It was a show of force, lining up as we did. They could see it all coming, but they couldn’t do much about it. The clouds started to rumble and gather, and they’d all heard the tales and saw the signs.
Silver Light inside the clouds. The feeling something was looking down upon you, upon your soul, and finding you wanting, that you’d done something fundamentally wrong with your existence and now, you were being caught and judged on it.
By some of the energy fluctuations inside, the virindi weren’t taking that assessment and feeling of being so small very well.
Those clouds also meant I could open up the bombardment with a whole lot of lightning.
Celestial bells rang out, and Hea screamed and covered their ears. The Summons could only gape up as the sky came down, and Heaven came calling.
Ectoplasmic bodies went flying, torn apart and dissipating in midair. Great eruptions of the Light and earth flew, gouging massive holes in the thickest parts of the line of Summons, tearing them wide open. Our archers and Casters calmly drew back, Buffs sparkled over them with Arrowflight and Mass True Seeking going off, and the first volleys of spells and missiles flashed out.
Thunderbolts crashed down and added to the confusion as murderously accurate and powerful arrow fire was backed with Gold spells flying in to deal their own havoc. Even if the spells weren’t lethal straight off, they were powerful enough to finish the wounded if they could reach them… and the Hea were shocked to see those spells were actually ranging nearly twice as far as their own magicks were in return, even though some of their powerful Casters were actually spitting out Pyreal, or even Platinum-grade spells, courtesy of their virindi patrons.
With the absolute range advantage and the bombardment from on high, we pounded a hole through their lines, reaping the Summons and turning one whole side of Castle Dryreach into a field of white.
I was Invisible as I materialized next to the fort’s outer wall, and just reached out and touched it.
Finding the ley line connection there wasn’t that hard. I couldn’t actually alter the Fort’s connection, but isolating it from the ley line wasn’t hard. I reached down through the earth and stone, wrapped a bundle of nonconductive inert rock around the nodes, and like that, the ley line energy coming into the stone was blocked, draining away with great speed.
It wasn’t even an attack, more like putting a door in the middle of a road.
Thunderbolts rang out in glory behind me, the Hea trying to organize some kind of discharge as they were pounded on, realizing immediately that the same Bolts from Above could easily be coming down inside the walls instead of outside, and choice paralysis of taking cover or charging to the attack ran through them. Even if they thought they could defend the walls, no one wanted to go up on them under the stern judgment of the Light dwelling within the brooding clouds above.
There it went, the magic was receding from this entire section of the walls. With a sigh, I began to Shape and send the stone down and broad, instead of high and square.
Panicked shouts began to arise as the first of the stones flowed down like water behind me, those atop the walls or hiding behind them watching them flow away in disbelief. Suddenly they were looking out over a low ramp of molded, fused stones, staring out at our forces outside there staring grimly back at them, with absolutely no protection.
That first narrow gap and the panic it started only grew as I walked slowly along the wall, Shaping thousands of cubic feet at a time, and I wiped away the southern wall of Fort Dryreach completely.
Behind me I left a great gaping breach, widening with every second, that led directly into the encampment of the Hea within. A great many crimson to violet faces stared as their protection flowed down and away, and their last hope to withstand the attacks of the coming Isparians faded and died.
There was an audible rumble as the lugian Vanguards and the phalanx soldiers moved to the front. Their lines were tight, their discipline impeccable, and they were not something the Hea could confront with similar tactics, broken and disorganized as they currently were.
The Summons, on the other hand, were noting the Thunderbolts didn’t land beyond the walls, and were instinctively withdrawing through the opening gap, further gutting their defensive position, even as Thunder rang out and shivered the souls of the watching Hea.
When I was done, a hundred-paces wide, twenty paces thick walkway had replaced the wall of Fort Dryreach. I flitted back to the lines on a Dimension Door, while the defenses of the Hea collapsed and they could only stare at the line of soldiers out there who would march right through their arrows and spells and grind them into the dirt.
Then I noticed the turn the virindi efforts on their Portal-making were doing.
“DO NOT ADVANCE!” Briggs, about to call for that, turned to look at me inquiringly, then at the swirl of purple virindi energies at the heart of the place. “ALL UNITS TURN AND DOUBLE TIME TO HALF A MILE AWAY FROM THE FORTRESS!”
Briggs just blinked. “You heard the Lady Magos! Pull back, NOW!”
He didn’t call it a withdrawal, and left it to their imaginations on why. Warlord’s Voice ripped out, soldiers turned without thinking, and even if they wondered why, they still trotted away steadily and very quickly, astonishing the watching Hea.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I wasn’t about to just watch them die, however.
“To the Hea: The virindi have betrayed you. The Portal they are about to open is going to rupture in an explosion of dimensional energies and wipe away all of Fort Dryreach when it does.
“I suggest you run, because you’re not going to be coming back from the death they are giving you with vivus Burning on the battlefield there.”
The shocked Hea looked at the building energies that were supposed to carry them to safety away from there, then at the missing wall.
“RUN, YOU FOOLS!” a deep voice cried out. “RUN! RUN! RUN!”
Spurred by the command, the women and children of the Hea began to run, even as a roar of outrage from the warriors signified that some of the elder shamans had realized the truth of the matter. Violent magic was already flying in the heart of Dryreach as they attacked the creatures that had betrayed them and their families… and called on spirits they had forsaken two generations ago in their wild wrath to do so!
Desperate figures in robes and simple garb of leather and hides found themselves racing after the very army that had harassed and chased them all the way across Osteth’s plains. The energies of the traitorous Portal behind them seemed to shriek and quiver, like a powerful and nasty bow waiting to be released.
Thunderbolts rang down again, this time plunging into the heart of the exchange of magic at the heart of Dryreach, adding purifying Silver slashes to the array of dimensional energy fluxes at play there. Reality seemed to collapse about them, condensing in their wake, driving the rupture back, delaying it second by precious seconds as Heavenly bells pealed brazen and iron clangor, bent and twisted by the assault on the integrity of reality, until…
The explosion was mostly soundless, seeming to catch the ringing of a Thunderbolt in mid-stroke and freeze it. Those looking on from the distance could indeed see what looked like a plunging Silver spear coming down, brought to an impossibly slow pace as something expanded at the heart of Dryreach, turned inside out, and then billowed out in a wave of wrongness that just hurt the mind and eye to look at.
It washed out across all of Dryreach, reached out to a hundred paces beyond its walls, lashing and clawing and writhing at the edge of reality, as if trying to grab it and stuff it inside a mouth that could not be filled…
Six more Spears From Heaven suddenly rained down along the path of that one impossible Thunderbolt hanging there slowly in the air, cutting and stabbing through the expanded dimension interference, and detonated in the heart of it.
Soundless Thunder picked up those running away and deposited them on their faces in a wall of wind and silence. A moment later, a hurricane swept back in and past them, rushing to the place where the fort had been, blinding Light covering all in smoke and dust and the haze of an explosion unlike anything anyone had ever felt before.
Looking on from solid lines crouched and braced against the wind howling past them, undeterred, Briggs said, “Guard formation. I’m going to see what’s going on out there. Kris, Magos, with me. Aun Gulchuta, Aun Hemenua, if you would join us.”
----
The Hea families were still struggling to their feet when our group strode past them. There had been no noise, precious little light, yet the impact to their souls made it hard to see, and hear, and even think.
Nonetheless, some of them managed to get to their feet, looked around, and saw that behind them was only a roiling cloud of smoke and dust, and there was no attacking army coming to slay them all.
What warriors and shamans had managed to flee the place staggered up and stumbled after the outsiders. If they had no weapons in their hands, lost in the fallout of the explosion, it was probably for the best at this point.
The air was aswirl with dimensional fluxes that made settling down the air and dust in it hard, at least until vivus was introduced to the game. Unwhite flames lit up on Weapons, poofed out instantly to clear the air for twenty feet around us, and streamed on ahead, clearing up the view as the wind carried it to all the active particles and ate them free of the dimensional residues.
The circle of falling crystalline dust around us expanded faster than we were walking, the air stilling. It was a surreal experience to the Hea trailing cautiously after us, watching glittering stars fall out of the nimbus of dust and ash.
Briggs just grunted as matters became visible ahead of us, and we all stopped right on the edge of it.
The falling crystals swept on ahead, widening and rising and clearing the view of the crater that was extending down and away from in front of us.
We were a hundred yards outside the walls of Dryreach yet.
Well, the former walls of Dryreach.
Shell-shocked Hea tottered up on either side of us, watching with us as the dust and smoke cleared. The fused arc of stone and soil, sparking with vivic energies falling and misting over it, crawling eagerly forward as they found residues to feast on, extended out before us.
Out, and out, and out…
It took several minutes for the wind and appetite of the vivus to do its thing, sparkling falls of misting matter spattering down to the huge concave crater where once one of the largest fortress complexes in all of Dereth had stood.
Now, it was just a curved crater of dimensionally-sheared stone, everything within taken up and devoured by a tide of energies that had left nothing behind.
With it were gone the majority of the Hea’s warriors and shamans, as well as most of their elders. They had been the ones helping and guarding the virindi with their rituals, the ones to finally rebel when they realized what was about to happen, and the ones who had stayed behind trying to delay the incoming magic as long as possible.
The Hea had nothing left to fight with. Naturally all their Summons had been consumed at the same time as the fortress had.
“Hea Kurugus.”
The tall and strong chieftain did not look so tall and impressive at the moment. As a matter of fact, he looked like he was about to break under the weight of what he was seeing.
Nevertheless, he turned at the sound of Briggs’ voice, finding himself actually looking up at the towering Warlord. He had almost no choice but to straighten under those pale green eyes.
“The fate of your people now rests in the hands of what Aun Hemenua and Aun Gluchuta decide,” Briggs stated grimly, waving to the senior shaman and chieftain of the Aun. “I think you have much to talk about now.”
The two Aun were rather surprised at the trust, honor, and responsibility thrust upon them, but both of them bowed to accept the duty.