BECMI Chapter 390 – So Much Fun is Forsaken
“TREMBLE!”
There was a massive drum-like beat as Endure crashed into the wall ahead of her, and the stone blew apart in a spray of shards and shrapnel into the forces hiding behind it. Sama was right behind the Hammer as it roared in reverse past and back to her husband’s hand, in the midst of the hapless defenders of Delphaxia (such imagination they had, she attributed the stupid name to the Immortal out of sheer pity), and she was cutting about her with Tremble as the desperate soldiers there screamed in panic and shock.
There was no mercy for these idiots. They were servants of an Entropic Immortal who thought playing with the Sphere of Death was nothing but pragmatic good sense, who wanted to destroy all of Delpha for daring to prove that He was indeed a useless twat over two thousand years ago, and who looked down on all non-Delphans, humans and other intelligent races alike, from a position of smug superiority.
There was an earthshaking bellow from outside as a Gargantuan Ogre, goaded by the magic prodding at its brain, came crashing through the streets towards her husband. A warbling battlecry of nigh-transcendent beauty arose to defy it from the bird that was anchored to his Armor’s pauldron and sitting there as if Briggs wasn’t also laying a whooping on anything and everything in range, while Endure’s tempo rang out in unbroken cadence, like a great metal bell toiling their doom.
“You believed in magic, and it failed.
“You believed in hope, and that has sailed.
“Now you wail in panic and fear
“Forsake all hope, ye who dwell here
“The Forsaken Source comes for you
“The Null Forsaken takes her due!
“TREMBLE! TREMBLE, WE COME!”
She crashed through a closed door, back out into the street, bounced off another stone building and up, taking her right back over the domicile that unlucky squad had chosen for its ambush… and the Ogre charging right for Briggs just barely saw her coming out of the corner of its eye before she slammed into its ear with a DING! and a TING!, the latter while Tremble was buried to the quillons in the great ogre’s hairy ear.
The hapless brute’s head cocked over to the side under the impact of her and her Sword, just in time to take a thrown Hammer to the forehead hard enough that its multi-ton body was clotheslined as effectively as hitting a rope, the force going right through its bones to its spine and snapping it with a sharp crack.
Sama bounced off the falling corpse in midair as Endure beat once heya-hiya again past her and was heading back to her husband’s hand, while a street over a battle-line of Buffed undead was punctured in three places and the screaming Priests behind whipping around their custom flails with brazen heads done up to look like skulls suddenly had some Forsaken Grandmasters on top of them. All of the invading warriors there were absolutely ignoring all the spells being launched their way, all the life-sucking touches of the undead, and all the magical items being widely triggered in flashes of energy, as well as Walls of hammers, descending Flames, paralytic Rays, Clouds of smoke and poison, and worse things being brought out desperately to fight the invaders who’d popped up among them.
This wasn’t just about killing all the bastards, in the end. It was sending a message to an Immortal, and maybe the rest of the magocracy. Two hundred Forsaken were reaving through this underground city with calm and ferocious invulnerability to all the magic they could bring up.
Trying to Teleport or Plane Shift away? Wasn’t working. And the damn magic-dead invaders were coming IN through the secret escape tunnels!
Trying to Summon in new stuff? It was working there, at the center of their power, down near the volcano where some Artifacts were keeping open a Rift to the Plane of Death, and something else was twisting time and space about itself. If Windrose was right, one of those was an Artifact of Time made by Tenya and given to Delphax. Giving an Immortal of Entropy a tool to use was totally justifiable in Her eyes since He was a foe of Delpha, who was the opponent of the Siricil Empire She was Patron of.
Just one more reason to get rid of the bitch, Sama thought, watching as some creature of negative energy wrapped around the bones of a dragon came loping down a side-street towards the main fight.
She had full confidence in the Mick and the Forsaken who’d come after them, but hey, she got to have fun, too!
She also knew her husband had seen it and in his mercilessly efficient mindset, he wasn’t going to let it scatter the fighting line of Forsaken carving through the troops and controlled undead. It would require more use of Healing Edge by the warriors, slowing down their offense some, break the line and force them to get back into formation, and actually give some hope and enthusiasm to the defenders, which might just buy them another minute or two of life.
Totally unacceptable!
Sama kicked off the building and was running along the side of the walls at blurring speed, possessed of the fastest and most versatile lightfoot in the world, zipping right on past the fighting towards the nega-drake coming their way.
Endure beat once as it passed her by, Tremble went Ding!, in response to it, and then the Greathammer crashed into the left foreleg of the creature just as the limb came down and weight was put on it.
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Bone shattered, the leg flew away, and the nega-drake, while not feeling any pain, also didn’t flinch convulsively like a living thing and retain its balance. It basically went right down on the weak leg with a crash and continued sliding along on its side in surprise and confusion, wondering what had happened.
The sickly red-green flames in one socket were staring up at her as she came down from above, and with a Ting!, Tremble drove into the eye socket there and really messed with its internal energies… as well as coming out the other eye socket, punching into the ground, and forming a very sharp fulcrum point.
With a clatter, crash, and tumble, its body whipped past and over her, but the Sword didn’t move, and the skull was shorn free and clear of the spine as it was yanked past, vivus jetting out multiple openings in glee at the fine meal as the corpse swept through the back of the defending lines and knocked a dozen spellcasters off their feet.
In typical Delphan arrogance, warriors were looked down on in this society, just like the main magocracy, so all the talented people went for magic, and warriors had to languish as lackeys and minions.
That tended to severely impact the skills, experience, and tactical ability of the soldiers and their commanders, and for some reason people adept at tossing Fireballs and Summoning monsters and driving undead things before them as disposable fodder did not make great battlefield commanders. Weapon Mastery was naturally a waste of time.
More power! More Magic!
More Null Strikes cleaving through magical defenses, Contingencies, and the hapless Caster behind them, killing them quickly!
She heard the crunch as Briggs landed atop a wall and began to trot along it, Endure beating every other step in inexorable rhythm as its wielder looked about, having the elevation needed for lines of sight and totally disrespecting any kind of local missile fire. A Lightning Bolt and a swirling swarm of Shards came flashing in, and Burned away in his Source Sun without him even acknowledging the direction they came from… other than a blip in the Heavens-Up Display painting two spellcasters and their guards and Summons at another intersection about a hundred yards ahead, now ducking urgently into cover.
Typical half-arse street layouts, not being straight vertically or horizontally, meant they couldn’t see Sama from where the Burning head of the nega-drake was blazing behind her.
They definitely didn’t see her accelerate, bounce off the ground on Rising Winds lightfoot, hit a balcony, bounce to a second-story balcony, skip off that to a roofline, take three bounding steps that spanned three rooftops, and come down right on top of the twats from three stories up.
Ding!
“TREMBLE!” she smiled, all their heads snapping up in paralytic shock as she came down right into the thickest part of them.
Ting!
The head wizard was split in two from right shoulder to left hip, shattering six different Wards and Contingencies on him as she did so. The next second, the air was a blurring wall of mists trailing behind Tremble as the Whirlwind Attack went off, and everything within ten feet of her was cut within basically the same second.
Armor protested and yielded under a Hardened adamantine edge, the flesh beyond spurted blood or necrotic fluids. Heads and limbs flew, screams faded abruptly, and Sama looked both ways as corpses collapsed to the ground, some dead for the second time. Vivus sprang up on all of them and devoured the splashing blood and gore that was spilling everywhere.
The other wizard was nailed to the wall through his mouth, Sama wasn’t even looking at him as his brain, so nicely full of necromantic residues, ignited before anything else.
The massive Fiendish Cobra and Tiger there, completely unmarked, couldn’t do much more than look at her as their Summoners died, and the next second her Null forced them right out of the Prime Plane as the magic keeping them there faded and Burned.
Archmages (and their Clerical counterparts, as appropriate) at Twenty made self-empowering Baneskulls against Necromancy, the Arcane, Servants of Delphax, or Humans, as was needed. Archmages at Thirty were eligible for Dreadskulls.
Overmagi made self-empowering Dreadskulls!
Thus, the location was marked for the Rangers in the second wave to collect the skulls of the two Wizards. They were moving through the underground city in its empty dome Invisibly, cleaning up after the Forsaken who were basically killing everything, making sure what was dead stayed dead, and ensuring nothing went to waste.
There were women and children here, too. If they chose to fight for the glory and devotion to their uncaring and demanding Entropic Lord, well, religious fanatics were what they were for a reason.
If not, they could be shuffled down to the shoreline to be corralled and perhaps evacuated.
Considering a fair number of them were also brainwashed slaves kidnapped from elsewhere in Delpha, a little mercy was allowed. The Venture and the Delver’s Delight were both here now, the latter having delivered most of the Forsaken troops here for the fighting. They had bombarded the remnants of the boneship fleet into Burning scrap and were occupying the docks with overarching fire support, just daring the Delphaxians to assault them with magic. The boom of the railguns replying to such efforts, and explosions of stone and dust that resulted, meant the underground harbor was quite safe from such distractions now.
If an archmage or two wanted to bombard them with their beloved Meteor Swarms, the Heat Sink Hexar Shields whose effects covered both ships completely drank them up without any complaints, and the railgunners politely sent out some nihilor loads with incredible speed and accuracy to show what they thought of such lovely pyrotechnic gifts.
No besieging the city with techno-magic however, although they totally could have. The boneships were necrotech in their own way, and totally eligible for being blown apart with magitech in return. As with the dragons, the ground forces of the city were being reaped with cold steel, pointed arrows, and men and women who could ignore what should be overwhelming magical supremacy to take down their enemies. While they definitely had lasers, plasma rifles, and concussion grenades, those stayed safely in the armories as overwhelming martial skill carried the day.
It was a good show for the Immortals. None of the broad, low power of technology was on display, only the railguns, which weren’t much different from magical cannons of various sorts. They were conquering, but doing so in an acceptable manner.
Of course, Delphax wasn’t happy, Tenya was entertained if not approving, and Oroyosam naturally deplored the violence.
But Sama didn’t care about getting on their good sides, regardless, and they couldn’t even see most of the Forsaken without having Avatars or Incorporeal spirits present and watching.
Which both Tremble and Endure could absolutely feel were present.
She’d axed Delphax’s little fiendish Avatar, and if that had sent Edge and the fleet to another plane as an unexpected consequence, it had also barred Delphax from appearing on the Prime for at least a year and a day.
Suck it, arsehole!, she thought, smiling at the memory.