BECMI Chapter 426 – The Reaping
I pulled Dread in Glaive form out of the head of the Ice Titan who’d been leading this particular horde of the frost giant Clans, fellow looking rather surprised as his skull burned away despite his invoked Immunity to fire.
I guessed familiarity with Primal and Divine energy immunity bypasses weren’t part of his Immortal education. On the flip side, Gulguz had another opening for Titans he could fill from his most fanatic followers, as Immortals were normally only allowed five each, positions usually given to loyal Aspirants who’d failed their climb to Immortality, but were worthy of keeping around as servants.
A wave of my hand brought down a Meteor Swarm from on high, one whose flames burned at +5 or some damage per die and were thus apocalyptic when they fell, wiping out a couple acres worth of pale-skinned giants and delivering their spirits to Gulguz for chiding and some reincarnation… or maybe they powered up a super-sized version of that damn Cauldron he’d made back in Darkmoor.
It really wouldn’t surprise me. He wasn’t the creator of the fire and frost giant clans, he’d just lured them away/created his own versions and filled their heads with his nonsense. Taking over their afterlife and using their souls as fuel in some necromantic device sounded like exactly the sort of thing he would do, and not bother to tell them about it, of course.
Just pawns and fuel for his schemes. It was all about him, in the end.
Well, maybe not for too much longer, on this Shore.
The Sim I’d set to making the Pyramid as an Eternal Avatar was finishing up, all the Karma we’d been sending her way powering the Crescendoom Pyramid up rather smartly.
It had taken the slaughter of thousands of giants, dragons, and magical beasts. This place was made for it, and the Karma flowed through me, into Dread, was condensed into Immortal Power there, and then flowed back out into the blocks of the Pyramid my Avatar Sim was making.
I could accumulate Karma and let it go, but I could not personally carry Immortal Power. My Eternal nature threw it out and rejected it, thus Dread was my tool for this purpose. Pumping Karma into my Gear was totally natural, Dread being unique that he could turn it into IP instead of more Slots and magical upgrades to himself, too.
There was a lot of stuff I could have done with that Karma, but I had the feeling I was going to be paid back for it rather soon here.
It was going to cost me one of the Sims, as she had to remain here to activate the Pyramid, and Sealing the place was absolutely required for what was going to happen.
Gulguz had nine active Avatars at this time. Well, seven. He still hadn’t rebuilt his Thyr and Surt Avatars, much to his annoyance, instead sending out Titans to lead the Change of Seasons and keep up his harvesting of souls and the brutal fighting that occurred there.
Hey, Titans were worth more than giants, so I killed them, too!
His new Nimbus identity was one of those Avatars, trying to infiltrate into places he hadn’t managed to get into before and naturally not succeeding, as a simple Commune would reveal the truth of who Nimbus actually was, and she was refusing all such communications for that very reason. Of course, such magic also opened one up to mental attacks at the very least, and so were only done between trusted parties… meaning she didn’t trust anyone, which rather hampered her infiltration attempts and made it obvious she was actually an Immortal others probably knew, and so was even less trusted, according to Captain Emeril.
He had a second body in Nexial the Immortal city on the moon that looked down at Nown, along with Nimbus, where the majority of Immortals involved on Nown had a presence of one sort or another. His third remaining body was in Arcandescent, the home plane of Stellaria, the distant and perpetually busy High Hierarch of Energy, famous as the most magically-rich plane known to any Immortal.
Sorcery and Wizardry Spell Engrams and Spell Slots were naturally doubled on that plane! This actually didn’t do much for true Immortals beyond it being naturally Energy-rich, but for mortals it was a heady, almost brain-burning benefit.
He had two more Avatars remaining in Crescendoom, plus what I was pretty sure was his primary, all inside the shelled Dyson Sphere here doing who knew what. Two other Avatars were scattered in distant planes harvesting Karma, i.e. slaughtering the unfortunate natives of them and gathering resources there in bids to create more fanatical servants and the like for himself, and the last was the Eidolon guarding the only normal way in and out of the plane.
It was time for me to end all of them.
With very little fanfare, my small army of Avatar-Sims led other Avatars out into the Astral Plane, using Gates to arrive at our destinations, while I headed to Nexial to take care of his Avatars there.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The big problem with having Avatars was that the Immortal had to split their Health among all of them, meaning that multiple bodies were actually rather fragile overall, even when buttressed with False Life and similar spells, but not actually all that difficult to injure or destroy when the controlling Immortal was managing them.
And they couldn’t use Sims. Simulacra couldn’t copy Immortals, and ones made of mortal creatures simply weren’t tough enough to take an Immortal lifeforce, burning out instantly and collapsing when attempts were made to do so. Both Master Lalo and Captain Emeril had tried to take control of Sims of various types as Avatars, and failed rather explosively multiple times, to no success.
That held true for my Sims, which were at sixty percent of my mortal Apex. But Eternal magic was not Immortal Power, and I could use my Sims quite freely as Avatars. This meant my Avatars had at least a potential baseline of 64 Health, before all other considerations, and I could build them up to as high as 110 before I used Eternal Avatar on them, with Greater False Life and all the Kickers stacking on top of that for +146 more Temporary Life.
Sims I wasn’t intending to Avatar, was using just for spellcasting production, or was intending to sacrifice for some purpose would be built to just 64 Health. The tougher ones I’d allow the Toughness and Toughness/2 boosts to Health to apply, and build them to that degree.
I also built them with variable versions of me, basically using Alter Self to switch around my own appearance and seeming species, and then making a Sim of that. With Immortals having connections to all sorts of planes, any sort of variant skin color, hair color, ear shape, and other variations were all possible, and all were valid. If I wanted a drow variant with dark purple skin and pink hair, lo, there it was, completely valid and believable, and she didn’t have to look like me at all.
Off they went to get into position, while my Clone Avatar harvested more of Gulguz’s unwitting minions steadily, waiting until my Sims located his Avatars in their distant places before I and my Eternal Bilocation twin in Nexial moved to act.
--------
The architecture was magical and beyond human ability to construct, perfect in ways mortals couldn’t comprehend. There were planar mechanics, dimensional shifting, profound certainties, and complete breaking of planar laws involved in many of the buildings here, Immortals attempting to out-do one another on wasteful extravagance, ageless hauteur, aesthetic superiority, shining splendor, clever mysteriousness, and just plain salves to the egos of their makers.
The city was designed in six sections, one area devoted to each Sphere, and then a central area where Immortals from all Spheres could mix and mingle. Amusingly, there were even mortals around to service the needs of their Patrons and go run errands, most of them awed, delighted, and incredibly cocksure in their status of being manservants to an Immortal.
My Ice Queen and Fire Witch forms not only didn’t stand out, they fit right in with all the magical and elemental creatures used as servants by the Immortals. All I had to do was move like I was going somewhere with purpose, and I was given little more than a glance as some toy of another Immortal, the area replete with fiery and icy females of rare beauty who outshone me nicely when I tamped down my looks.
I certainly didn’t want any of the lustier ones looking to find out more about me, and looking like an errand girl wasn’t hard. The inhabitants were also quite arrogant, certain no hostile parties would dare to invade the heart of Immortal society here in Nexial. I was obviously no Immortal, I bore an Artifact that held IP where I did not, and I was just the kind of servant a lot of Immortals preferred to have.
I didn’t talk to anyone, and I still fit right in. It was terribly improper to attempt to bribe or lure away another’s servants, too, after all…
Combined with the help of Captain Emeril and an Avatar of Master Lalo, coming in as outside Immortals and just visiting the place, I was very familiar with the layout of the place, even with all the weird dimensional shortcuts here and there, and so I always had somewhere to go and another place to visit, just not actually arriving there much to any extent.
In short, I wandered around looking at the sights, occasionally stopped to talk to other mortal servants who had a bit of time just to not be TOO anti-social, and waited until all the pieces were in place across five different dimensions.
And then I killed them all.
------
Gulguz was pondering his newest attempt at a hyper-dimensional power core situated in the final sun of his home plane. It was a marvelous structure built with some geometries that a few of his seniors in Energy would instantly obliterate if they saw it, tapping on knowledge from things Outside Reality that had been proven to drive mad those who undertook research into them too closely. The interaction with light and gravity was hypnotic in its kaleidoscopic effect and unleashing images from spectra beyond normal radiation, and analyzing them was a process that took days every time he began them.
The deaths of five of his Avatars was one of the few things that could jerk his primary self out of such calculations, appalled and nervous at the sudden action against him.
He didn’t know who was striking against him. The attacks had all started within the span of thirty seconds, sure signs of another Immortal using multiple bodies to coordinate against him. Overwhelming magical power had come in, skipping past all the foresight magicks that were supposed to warn him of such things and going right to obliteration.
Except for his two Avatars in Nexial. Nimbus had run around a corner and right into a glowing Weapon that had bisected her skull instantly: that was the only image he had managed to remember. His main Avatar had just thrown back a handful of scopfu nuts treated with catoblepas butter and nocrista blood salt, and multiple somethings had detonated inside that body and blown it to smithereens from within.
Frantically he reached and began the process of sealing his home plane against intruders, while allocating a handful of his Health among a couple of Constructs so as to Cast spells to defend himself, and both find and predict any attackers already inside his dimension waiting for him.
Suddenly the relatively recent losses of his two Avatars of Thyr and Surt took on far more ominous connotations. There were attackers here, they were obviously prepared, and they had managed to strike and slay two of his Avatars on his own home ground!