A twenty-stepper was only six days. I’d be done with Kara’s Pyramid tomorrow. The lugians moving into the area could just sit there and watch me Shape for hours and hours, totally mesmerized by the amount of stone I was shifting and the eye-watering quality of the Runework I was putting in.
“Briggs still set on hitting the northern towns again?” I asked Kris, eyeing his plans for the raid in the Markspace. There were big red indicators all over the place, however. “It looks like he thinks it is going to be a trap.”
“Oh, the undead have definitely been busy with somethings when they restaffed the towns,” Princess Kristie assured me grimly. “Pretty sure that wiping the towns off the map is part of what is designed to happen.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, although it was the shades historically, wasn’t it?”
“In Isparian memory. You’re forgetting how old this place is. I’m sure the settlements have been razed many times over, and just rebuilt by the next group drawn to settle in there by the lack of Summon points.”
“If it’s an ambush, then the best thing to do is counter-ambush or spring it the wrong way. We don’t need to take the towns back right now at all, and while the undead may be patient, that’ll evaporate if we start picking off their people.”
“Hearing them wail as they Burn has been rewarding, then,” she sniffed, while she finished going through the belongings of the dead and pocketing everything. “Opinion on what they were planning here?”
“They were going to bring in something big.” I eyed the empty Runework speculatively. “Something of earth, I think, big and mean and strong. Perhaps a monolith or elder monolith, or an Elemental Princeling. In an underground area, it would have been invincible.”
“Well, a good thing it wasn’t brought in, then…” She paused, and looked down sharply.
At pretty much the same moment, the Circle refilled with energy with a snap of restored power.
“Code Violet!” Princess Kristie shouted aloud and in the Markspace, as we both sprinted towards the doorway. She tried dragging Quaver through the Runework, but it only caused a momentary blip in the surging energies around us before the damage sealed itself behind us. “Vacate the city IMMEDIATELY! RUN! RUN, YOU IDIOTS, AND DON’T SLOW DOWN!”
The Marked shouted back and combats broke off instantly all over the place, Alliance troops booking for the ways out that manifested in their Markspaces at top speed, even as the earth jerked sideways underneath me. Happy for Footsteps of the Mage keeping me six inches off the ground, Kris Skated right through it, while many a soldier cursed as they were thrown off their feet or into walls by the quake.
Something was coming in, clawing at the Veil, and a lot of power was pumping into the effort to get through. “Existing dimensional funnel, Interdiction isn’t stopping it because it’s already extant!” I breathed out. “It’s just having to work to expand it instead of bringing in whatever is coming almost instantly!”
“Lucky, lucky us!” Kris /snarled, paying for the Mass Disks to be Flashcast through her Matrix as they popped up around us, just so those we passed could fling themselves onto them before they could be tossed off their feet again. Whole teams basically barely able to stay on their feet piled onto the swarm of Disks as we caught up to them, making for intersections we could reach, and soon over a hundred people were sprawled two and three to the Disks as the ceilings cracked, walls began to splinter, dust fell down all around, and something REALLY big began to come on through behind us.
I shot up out of the ramp to the outside, my own Disk unfurling behind me for me to drop into as I Cast another Mass Disk, noting everyone outside the area of the underground city was already fleeing into the desert. They saw/heard/felt us coming, and happily got themselves scooped up by more Disks as Princess Kristie ran by, the only one who didn’t take one being Briggs, who was towing a half-dozen steel ones with wounded soldiers seated on them.
I flashed burning, Healing Shards through the wounded, everyone who raised their arms, and if they yelped at the fiery heat that welded injuries shut and powered the fast closing of wounds and replacement of blood, it was kind of lost in the cracks and rumbles of the ground giving way behind us.
There were above-ground buildings in Xarabydun, but not for long. The crater expanded with great speed, swallowing the extant buildings and sending them sliding and falling into the growing pit there, cracking and crumbling on the sand and stone that kept right on moving and churning after it hit the bottom, sprays of dust leaping fitfully into the air.
“Pressure from the Veil is acting on whatever it is. It might manage to get here, but won’t be able to sustain its presence for long. Briggs, get on a Disk!”
He blinked, then hopped up, pulled out his own Disk, landed on it, and bopped fists with Princess Kristie as she veered over instantly to take over the towing.
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She wasn’t in contact with the ground, and realized the problem, immediately tacking off at an angle to our previous course.
The crack of the desert splitting open around our previous course was deafening, sand and grit exploding into the air as a yawning chasm opened up right along the course Briggs’ heavy boots had been making. Likely he’d’ve been able to sense it coming and jump to avoid it, but nobody felt like playing dice and testing his reflexes that way.
Someone, multiple someones, screamed something. I looked back at a twisting, multi-segmented tentacle or appendage, it was hard to really say what, as it shot out of the air, jointed at weird angles, tipped with razored spikes… which seemed to have clattering mouths at the tip, the spike itself being an extruded tongue.
It arced down and drove into the ground, much like a finger clawing for purchase, and another one heaved itself up out of the pit at the same time. I watched the shockwave traveling across the ground with plumes of rolling dirt and spray. Kris obligingly hopped a foot higher off the ground, skating along as it blew by beneath us, spraying and rasping against the bottom of our Disks, everyone covering their faces to keep it out of their eyes.
We were making really good distance and time, however, as Princess Kristie was not slow. A third tentacle, another shockwave, and then another chasm split open to our left as something too big cracked and crunched and tried to get through solid matter where space wasn’t giving way to fit it in.
The rigid edges of a multi-leaved shell began to extrude above the pit, the edges of which began to rise…
I dropped a Darkness spell on the backmost Disk, startling the riders, and snapped all the other Disks into abrupt alignment with the Darkness between them and whatever was looking after us from back there.
“Nobody is looking at that thing!” I informed everyone with Magevoice that could be heard despite all the rumbling. There was a grinding, screeching sound building, like all the fingernails on the blackboard ever, and I threw up the Sound Bubble right on the heels of the Darkness.
Most of the rumbling from without went away, the sudden quiet absolutely jarring as Princess Kristie didn’t look back and kept booking.
I flashed up a big Interdiction, the strongest I could, and sent it back that way.
The way the Veil suddenly quivered, as if something really strong had just rammed into it, was good validation of the move.
I pulsed out more of them, ten in total, forming a long line of absolutely-reinforced reality in massive bubbles that could anchor and buttress the greater reality back there, bringing more and more pressure to bear on the thing.
Princess Kristie juked aside again. The chasm that ripped past us only missed by about ten feet, almost upsetting several of the Disks to the left. Obviously the fleeing globe of blackness was pretty easy to see, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t get out of range of the thing pretty damn quick, as she’d seen where the first two had petered out.
We couldn’t hear the cry, but I could feel the air vibrating through Primus’ nascent Air Elemental Command, my second Ring’s harmony with Air registering the sound even if the only thing we saw was the view outside growing increasing blurred and static-like as the air rippled so fast.
The end of the chasms flashed past, and we were on open ground…
“Rock in the sky!” Briggs shouted, and all who could see looked up to zero in on a hunk of stone larger than a house was waaaaay up in the air… and coming right for us.
Kris promptly juked right, and we fed her the Markview as it slowly veered after us, closing in with impossible speed and accuracy…
“Close your eyes and hang on!” It was a second from hitting us when she did a sliding ninety-degree turn to the left, far too many gravities to pull for anyone running without lightfoot, or without Disks to keep people on board them and ignore the physics of the direction change.
The rock slammed down exactly on where we’d been going to be, unable to slow itself fast enough to catch us. Kris snaked through another ninety-degree turn as everyone’s stomachs leapt for their throats, and made for more distance, having just been shown we hadn’t gone far enough.
It did try another rock, but it couldn’t quite get the range on it, considering that we were now a mile away and only picking up speed as Kris burned Stamina for extra juice and her feet glowed with Soul magic. Nobody there had ever moved so fast, and that included those who’d been lucky enough to enjoy some freefall.
We were two miles out before she slowed down slightly, and three miles before she stopped sprinting and settled into a jog which could still have outpaced a thoroughbred.
“The Mick is over that hill. We can stop there,” I murmured, looking backwards at the manafield and feeling the inexorable strength of the Veil pressure closing in on the unwanted Entity there.
The sands were all wrong, as it were...
---
We crested the hill like a ramp, Kris surfing down the air in a casual corkscrew or four, the whole raiding team managing half-hearted whoops as she did so. She slid right up on Lord Mick and his Roaches, assembled there on their own Disks and astutely not looking back whence we’d come, even through the hill did a good job cutting off the view.
A crude barge raised on Disks held over a dozen mangled forms made of metal. The Constructs’ chests were fused and blown out, internal mechanisms there completely destroyed. They had dome-like skulls on swivels, broad shoulders, and heavy primary chassis, armored and all built of various hued metals.
Dominating them was a massive Knight of golden metal, easily head and shoulders above any of the rest of them. The rupture of his core had done considerably less overall damage to him than to his subordinates, so Atamarr the Golden Primus was mostly intact, but as inert as any of his comrades.
This was the main objective of the raids. The undead had likely known there were buried Gear Knights in the area, particularly the Primus, but they’d all been stuck at least ten feet down and artfully concealed, so casual digging efforts by the undead had found nothing. Kris had discovered the graves with some crisscrossing of the area under the directions of the diggers via her Tremblesense, and the Mick and the Roaches, with the help of some Summoned Elementals, had been quick to get started pulling the fallen Constructs out.