-sized nuke, and much more expensive in its damage, I think?”
“And probably occupied by a whole lot of hordelings, who are also now vivic ash and Land-fodder,” I added on.
“I do love a good Karmic experience!” she replied while we hurtled back, pushed and falling back towards the epicenter of what was happening here, the vivic flame around my Bubble making us just another part of the alien presence being forced back by the master of this Plane, not standing out at all.
“You know He’s going to check the other side for survivors,” Sama predicted, her eyes narrowed.
“And the Veil is going to be locked. Got a Potion of Gaseous Form? We’re probably going to come up under a fallen mountain, I can’t leave a trail letting Him know someone got out.” Shaping a path out would leave traces an Immortal could deduce and follow, not a good idea.
“Of course, always keep a couple for emergencies.” She patted her breast pocket, eyes turning ahead of us, where a crater of thick misting unwhite was boiling and bubbling in reaction to the Entropic nature of the Plane we found ourselves on… and pouring back down in a returning tide of ethermist.
Without Death Ward, the blackness would have been sucking the life out of us, too, in those first few seconds before the Bubble was up.
“Probably gonna ram into rubble on the far side that couldn’t get through.” I grit my teeth in expectation, sucking down the Potion that popped into my hand urgently. I didn’t feel a need to get pancaked against the inner side of my Force Bubble, even if I knew it wouldn’t kill me.
Sama just grinned, pulled out her own steel vial and sucked it down, Tremble sheathing itself even as she dissolved into a swirl of pale blue smoke, Dread and I turning into black vapors with little silver sparkles.
The vivus-concealed Skull-Bubble, lost in the thickening tide of so much vivus being shoved back whence it came, drove right down the center of the wormhole and right on through a mass of vivus so thick it was nearly solid, the torrent enough to keep it all open despite the Veil being hard as iron right here.
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There was a solid crunch as we slammed at a couple hundred miles per hour into the underside of a whole lot of ex-mountain and former castle blocking the way out.
The Bubble stuck there, wedged by pressure from behind and the fact the rock was disintegrating from vivic overload, hollowing out a cone or sphere or something, like water carving through wet clay all around us.
I let it do so, drilling a path up for us, vivus flashing past and making ways out for us to exploit. Going out into the stuff would strip the magic immediately, so wait for it, wait for it…
There was a flash of darkness below, and the feeling of a massive door slamming shut as the Veil pounded itself closed with finality. I promptly popped the Bubble, and Sama and I boiled up through the shifting, sinking rocks above as mists and vapor, following the paths the vivus had carved through them before they could totally shift shut.
It took a couple minutes, but we didn’t have to worry about pressure, and there were tons of openings to exploit, the paths obvious even if we couldn’t move overly quickly. I could, however, subtly use Zephyr-level gusts of wind to blow us through the open paths, following the air flows out readily. In remarkably short order we had poured ourselves up and out through at least a thousand feet of shattered castle and mountainside, and emerged into a dusty, foggy day there.
I kicked up the airflow to a solid Gust of Wind, full blast, and it swept us out and out of there at over a hundred mph, while Sama pinged Briggs and let him know we were fine.
The jet stream blew us across the valley, the main thing visible being that the castle that had loomed above it was no longer there, and the mountain’s peak and a few canyons all seemed to be rather missing. Smirking as I headed to a safe range before Teleporting out, I had to wonder what the ramifications of this were going to be.
Doubtless dear old granddad had plenty of other places where he cached his wealth and magic and monsters, but the Writhing Well going up had effectively sucked away and destroyed all the secrets in the dungeons below his splendidly brooding castle.
If ever there was a time to hit him, it was now.
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Briggs…
Totally as expected, his gal and Edge got out of there without much problem. One rescue mission turned into an opportunistic directed magi-nuke… in TWO worlds! The implications that Edge now had access to Thanatos’ very hidden home place and could potentially kill Him there was impressive…
Just a pulse from the Mick’s Mark. Briggs rose to his feet, feeling a swirl against his Sun as something distant came streaking in to this place, and down into a certain receptacle hidden under a black cloth covering.
He hooked the silk cloth with the spike atop Endure and tossed it aside.
The blue-white flames of the Radiance boiled and simmered inside the crystalline shell there, one of the painfully and carefully-made containers which the Brotherhood of the Radiance gathered the Radiance to work with, empowering special spells and powers that helped annihilate the magic of the world and drive it towards more Days of No Magic.
Also, the mandatory Phylactery for a Radiant Lich.
The motes of quasi-magic swirled and gathered into a distorted, shriveled human face long dead, staring up in the dim light at the towering armored giant looming over it.
He’d already destroyed the extra corpses set aside in Repose for Prince Cannarl to possess and re-Animate as his new lichnee shell.
The glowing Hammer playing with vivus, Undead Banefire, and Bane of Legends was kind of hard to miss, given its size and proximity.
“Do not, do not kill me!” rasped the suddenly desperate, stunned voice of the Prince of Caergard. “I can reward you with riches, great secrets…”
“Urr?” Briggs answered in a flat, stupid voice borrowed directly from a rather dense ogre he’d killed long ago. He blinked his pale violet eyes, showing no comprehension, and just loved the expression coming over the face of the lich’s spirit as it realized it was going to die to an imbecile of a brute warrior.
Endure flipped around, up, and down with the ease of a whole lot of Hammer swinging. His Sun concentrated on the front of it, the bright image of a pick-like point gathering there just for getting rid of the Enchantments and magical reinforcement on the Phylactery.
In reality it was really quick; not much longer than an eye-blink, in fact. To the spirit watching the Hammer go back, up, and come down, it was a short eternity.
The reinforced crystal exploded like brittle china, blowing in all directions and clanging off his Armor before shattering into dust and harmless motes. The Radiance within flared with vivus and devoured the screaming spirit of the doomed Prince and Radiant Lich, do not pass go, do not collect one hundred crowns.
Endure hummed happily, the vivus swirling around and into it. Radiance was quasi-IP after all, and quite nourishing for neo-Artifacts… not to mention there was a nice vein of soul crystal inside the Hammer, harnessing the Radiance for personal use.
Prince Cannarl was no more, and another Prince would have to be appointed to the position.
Like, the cousin of the Caer swordsman who had just led the effort killing all the necromancers in Zanzyr, who also just so happened to be more powerful than any Prince in Zanzyr except for the Grandmaster. While there was going to be a wild scramble for the suddenly-vacant noble estates tied to Caergard, the ones doing the overthrowing were suddenly also going to be the most ideal candidates to take them from their previous holders, likely with lots of popular acclaim.
Isadora McMikal was also an Elementalist of Earth, along with her husband Hammel Guntervund, and was going to challenge and utterly dominate the current Earth Elemental High Master, making her a Prince and High Master of a Secret School, a combination that was basically made for Zanzyran Princes.
“Edge,” he said aloud into the silence and the near-darkness, lit only by vivus licking at the remnants of the receptacle and its stand of Shaped dragonbone, “punch that special project you got working some time ago. Lupins, it’s time to show why you are the Hounds of Heaven.”
Elven Eternal who could travel through time, making more time out of nothing by going to the past.
Need a project that was going to take to take years to accomplish? Go into the past, get it done, and then just leave it sitting around waiting for its moment.
Time to keep Thaum busy as things got done.