BECMI Chapter 382 – The Eyes Do NOT Have It
So, there were six of them left alive. I was unimpressed.
They were almost as paranoid of one another as they were of whoever was hunting them, and so they maintained as much distance between one another as possible. Indeed, one getting another in the anti-magic gray cone of their central eye meant that another in the lee of the effect could assail them with eye-beams without the ability to shoot back.
Naturally they were leery of one another.
They also were not identical. I’d heard long ago that beholders, as aberrant beings that shouldn’t naturally exist, could not be identical, and indeed had significant and sometimes wild genetic drift from their forebears.
They were also programmed genetic purists of the highest order, each considering themselves the apex of the beholder race, and any deviation from their ideal pattern was an inferior and defective thing fit only to obey, be used, and destroyed at the slightest failure on their part.
That included any budded offspring, and their own forebears, of course.
None of these beholders had the same coloration, seemingly taking after different rock striations in the sections of this floating skyland they called home, and their eye tentacles were all different, be it in color, rings, jointed, length to width ratio, or whatever.
So, they all thought they were supreme, all the others were inferior creations of their master which should die for them, and they only obeyed because the king-priest was half-again as big as they were and likely almost impervious to their attacks if it stuck that big pearly eyeball of an Artifact into its empty primary eye socket.
Daddy had his favorite, I guess.
The big one was still trying to scry me and getting nowhere, of course. It might have located the fleet, given the way it tended to drift in that direction and looked like it wanted to drift the leagues over to the cliffs and inspect them personally, but the fleet was anchored way out in the waters there, staying a respectful distance from the shores, and all the meat and wool was out of sight in the holds.
It would be bloody obvious coming for them, and they’d just sail away from it. So, no wandering out for humanoid munchies.
Time to kill them all.
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Proper wizardry is about lateral thinking. After all, I didn’t have to shoot the bloody bastards, thereby giving away my position and setting myself up to be blanket anti-magicked, surrounded, and presumably feasted upon.
Yeah, they wouldn’t have liked that result, either. Invoke Magic was made for just those situations.
I didn’t have to resort to proper wizardry a lot, but it was always fun and satisfying when I did.
First of all, they had no special sensory ability beyond their many eyeballs, 360 vision, and visual sensitivity to magical writings of any sort.
Second, that temple was working off the eyeball Artifact and giving them Anti-Magic Resistance, which actually calmed them down since it meant they were mostly invulnerable to one another. Probably didn’t stop the priest-orb’s Artifact Eyeball, but I didn’t see any demonstrations, so I could only infer from their behavior.
Thus, they couldn’t tell I was tunneling underneath them at all, Runes laying underneath a paper-thin sheet of stone were still invisible (didn’t have to worry about the cover breaking, because beholders float!), and they couldn’t feel the magic working below the temple’s Immortal-gifted defenses.
Yeah, yeah, the place was fortified against Rock to Mud and Earthquakes and other things, peevish bastard not letting others take down His temple.
But that statue? It might be empowered to defy the elements and stand forever as a tribute to Delphax’s eternal glory, but it didn’t have the same protections to its foundation. A tiny oversight I was willing to take advantage of.
I was also willing to take advantage of the beholders’ instinctive organization and taking up patterns, both to maximize the distance between themselves and to cover the maximum area while still being defended by the temple’s Buffs to them. Like their patrols in their territories, they moved regularly, vying to show superiority by how regulated and precise their movements were… which meant they were bloody predictable.
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The Runes materialized on the floor as Groximigorugh approached the otherwise unremarkable section of the open-air temple, clearly the greatest tribute to Creator Delphax in existence!
Pillars that resembled beholder tendrils towered above even the great beholder, all such pointing at the great statue that towered over them benevolently, hands and wings and tentacles spread protectively to showcase His love for His most perfect creations!
The Grayfield of its central eye covered the scriptures and made sure no magic was being evoked from them, even as a delightful prickling in its optic nerves assured it that the writing was indeed magical!
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The only magical scriptures they were allowed to scan were those inscribed beneath the great statue and upon its pedestal. Such writings sang with the power of their creator and were a feast for their many eyes… but the benefits of reading them now were minimal. All of His children had read them many, many times now, and even if doing so filled them with ardor and devotion for Him, they had little benefit and did not satisfy the craving for magical patterns and formations and scripture within them.
This, this was NEW.
Groximigorough drew in closer, keeping its primary eye upon the writings just in case. Despite the Grayfield, they shimmered to its central eye with untapped meanings, and it tilted forward enough to bring four of its lesser eyes to bear, and the delight magnified fourfold as it did so!
The profound meanings! The wash of magical certainty! The connection to disparate powers! The profundity of each curve, the absolution of each coil and change of direction! The changing meanings depending on which way the Runework was read!
Groximigorough had never read anything like this! Some of the swirls and accents echoed the writing of the Creator’s own hand, so this, this was a gift to His children! A feast and a blessing for them, to protect them from whatever was hunting them, surely!
Groximigorough carefully closed its middle eye, ready to snap it back open at the merest hint of hostile magicks.
The Runes only shimmered a bit more, magic drawn to and coiling about them with terrible, lethal subtlety that sang like the finest of wines to its eyes, smelled like most endearing melodies to its tongue, tasted like the most glorious rainbow to its ears. The complexities, the shadings, the depths and layers and awful waiting magic below!
Matchless! Simply matchless!
Groximigorough made no indication to its defective kin of its discovery, even if it would break the pattern of their patrols. They could stumble upon it and feast their optics here after it was done!
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Hrog was its name, the first and best of the Creator’s children, favored in size, power, intellect, and cunning, and indeed blessed with the ability to change the spells of its tentacles and hurl clerical magicks from some of them if it so desired. The Eye of the Tyrant had been gifted to it, and it had removed its own central eye in order to fit the Artifact within it when so needed.
It could project a beam of gray Anti-Magic even further than its own eye had been capable of, and was also capable of channeling the wrath of its other eyes into a mightily destructive eyebeam that could slice through a Grayfield like those of its lesser copies without stopping.
It had only had to kill one of the lesser things in the distant past for the lesson to sink home to them. Placing the Eye in its central socket also made its scales reflective, and their own eyebeams would bounce off it impotently!
They could not even use the Eye, their sockets were not large enough to hold it, and so they could never claim its seat and status, although the obviousness of their desires to do so were humiliatingly plain to see.
So, why had they disobeyed its orders and all stopped their patrols?
Fourteen eyes on stalks, another sign of its greater power, turned in all directions from the height of its seat of power in the temple center. The tentacle-pillars, frozen in undulating throes of rapture as they beheld the glory of the Creator, blocked much of its vision, but it could see the edges of the floating bodies of the lesser things, hovering in place as if coming to a silent agreement among themselves.
Wariness and proper paranoia rose in Hrog’s thoughts immediately. It did not think they could work together to attack it, their own pitifully inadequate egos unable to bear the idea of teaming up against it. Who would dominate once it was dead, if such an impossible thing occurred? They would immediately turn on one another and fight until but one was left, and that would be the end of them, especially with something hunting them and no doubt ready to leap upon a weakened or damaged Child of Delphax!
Still, it was most strange that they had all stopped at the same time, and yet remained silent as they did. There was no discharge from their eyes, and even their Grayfields were down, the darkening of the air from the projected Anti-Magic easy to see.
Prudently, Hrog reached out with its Telekinesis from its fifth eye, grabbing the Eye of the Tyrant and smoothly placing in back into its main socket. It would not be able to scry with the Eye while it was so placed, but if anything attacked, including its worthless lessers, they would be rudely surprised, indeed!
There was a shimmer, and a subtle, quiet crack. All of Hrog’s eyes snapped to attention as very faintly glowing lines shot through the temple, ignoring the beaming power of the Tyrant Eye’s Grayfield as they bounced back and forth from the locations the five defects were floating at, quick as lightning and only followed because Hrog was looking in all directions at the same time.
Only the faintest of magic, but such subtlety, such power! Echoes of Chaos and Death, visible since it could not cover all of the lines with the Eye, shimmered with power and purpose and a fell energy that brought to mind blood and screaming souls just staring at it.
It was only the simplest of lines, and yet, so incredible a carving! The symmetry alone was almost mindbogglingly profound!
Hrog completely forgot about the crunching sound, all its eyes bending down in all directions to feast on the sight of the pentagram that had surrounded it and the altar where the Eye floated when it was not being worn. Hrog could feel power flowing towards it, the energies of death and magic and fires that the Creator loved so much, and it exulted in the view, knowing it was blessed, blessed, and the Creator was defending them this day!…
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The Fascination effect of the Runes was pretty potent, and catering as it did to their mania for magical writings, with all those eyes looking at them making it a penalty instead of a bonus, the six beholders completely missed it when the statue started to move.
I did reinforce its base and the pivot point, stone flowing smoothly out of the way so it wouldn’t crack loudly and startle them, but a Sound Bubble dealt with that regardless. The rounded lump was a good locus as the Stone was Shaped away in front of it, severed behind it, and the great statue of Delphax, the Last Emperor and the Great Fool of Delpha, began to fall.
They might have noticed the shadow as it fell. All of them were in the perfect positions to be hammered by the hands or wings, the priest-beholder sitting on its altar inheriting the main body.
The Eye of the Tyrant could only be destroyed by anointing it with the blood of Delphax, as per a convenient Legend Lore about the thing after I saw it from a distance. I was nice enough to Rock to Mud the heart of the statue of Delphax, and naturally when it fell upon the colossal priest-beholder said ‘blood’ got all over the Eye.
And that was if the beholders didn’t count as children who had inherited the blood of Delphax!