BECMI Chapter 534 – Carnifex Vexed
Mechanized armies equipped with powerful technology supplemented high-level mortals with transcendent skills and toughness. Production facilities came online, more power and more resources mobilizing to fight a foe pushed further and further back into ever-more restricted territories.
The Carnifex tried to open Portals and let in horrors the gods themselves would have to face. We stopped them. Repeatedly.
They tried to blow us up with Rituals and Artifacts and agreements with alien, forbidden powers. We stopped them with Counter-Rituals and Forsaken hunting them, and the gods alerted and taking action of their own, empowered as much or more to act as the Carnifex could manage.
The Carnifex couldn’t flee to Leng, even if it was right over there, yawning and open to them. They couldn’t open a Gate with Immortal Power and flee through it.
They had to fight, and they had to win.
They made dozens of Sepulchers, trying to Sequester their people to come back in the future when we weren’t so prepared, to return and confound us.
All of them had to be on this world, this plane, and we hunted for those places harder than we hunted for their Creches, following every change in the Land, every obfuscation in Divinations, every twist of Fate and wrenching of time that was trying to conceal what they were doing. We shut them down, mostly with Eternal Magic that had to punch repeatedly through their Wards to do so.
There was a final Creche ahead of us, built into an indescript mountain. Within that mountain were the last of the Carnifex, even if they didn’t know it, because we’d been happy to slip Nulls into their little hidden Sepulchers and slit the throats of the Carnifex in stasis there, setting them to Burning vivic quietly in their little hidey-holes, never to awaken.
A lot of magic had been expended to make very, very sure that these Carnifex defending their last Creche were the last of them, and they didn’t even know it because their own Wards wouldn’t let them see the fate of their Sepulchers.
They were laying out everything they could. Poisons and Elements in the air that reduced anything organic to sludge. Swarms of devouring creatures from other realms that could strip the stones from a world. Two kaiju, brought down by antiproton cannons lighting up their skulls and boring through bone that could defy atomic bombs.
They mobilized thousands of bizarre constructs, tens of thousand of undead horrors at the highest edge of any we had ever seen, extraplanar monsters worthy of the depths of Leng, and attempted to animate the entire mountain as a genius loci to defend them.
We killed it all, we stopped it all, we dug them out.
Earthquake spells and atomic warheads blew into that mountain together. Spells slammed into their Wards and unwove them steadily and implacably. Thunder boomed and rain came down to keep the dust and filth out of the air, and vivus from shattered spirits, countless corpses, and the mangled metal of crushed Constructs pooled around us as the Land fed, while atomic fire and baneflame reached for them.
Until the Final Challenge came, and words hissed out into the minds of the thousands of soldiers watching and waiting, “Face us personally, and we shall end this!”
They didn’t lack for courage, because they didn’t lack for arrogance and pride.
“Come out and die, then,” Emperor Thor replied calmly, shouldering Mjolnir and stepping forward into the rubble-strewn valley before him.
In his wake, other figures in dark, grim armor followed, weapons at hand. Beside him, Sif’s flaming hair was like a torch leading the other Forsaken forwards.
I floated behind them, the only true spellcaster to do so. Overmagi, Ranger Lords, Elven Exemplars, Overpriests, Hyn Adventurers, Dwarven High Lords, Hobgoblin Urchiefs, Ogre and Garl Icons, Jarls from all five major Jotun races, and hundreds of Dragons, the last with Cirruluxul hovering in the air above us all, the aerial forces of the Empire living and mechanical ready around her, while two cloud cities towered in the background behind, were all looking on. Mecha, hovertanks, gravsleds, gunwings, sky carriers, armarines, and artillery stations alternated with thousands of ground troops from the dozens of surviving races here.
Scores of Eternals were here and watching, leaving their fights on Arktos behind to come and watch this at the end.
But those moving in were the Forsaken Masters of the Empire… and the Imperial Family, of course.
I waved my hand, and stone began to fold and melt and run away in front of us. Boulders washed away, leveled out, craters filled in, cracks and crevasses sealed shut, and the ruin of a valley suddenly became a very broad and very open fighting ground.
Behind the Forsaken, the spellcasters finally began to filter down… bondmages all, coming to back up their Forsaken here at the end, and make sure there was no funny business whatsoever.
I rose up behind Sif and Thor. Neither were Bonded to me, of course, as I was Bonded to Sama on the Far Shore.
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Thor and his sons Magni and Modi, plus his sons-in-law Baldur and Kyndig, were there, towering over the rest of the Forsaken, their dakon and garl attendants remaining respectfully behind. Three Hammers and one Greatsword glowed for attention.
Sif and her daughters Brigi and Guin were with her, her daughters-in-law Freya and Caitlin spread out to the left, hair blonde, auburn, black, and brown like cloaks behind them, weightless to each of them, impossible to grab, the envy of every woman there.
All of them Ranthas, the Imperial Family, and the most feared melee combatants on the whole planet.
Armored men and women, all humans, all Nulls, all Forsaken, arranged themselves silently to the sides of the Ranthas.
A section of the mountainside ahead of us all flashed green and vaporized. A moment later, the first of the Carnifex poked its head out, saw us all standing there, and just paused for a moment, slitted eyes looking us over from a half-mile away, waiting for something to happen.
It thought about treachery. It thought about maybe being able to wipe the entire Imperial family, the Eternals, the Storm dragons, the Masters here…
It felt the earth trembling, and the Sublime Chord echoing in its blood. It looked up as the sky began to part, and the stars were shining down, and Divine Presences were looking down at them…
Along with So Much Goddamn Power.
Whatever end-game suicidal things it was contemplating evaporated. It could go on and kill itself, sure, but there would be no treachery it could undertake against those facing it that would succeed. What was going to come down instantly from above if they tried was proof of that.
The valley was eerily silent as the last of the Carnifex eased themselves out of the hole in the mountain.
Beneath my feet and out of sight of anyone, the long tunnel into the depths of the mountain extended out by a hundred feet every ten seconds. The fusion bomb on its cart rolled right along with it on its descent towards the lowest portions of the mountain.
We’d already blocked all lower level access with shattered tunnels, magma filling and fusing them and Wards waiting to see who tried to run away. They’d need magic to do it, we’d sense it, and that would be the end.
But no. The last of them seemed to be coming, but that didn’t mean we trusted what they left behind in the slightest.
Out of sight on the sides of the mountain, geomancers and cryptomancers were already erecting the Circle around the mountain, both atop and right through the stone, Shaping the stone around the girth of the broken peak and going to contain whatever was coming next, because no one believed that they didn’t have something else left.
Looked like around fifty of them left. Twenty were their Elder Magi, five other Magi of Grand status, and the rest were split between Voices, Warriors, and Tricksters, in that order of numbers.
Wishcasters, all of the spellflingers, then those directing military operations, then the mission specialists who became increasingly useless as the Forsaken hunted them across Rikada whenever they tried to strike.
All of them post-30 in real terms. All of them pretty Geared out, given there was no one else to use the Gear on.
My eyes wandered over them, the Mind Blanks on them not protecting them once they were directly in my line of sight. I shifted everything I saw into the Markspace, and the Forsaken happily noted everything that was important.
The Warriors formed the lead and the honor guard for the Voices and the Magi, the Tricksters taking up the rear without shame or comment. They didn’t hurry to get here, but they didn’t dawdle, either, pride too great to do something as petty as make us wait, especially since it wasn’t going to affect us.
Plus, the stars were looking down on them in all the ways, and they were likely not trying to squirm as the Heavens followed them.
They spread out along the edge of the field there, challenging gazes leaping across a hundred meters of cleared ground to the opposite side.
Our Forsaken Masters out-numbered them, I was quite happy to see.
Thor tapped his gauntlet to his armored chest, the Shieldplate he had worn for over twenty-five centuries now. At once, the most junior of the Forsaken stepped back, evening the field at fifty-two combatants on each side.
He brought Mjolnir down from his shoulder, and into his hand.
There was a hiss from a lot of scabbards as every Forsaken moved their Weapon into position.
I noted that not a single Forsaken Eternal beside the Imperial Family was in the line, and Thor had actually apologized in Markspace for the necessity of the show. The Mick, Kormac, and the many other Forsaken Eternals had waved it off. They alone outnumbered the surviving Carnifex, and so could have taken all these spots.
They hadn’t been facing the Carnifex for centuries unless required on the hunt. It was a task for the Masters and the Imperial Family. While all of them had also put in centuries into the Eternal War, it was those mortals who were current with it who would find closure now.
The bloodthirst on our side was almost palpable. All of the Forsaken had hunted these things for decades, at the very least, and wanted nothing more than to kill them!
In absolute synchonicity, the Dreadskulls against Carnifex ignited on every single weapon, bathing their Weapons in flames the color of Carnifex blood.
In answer, there was a somewhat disorganized drawing of Weapons, and the crimson of Humanbane arose on all of the Carnifex Weapons in reply.
Dreadflames were a little harder for them to come by.
“Do you have any final words?” Emperor Thor asked calmly in Draconic, voice rolling out and filling the whole valley without growing any louder. He certainly wasn’t going to go slumming in Aklo to talk to them.
There was silence as the Eldest of the Carnifex remaining, a rather clever fellow named Zaestershellim, pondered its reply, slitted eyes taking in the flames bursting from the skulls of those who had once been its peers or even seniors at one point. They were killed, and their Skulls handed down to following Masters until such earned their own, brought out now to show how many had fallen, and how long ago.
Its peers, here to witness the fall of their own so many centuries later.
“We will taste your blood one more time, little ape!” the Magi swore, also in Draconic, and all the Carnifex burst out into hissing, Weapon-waving support.
“You’re not big enough to call me little, worm,” Thor spit back, and took the first step forward.
In lockstep, the Forsaken followed, one pace behind him.
Forsaken Interdiction extended up and out like a Veil of adamantine. Nothing was going to get through it.
Armored soles rang upon the stone in unison. No call-out for pace, they could feel through their ki the timing needed. No hurry. No return curses. Not a single battle-cry.