BECMI Chapter 541 – Perpetual Spells Trembling
Out in that crater, surrounded by masses of Leng natives on fire, a figure rose into the air, spreading phoenix Wings filled with stars, and skeletal and spidery black Arms gripping Autobows formed at his waist. A serpentine, pointed Tail shimmered and materialized behind and over him, a quintet of spiked missiles coalescing around it, already blazing with the same Fires burning over the Staff in his hand, around which Light and Fire and Lightning were pulsing and flaring hard.
A Symbol shone over his head. It was cerulean, leaflike, wrought of Runes as ancient as the world, and not unfamiliar here on this field. A Cerulean Seal, sure enough… but this one was on golden Holy Fire that had the creatures nearest him howling in agony, be they Aberrants, Undead, or the random Fiends that had joined this mess for fun and games.
A Celestial Cerulean Seal, dropped out of at least an VIII Slot with humongous Spell Potency behind it, and the Caster Level of a god.
Then across the distance, I saw the first circle of Greater Shards spin up around the hand he was holding a jeweled Scepter in, counted thirty of them and could scarcely believe it.
I knew those Shards, as long as a forearm, so many hues and colors, already beginning to spin as Residual and Repeated Metamagic prepared to cycle up, two effects that didn’t work nearly as well here as they did in the world of my memory.
Except a magnificent tenor was shaking the Sublime Chord, and the manafield was playing host to a level of Theurgic magic it had never seen, and was never likely to see from any other. It was pretty plain that magic was going to do what the man wanted to do, and that was it.
Aelryinth was here!
How the Heavens was he on this side of the timestream?! Retracing his path should have brought him to the Far Shore!
Thirty Greater Shards doubled, another set spinning into existence on his opposite arm. Then both of them doubled AGAIN, and he began to move.
He was just outside the Stillflight Field that was making the massive flying swarms of invading creatures of Leng useless for vertical envelopment, and he moved FAST… not that range seemed to be particularly a thing to be concerned with as he was suddenly coming into reach of the enemy, they were covering their eyes as his Halo Crown fairly burst with blinding Light, his Cerulean Seal hammered at the souls of the nearest of them, and he let go.
Oh, wasn’t that just a crazy fun amount of Chains going off.
I couldn’t replicate it. Perpetual Spell made the spell it was attached to an at-will Spell-like Ability, not a Cantrip, and metamagic Efficiency didn’t apply to such here. The Shards I let go had Metamagic at full costs, which meant Chaining in a broad spectrum relied almost completely on Kickers for damage.
Aelryinth’s version clearly wasn’t so restricted, and so he was stacking Admixtures, Paired, Fastcast, Echo, and a whole, whole lot of lesser Metas as suddenly everything about him lit up.
One hundred and eighty Greater Shards lanced out, Chained to twenty-five more targets each… and then Exploded, applying more Kicker damage around themselves… and everything was Burning with Silver Fire and all those Topped-off Kickers.
Undead just blew away, Disruption effects ripping them apart. Aberrants howled in agony and either died right away, or counted down their deaths by inches. Powerful Aberrants thinking they could resist or survive the twisting, intersecting Chains of jetsilver Shards that looked like stylized swallows in flight inherited two or more, and then Fastcast follow-ups if they looked like they could eat the Burning Silver to follow.
Then the Echoes came around on the rebound, and three hundred and sixty Chains went off.
He’d added another maximum layer of doubling, in addition to pumping his Caster Level higher then my memories recalled. I had to wonder what he’d been through to allow that, then considered that I was coming up on five thousand years old and shouldn’t be talking about such things.
Nine thousand potential targets, and every one the Shards blew through also exploded to damage everything around them.
Twenty to thirty thousand casualties per cycle.
Spells began to fly at him frantically from all directions, and fizzled against a truly impressive Spell Resistance that amped up against Evil spellcasters, while whole swathes of spells he was simply immune to and completely ignored. Missiles flew at him, then flew twice as quickly back at those launching them without ever touching him.
All those who hurled the either spells or missiles became convergent targets of three or more different sets of jetsilver birds trailing different lights and all those types of Flame, and none remained alive to launch again.
There was a flow of motion around him, and a massive Snake poured up and out into the air about him. I whooped to see Feature still alive and making his protective throne, while Load folded out of Ael’s Masspack and scooped up under both of them, falling down to just above the ground.
The Eagle’s Vantage went off, shooting up to a thousand feet above the battlefield and giving Ael a clear look around. Feature tilted his head back, then roared forth a cone of Heavenly flame shot through with Eldritch energy from Aelryinth’s Wrath, cooking a whole swathe of ghasts who couldn’t get out of the way in time.
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The Stillflight Field went off next, fed to Feature and hissed out to down everything within two thousand feet of him. It didn’t slow Ael in the slightest, his Wings speeding him across the battlefield inches above the ground on geomagnetic repulsion while riding his Disk, bringing him up on his new targets with great speed. The Interdiction, only a thousand feet in radius, followed up, but it shut down all planar movement and popping about, particularly as space-bending parties tried to move up on him quickly, or if disinclined to die so abruptly, tried to pop away instead.
I knew he was marking all of the ones trying to do that, and they were the ones dying next as he read the magic they were manipulating and Marked them in his internal Heavens-Up Display for particular attention among his nine thousand potential targets, maybe even making them a primary on the next salvo.
He was being noticed back here now, as some of the leaps of his Shardchains were taking the kills a good half-mile back towards Doomrose Castle and the lines here. Also, obliterating acres of bad guys at a time in a crazy show of The Light like that was bound to get some attention.
Cue! -Who the fuck is that?- Thor /demanded to know, down on the lines and toting around his Gun Hello on Gatling mode that hadn’t stopped firing for an hour straight now, never running out of targets. -He’s killing more shit than a mile of frontage!-
The Emperor wasn’t complaining, mind you. He was just wondering where the fuck someone who could do that kind of carnage had come from.
-That’s the meteor that fell out of the sky a few minutes ago. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Aelryinth!- “Say hi to everyone, Aelryinth!” I said in Magevoice.
There was only a bit of a pause before a fairly mellow and almost unearthly calm Voice came back from the distance, reverberating with the Sublime Chord in the same way mine did, only deeper and broader, more Thunder in it. “Good day to everyone. I seem to have stumbled into the middle of a bit of a dispute over planar borders. Is there a reason Leng got uppity enough to actually start an invasion of the Prime here?”
Leng got uppity. Ah, the sheer chutzpah of that when surrounded by tens of millions of Leng creatures in a horde that could overrun the world, could they but pass Arktos… although most of them could not advance beyond the borderlands of Dream passing into the mortal realm here, without further strength or knowledge or being Summoned from without.
That was the whole problem in the first place. “They were Summoned here by a race of exceedingly powerful beings called the Carnifex, who are now extinct, and simply don’t want to take up their toys and go home,” I answered back.
Only Castle Doomrose’s Domain was pressing the Dead Magic Zone back far enough to even use magic carefully here!
“Mortals invited them here?” There was a whole lot of calculation behind those words. “Well, now, that does make things interesting. Then the proper thing to do is to have Le Majestor et Jaune decide to take up his toys and go home because it isn’t fun anymore. Isn’t that right, you fine disposable minions of Leng?! Show your king just how much you like being Fed to the Land!! Scream your exultation as the Mortal World feasts on your bodies and souls! The World is a Mother, and She has CHILDREN TO FEED!
“TREMBLE, SHE COMES!”
Thunder echoed overhead like a great silver bell, splitting the streaked and gray sky open with layered power, ripping it wide to show the blazing stars and moon of Nown’s skies, and not the diseased orbs and cursed yellow gibbous eye of Leng!
-He’s Dreadsonging on Magevoice into Aklo!- Sif /noticed instantly. -He needs some accompaniment! Let’s go, girls!-
With a collection of woo-hoos, five Rantha Hags and a bunch of Rantha Eternals went right over the side into the face of the rather desperate-looking creatures and minions of Leng there. Hilarity ensued, and didn’t slow down.
There was a chorus of exclamations about being left behind, and five Rantha Hagspawn, and a whole lot of Rantha sons and husbands thereof poured over the line after their women, some very large and impressive Weapons raised up.
With a roar, anyone on the wall who could make that forty-foot jump was up and after them!
“SHE COMES! SHE HUNGERS! THE INFINITE DEPTHS OF THE MORTAL PLANE!
“WHAT FOOLS MARCH HERE, TO FEED HER THEIR PAIN?
“WHAT MEALS AHOOF, BUT THE DAMNED AND INSANE?
“DREAM! DREAM! YOUR NIGHTMARE BEFORE YOU!
“SCREAM! SCREAM! THE TEETH RISE TO CAGE YOU!
“TREMBLE, SHE FEASTS!”
I had to say what followed was some of the prettiest Stylized Spell shaping I had ever seen.
The clouds that had parted to reveal the stars above, so welcome to see after the drear of Leng, came dropping down, and now they resembled nothing more than a mouth of the entire plane, miles wide and long, biting down with star-filled fangs… and Nown itself had roused up, and had invested in that spell!
In all directions, other great teeth of stone were rising from the ground to cage countless numbers of the crawling horde, packing them into place as they began to panic, began to flee and howl at the sky coming down.
It was a stylized Pyroclasm, crafted to look like closing jaws. But it was also Widened to a sixteen-thousand foot radius, and when it went off, the sound of it was tearing the souls out of everyone who witnessed it with its glory and condemnation.
I wasn’t sure what he juiced it with, but it was a lot. The Thunder damage alone reduced every stone in the area to dust, rang through the earth and liquefied everything below ground as surely as that above. It was a fuck-ton of Kicker damage, and everything ate it, even if the base was only 2-12 + whatever his Boost was, probably +30 or something.
The jaws closed, and stars and the heavens swallowed everything. At least several millions of things of Leng were beneath those jaws as they came down to the ground, and the earth and sky RANG like a hammer and bell coming together, devouring all of their screams with a tolling clang of doom.
The stars melted into the ground, and left behind ruin.