Amdirlain’s PoV - Culerzic
Her journey along the road’s outer edge proved enlightening for observing her aura's impact. A juvenile Behemoth the size of a truck had swerved away from her. Despite the efforts of its driver, it had ended up stamped into the ground by a larger Behemoth moving beside it. With its blood splattered across the black-scaled shape Amdirlain presently possessed, she didn’t even break stride. While its prey reaction had been in the extreme, few around her didn’t react in some fashion to the aura of violence. It was certainly a preferable reaction to those offering lifts or employment, including one Skëll offering to share his plague farm.
In the final kilometres before the city, the road ran parallel to the Ravager’s River. From the Wizard’s memory, the city encircled the river’s fork, where one course eventually ran to the Umber Ocean while the other emptied into the Perdition Sea. The crowd on the road and those damned in the river washed her surroundings in white noise.
The embankment let her see into the water’s depths and survey the damned chained well beneath its surface. The thickness of their presence was a mass of strands and made seeing the riverbed impossible. Indeed, as they swayed about from the current and the fish pushing between them, they revealed further levels of the damned below.
Most fish were a gopher-shaped species with a razor-sharp fin down their back. They ranged from barely a hand’s length to nearly the size of an adult Human. The chunks of matter their hang-tooth maws stripped away instantly regrew. Yet the pain of the injuries continued to accumulate despite the healing. It was kilometres of effort trying to focus solely on the damned’s music before Resonance started to make sense of it amidst the noise. It was still another hour before the difficulty finally earned her a notification for her persistence.
[Resonance [M] (72->73)
The injuries weren’t merely pain inflicted on the caught souls, but each left an alteration, forming layers of changes like the grey fate that she had imposed on other souls. Their healing wounds braided scar tissue into the chains securing them to the river bed.
Within the final kilometres, the energy of the place radiated a concentrated foulness of abyssal energy. Taking her time, Amdirlain focused on the wards and checked the protections for traps. Among the divinations, she spotted those for various species, along with the Sisterhood sigil. They didn’t obstruct teleportation out of the city, but she found sensors that extended kilometres beyond the wards seeking arrivals.
The walls of the abyssal city Ngakinga loomed far overhead by the time Amdirlain arrived at its gate. The blood-red wall ran further than she could see in both directions, arcing over the nearby river to allow barges and other vessels to travel its course.
The random charges the guards levelled for entry to those ahead seemed to have little rhyme or reason. A behemoth emblazoned with Moloch's crest paid less than the owner of a hand-drawn cart. Despite no imprints being demanded, Amdirlain still set her profile to show the Tier 5 classes of Black Knight and Warlord.
The Schir guard that waved for her to halt looked her over almost dispassionately, bolstered by the support of other troops. “Purpose.”
Titling her head in the river's direction, Amdirlain rumbled. “Visiting the arena.”
“Betting or taking part?”
“Betting,” Amdirlain huffed, keeping her tone bored.
“Five Rage.”
When Amdirlain slapped five red coins on his palm, he looked at them appreciatively and sniffed the metal. “Nice purity, such sweet toxicity.”
The guard stepped aside and waved her to move on, palming one coin when he dropped the others in the chute.
A large male Skëll supporting the Schir guards at the gate was less restrained than the farmer, practically drooling while Amdirlain was speaking to the Schir. As soon as she crossed the city’s threshold, he stepped towards her, and Amdirlain lazily backhanded him into the guardhouse’s wall. Amdirlain fixed a smile on her flat maw and projected a cold menace.
[Intimidate [M] (2->4)]
The Schir she’d paid simply waved her to hurry on her way, unbothered by the Skëll’s groans of pain. “Clear the way.”
At his instruction, Amdirlain stomped forward and her clawed feet digging into the stone prompted the other guards to yank hands from their hilts and step well back.
Much like the polluted city of Avaris, travellers split off in all directions once through the gates. The course of the external road split repeatedly, turning from an expressway into a few main roads and scores of tiny capillaries within a few hundred metres among the city’s soaring black towers. Within the lower levels, businesses large and small mixed in with personal residences that made even the most oppressive low-rent flats on Earth seem luxuriously spacious.
As she progressed, erratic concentrations of abyssal energy twisted against her perception and warped distance. A notification chimed when Amdirlain caught a mid-block twist in her sense of direction.
[Abyssal City Navigator (13->14)]
Stepping back toward a busy alleyway that she’d already passed twice, Amdirlain found the source of the issue. With her form head and shoulders above the surrounding demons, Amdirlain examined the top edge of an energy ball twisting within the alley. A natural portal formed by clotted abyssal miasma drew on the surrounding concentrations, fluctuating in intensity as demons moved through it. Waves of energy ebbed and flowed, shifting the feel of the Abyss nearby.
The clot was almost solid purple, flickering only momentarily to hint at another location beyond as demons stepped through. The transition point wasn’t like other portals she’d seen; instead, the demons seemed to co-exist with it before being shunted away. When one Demon was too slow to move aside, the nexus displaced the following Demon in the alley, setting them down in a cleared spot.
Though those travelling through it eyed Amdirlain carefully, her aura of violence prompted them to keep their mouths closed. From amid their thoughts, she caught that the transfer was completely normal to them.
Scrying, Amdirlain looked through it, and a dim image showed the far end was a platform beside an open market. Detection spells established it was a naturally forming portal, twisting the surrounding plane within the city’s confines, and showed the trails of demons that had journeyed through it. Further spells confirmed the existence of many similar portals forming a network within the city.
“Isa, can you send me images and details of the Hade’s Blood War battle sites you mentioned? Also, ask Ilya if she knows the names of any demon lords or ladies that might attack Moloch.”
It was a long wait before Isa replied, and Amdirlain caught a list of names. The first image was a massive mountain slope with dots moving across it. In a sequence of pictures, sections of the mountain came into focus, dots became ant-like figures, and resolved into forces of Hell and the Abyss smashing each other apart.
“Care to explain what your next play is?” asked Isa, with a hitch of worry.
“Demons are always turning on each other; I will be radio silent for a few weeks or longer. Don’t open a Gate focused on my name until I let folks know. Anything inbound where I am will set off a ton of wards and get me spotted—please pass that along,” Amdirlain replied.
Keeping a sharp eye out for further concentrations, Amdirlain continued following her chosen course. Splitting off from the main road, she followed the images she’d gained from the Wizard. Now warned about the distortions, Amdirlain watched for their attempts to twist her off course. The notifications chimed three times before she finally found her way to the bridge she wanted.
Within the city limits, rows of the red acidic-fleshed Babau spear-fished along the river’s edge. The ooze-coated demons continually hauled in fish, and occasionally even a damned, but they didn’t secure their entire prey. Instead, the Least Dretch and Schir attending them hurriedly hacked off meat, which they dropped into nearby baskets. Once they were done, the Babau shook the remains back into the waters and looked for their next target. The bloodshed chummed the waters, drawing more fish to feed and become prey while the damned started to reform.
Streams of blood and gore leaked from the baskets into gullies further from the river and flowed off deeper into the city. It seemed a strange precaution, given the murk in the waters—and a macabre curiosity dug at her—but Amdirlain left it well alone. Once across the bridge, the highrises blocked the view, and she gladly left it behind.
The Wizard’s stolen memories gave her no perspective on the city's size, but his business dealings gave her a target. An arena that used mortal prisoners for twisted games of prolonged suffering and let them recover in between to extend their use. Rounding a bend in the road, she caught sight of claw marks cut into an aged stone foundation. Though they looked haphazard, beneath the scratches were cuneiform markings in primordial abyssal with a single concept emblazoned: seeker.
Though curious, Amdirlain almost walked past it until, out of the corner of her eye, it blended into its surroundings. The grey stone block reemerged from a black metal wall when she focused back on it. Shouldering aside a pair of large Dretch, Amdirlain stepped over to it and allowed Resonance barely beyond her skin. With the Power reactivated, Amdirlain caught a whisper of True Song lingering within the rock. It wasn’t a waiting song but one set in place billions of years ago. The rock lingered out of phase with its surroundings except for those with True Sight.
The sense of it nipped and dug at old memories of work performed rather than danger, pushing Amdirlain to touch the symbol. It only required the lightest touch, and Amdirlain heard a voice she’d only known from memory. “Finding Redemption’s Path can take many steps for those that care to seek it.”
An image appeared in her mind, with Orhêthurin’s voice in her ear. Upon a demonic landscape, another rock stood out from a grim moor. The plant life around it continually rotted into the ooze while more grew to fill the place. The location pressed hard against Planar Sense, and inside it, the feel of a beacon activated, pointing her attention off to another Plane. It was far too close to be Ijmti, and the beacon didn’t possess the tight focus of those she’d practised. Though it was unclear, it seemed only a link to an indistinct region.
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With the location out of reach, Amdirlain returned to her search with curiosity niggling at her. Had Orhêthurin not left sharing the Redemption’s Path location to the original three, or had they slipped from it?
It was a day of walking and repeatedly retracing her route before Amdirlain found what she’d been seeking. The building was kilometres around, with a host of various-sized entry points. Though its upper rim didn’t reach half the height of some skyscrapers within the city, it covered enough ground to fit scores within. Wards along the boundary protected them from teleportation, blocked things from leaving, and strengthened the building against more magic than she’d expected.
Following the building’s curve, Amdirlain found an area without entryways. Finding a suitable hiding spot beside the ward, she stored her gear before transforming into a pebble among the other scattered debris. Ensuring she kept her spells from touching the wards, she spun delicate concealments into place, using her proximity to the wards to hide in their background noise.
With Resonance pulled in tight, Amdirlain allowed herself to take in details only a finger length away. Starting by cataloguing information on the ward’s first layer, she slowly extended her reach until everything became a blur of white noise again.
She struggled to isolate the elements that had earlier been clear. Working through visualisation approaches, she eventually managed filters and grouping within the incomprehensible noise—grouping tracks and muting them away. Some layers separated cleanly, but others caused everything to hiss and scream within her mind until Amdirlain stopped trying to pull them apart.
Every inch of progress gathered information from a sphere of influence. In the cluttered city, a hundred metres of expansion had more songs within it than a dozen of kilometres of barren waste. The songs of demons and material, warped by the Abyss’ corruption, scratched at her awareness and Amdirlain pushed hard to keep control within Resonance. When the pain started to pulse through her in waves, she deactivated the Power and shifted her focus.
True Song Composition had provided so many conditions she could coil her waiting songs around. The structures of the linked spells she started to design touched back on lessons she hadn’t considered since university. Even though she had barely touched them in her career, programming concepts now seemed like child’s play. Breaking down the overall goal she had in mind, Amdirlain planned out a network of conditional songs to reinforce each other. Despite the source of the logic, the notifications showed her True Song Composition absorbing the gains.
Rooms grew within the mind palace that Amdirlain had started with Athena, each becoming covered in complex notations. With some songs she needed beyond her reach, she started with the easiest ones and planned out their placement to stretch her capabilities to the heights she needed. A room became a map of the links between the songs, and she visually checked for gaps.
Each time the pain ebbed enough to focus on Resonance again, she returned to her practice. It was nearly a month of work and focus until she could perceive the entire arena. The strain of the ongoing effort not only cranked Resonance’s levels but taught her more about shaping its focus. No longer limited to a full sphere, it let her sweep focused regions in her surroundings.
When she breached Senior Master rank, its reach exploded, yet the extra elements grouped into the controls she’d set. Within her mental framework, the Power kept cataloguing the assorted tracks in her focus, accumulating numbers and strength, and letting her shift between them with a moment's thought.
Resuming her Skëll form, Amdirlain replaced the weapon harness and padded towards the closest nexus point within the range of her perception. As she listened, she contemplated what she’d already composed and added more to the list.
With Resonance pushed through the challenge of filtering the arena’s noise, she could feel the prisoners’ within its depths. Though she wanted to free them immediately, the nature of the wards anchoring them in place required preparation. With her plan always in mind, Amdirlain took to wandering the city. No longer merely searching for a single location, she looked for targets amid the assorted skyscrapers, ones formed of gristle and bone next to those made from light-drinking abyssal steel. A trip through the original portal she’d seen set her within a crowded square.
Food vendors in the middle sold familiar demonic foodstuffs similar to the square in Hrz’Styrn Hundreds of flayed damned hung the square’s perimeter, linked limb to limb like obscene Christmas ornaments. Their lower jaws and tongues were removed, making their screams a reverberating tune. Streams of blood oozed down the walls something had pinned them to, and demons moved about, sampling the flavours on offer. Many wiped it onto assorted foodstuffs to add to their appalling cuisine, while others simply licked it off the wall.
Amdirlain moved for an exit and left scores of songs coiled in her wake. When she released them, the music flooded the air with her rage, causing patrons to lash out at those around them. Taking in the music of their attacks added more songs to her list.
Projecting disinterest allowed Amdirlain to move about the city, but she kept a wary lookout with eyes hidden among scales and Precognition was pushed to the limit. Constructions, already warped by the chaos of the Abyss, were twisted or corroded and strained harder against the enchantments that held them upright. Weaker demons stayed out of her path, and she shifted course whenever those strong enough to risk trouble approached.
Exploring the streets, she found an endless assortment of horrors. Chains looped between buildings held decorations of screaming souls that swayed perilously on corroding links forged from their malice. Among the buildings, she found growths that blocked out the light. Retriever demons stretched their webbing between buildings to let them torment the dangling souls. Giant wasps' nests bulged out from buildings, and sometimes their cancerous masses merged with multiple constructions.
She found regions of imprisoned souls in the city. Thousands of damned lay trapped beneath surfaces of metal, stone, or layers of bone, their quests for freedom mirroring a fetus’ efforts in a womb. Those passing reacted to the bulges with barks of laughter or blows to settle the damned back in place.
Filtering out demons and abyssal materials, she searched the twisting warrens of the crowded rats’ nest for prisoners amongst the demonic residents. Those left unattended, Amdirlain considered fair game for immediate release. With a fake in their place, she dismissed them to their homes. The corpses sung into existence showed wounds copied from the brawls she’d provoked. The energy and stench of various demons left the original captors searching for those that had stolen their fun.
During her explorations, she created linked songs to focus through each portal’s nexus, each layer and each nexus adding further amplification to help grab her targets. The songs at the end of the chain, she already primed against a simple melody to be projected within the city’s limits.
Looping through the city, she located other arenas and private locations not so easily breached. With each of those, she took the time to tag their prisoners, mourning the dead whose fading songs she heard. The number kept mounting, reopened painful wounds with every death.
With the primary pieces set in place, she moved towards executing the main event, hoping she’d not already left it too long.
Isolating out each of the arenas’ prisoners, she set effects into place—similar to the town, yet amplified to pierce the wards. Though she worked as quickly as possible, with the numbers involved and her bigger plan, the preparations took weeks to complete. Still, by the end, thousands of prisoners had songs set silently from kilometres away, each linked to early tunes in the chain Amdirlain had planned out. Months after she began, Amdirlain pulled the pin.
The endless days within the Abyss normally stretch out for demons, delivering only more boredom and spite.
Normally.
“Ooh, let’s go!”
As the strange song rang through the city, demons looked around as sound waves drowned them. The Abyss' reaction wasn’t to the audible words but to the coiled songs that thrummed in response. Within the concentration of abyssal miasma that millions of demons clustered together formed, the portals started to change. More songs tweaked and amplified the nexus points excluded from the city’s wards, and their unnatural energies flowed.
Glutted with power, they transformed from portals into one-way gates and scooped up hordes from among targeted battlefield reserves. Battalions that were already primed for battle disgorged into the city’s laneways, streets, and buildings. The portals' basic nature spread them further as the crowds thickened, squeezing them into every available space throughout the city while continuing to draw more in. Confusion and discomfort quickly poured anger into the situation.
Then the next conditions flipped, and it used the planar displacement of the arriving troops to shatter dimensional wards. With that disruption, surviving prisoners from arenas, mansions, and guarded pest holes found themselves suddenly home.
With troops still arriving, the next sequence obliterated the stunned confusion of demonic troops and citizens alike. The same song of heart-filled rage that Amdirlain had injected into coins distilled itself into countless demons to give hate form. Powers, weapons, and spells clashed as the city exploded in violence. Unnoticed by the demons, planar attunements pulsed through the streets to ensure the ultimate death for most combatants.
Far outside its walls, a smiling Skëll enjoyed flaring songs as the destruction began, unable to resist amusement at Queen’s song having kicked things off. As the battling forces toppled the first weakened skyscrapers, Amdirlain felt a chill of remembered horror run up her spine, and the notifications hit.
[Achievement: True Song Cascade
Condition: Achieve a difficult goal using over 20,000 interlinked songs
Reward: 2,000,000 Experience split between True Song classes
Reward: 5 Additional ranks in True Song and Multi-Voice.]
[Achievement: True Song Dominos
Condition: Achieve an epic goal using over 50,000 interlinked songs
Reward: 50,000,000 Experience split between True Song classes
Reward: 10 Additional ranks in True Song and Multi-Voice.]
[Achievement: True Song Virtuoso
Condition: Achieve a legendary goal using over 1,000,000 interlinked songs
Reward: 140,000,000 Experience split between True Song classes
Reward: 15 Additional ranks in True Song and Multi-Voice
Reward: True Song Composition evolved to True Song Architecture.
Note: You pulled over 20 million demons into that city with a single combined effect. Going to create a sun next?
Note: Normally, this would be an achievement for someone with Grand Master in this Skill. You’re going to toast your brain pulling these stunts.]
Raw knowledge of how to apply the Skill pulsed through her mind and dropped Amdirlain to her knees. As the agony continued to mount, she forced herself into the form of a pebble to immobilise herself and avoid garnering attention. The distraction of that change pushed her off balance, and she could only helplessly ride the waves of pain. Her physical form didn’t stop the agony of information looping between awareness and Soul, which reverberated for hours in a self-perpetuating feedback loop.
When she finally returned to herself and peered towards the city with True Sight, she found it eclipsed by the shadow of a strange planetoid covered in thousands of writhing eyestalks. Spells filled with Destruction Mana rained down from it, adding to the billowing smoke that obscured much of the being. Despite the haze, more than enough was visible to target Analysis and pain ripped through her battered thoughts. A price she paid for only his name: Moloch.
Before she could move away, more notifications hit.
[Achievement: City Breaker
Condition: Plan and carry out an attack on a city with a population of over 20,000.
Condition: Achieve 50%+ destruction of a city’s populace and infrastructure.
Reward: 100,000 Experience.
Reward: Evolved base class - Terrorist Unlocked!]
[Achievement: Metropolis crusher
Condition: Plan and carry out an attack on a city with a population of over 150,000.
Condition: Achieve 60%+ destruction of a city’s populace and infrastructure.
Reward: 500,000 Experience.
Reward: Evolved base class - Master Terrorist Unlocked!]
[Achievement: Megaplex Annihilator
Condition: Plan and carry out an attack on a city with a population of over 10,000,000.
Condition: Achieve 70%+ destruction of a city’s populace and infrastructure.
Condition: Activities remained undetected.
Reward: 15,000,000 Experience.
Reward: Evolved base class - Shadowy Manipulator unlocked
Note: It’s easier to destroy than create. Don’t lose your head!]
[Achievement: Great Escape
Condition: Free over 1,000 prisoners through a single escape plan.
Reward: 2,000,000 experience.]
[Achievement: Epic Liberator
Condition: Free over 5,000+ prisoners through a single escape plan.
Reward: 20,000,000 experience.
Reward: Peace of mind for what else you did?]
[Achievement: Murderer of Innocents
Condition: 100+ innocents perish because of one scheme.
Condition: Terrorist Class Unlocked
Reward: 100,000 Experience.]
[Achievement: Baptised in Blood
Condition: 500+ innocents perish because of one scheme.
Condition: Terrorist Class Unlocked
Reward: 500,000 Experience.]
[Achievement: Lady of Butchery
Condition: 1,000+ innocents perish because of one scheme.
Condition: Terrorist Class Unlocked.
Condition: Resident of the lower planes.
Reward: 1,000,000 Experience.
Note: Not a Mantle, just an aura. Going to collect them all?]
Amdirlain teleported away to her second hidey-hole. She flowed back into her Fallen form as she pressed her forehead against the table, and burning tears flowed. Howls of anger and grief ripped out of her throat, releasing harboured emotions. When her claws fractured the table’s stone, the cracking sound caught her attention, and Amdirlain reared back to fling it against the wall.
“Over a thousand?!”
Enraged at herself, Amdirlain surged forward, and the first punch obliterated a torso-sized chunk of stone. Even without Ki, the power in the strikes and her hardened flesh turned stone into dust. Follow-up blows lashed out faster than a jackhammer until the chamber threatened to collapse from the destruction. When the tunnel she’d carved began to collapse from the ongoing impacts, Amdirlain teleported away.