Something pinged just at the edge of my Detect Aberrants V+1. My eyes widened, glancing at the last sets of tentacles going up like candles and blazing away, the thing-choppers swarming to get the last of them.
No telepathy around Aberrants. “Kill the last of those things and then RUN DIRECTLY AWAY FROM THE DERU TREE!” I ordered all of them urgently, and crackling Silver lightning materialized over them as my Haste spell caught them up.
Kris didn’t even question it, simply taking up the order as the Trembling Song hung in the air with a ghostly sound and their Weapons became a staccato, energetic rhythm. “You heard her! CHOP AND RUN, AND NOBODY BETTER BE SLOW!”
The ground quivered from deep down below, while I blew my a flight of Fastcast Shards up the side of the Deru Tree, drawing a long line of multi-hued Flames up the side of it with ever-increasing speed, the fires seemingly drawn by the literal rain of vivus coming down from above, waiting to connect and complete a circuit…
Like swarming locusts, the melee teams fell upon the last two clusters of tentacles, hewing them down with a frenzied speed as Silver crackles followed them and every motion of them. The stalks were hacked through in seconds, all told, and Kris simply ordered, “RUN!”
Everyone streamed down the side of the hill and away from the Deru Tree, lurching as the ground started to heave and rumble underneath them, and they realized why she had so insisted that they learn their damn heavyfoot and lightfoot.
Kris and the Mick rudely threw six men who were going to fall down onto the Disks they’d brought up, stacking them on top of one another as they followed the teams down and off the hill and away as it began to tear and rip open.
Gouts and fumaroles of foul gases, chased by fires and vivus, spewed out of the ground, tearing open new gashes in stone and dirt. The sides of the hill around the Deru Tree were ripping open as something rippled and twisted underneath it.
The ripping, popping sound as that long line of Flame I’d ripped up the side of the Deru Tree split open was far too wet, way too organic. Dry wood deprived of all strength and power cracked and shattered as something swelled within it, the whole crown of the tree split open and fell down at the same moment as the strongest and thickest of branches shattered like twigs, and the bark of the Deru Tree ripped free and fell away in a great shed Burning husk, revealing what was beneath it.
It wasn’t a Deru Tree.
The tentacle was two hundred feet high, engorged with massive amounts of ley line energy, dotted with dozens of alien, multi-hued eyes like corrupted boils that were all looking at me in what could only be called hatred at being revealed.
The Flaming wood stacked around it like a custom-made campfire, blazing up higher as the Fires both seemed to reach for the revealed tentacle and pour down heavily into the fissures torn open in the ground all around.
“GIVE ME YOUR SHIELDS!” Zeks reached out and tore the Cerulean Sign-painted Shields off the arms of their wearers with Telekinesis, sending them skimming towards the massive revealed T’Thuunic Arm that had been growing inside the corpse of the Deru Tree.
All those eyeballs needed something more to look at than just me.
The oversized orbs got eyes-full of the anti-Aberrant Sign at close range as the Shields zipped up in front of them, forcing them to close at the purity and anathema each such Sign represented, which caused the whole Arm to shudder and tremble in revulsion and antipathy.
A bright yellow-green beam of power stabbed out across the distance for me.
My first mirror-bright Hexar Shield flipped out of my Masspack and reflected the Ray off to the right. A four-hundred old jungle giant was cut through like air, the whole section of its trunk for ten feet around the beam just vanishing into grit as it was Reflected away.
“Yeah, fuck you, too,” I said, and promptly unloaded a double heaping of Shards upon it as the Sublime Chord blossomed with purity of magic and mana and weighed down on this thing in the distance, letting it know the Land was with one of the two of us, and it wasn’t the one.
Radiant Force pulses with Banefire, Divine and Primal energies, and a whole lot of Kickers and Silver Fire Smote the Arm with full Heavenly antipathy. Dozens of eyeballs exploded into gore as the Banefire guided the Shards into them, blowing out chunks of its length and letting it know what I thought of its attempt to Disintegrate me.
That also meant it was hugely distracted as Kris was somehow at its base and climbing towards its top.
Bulging eyeballs exploded around her as crits blew out in Bursts of Lost Light and Aberrant Banefire. The hide of the Arm twisted and shifted under the clouds trailing her feet, but it had precious little time to react as it attempted to bend over to get a look at her, and she simply spiraled opposite it, her Tremblesense clearly telling her which way it was moving, and it simply didn’t have time to react to her as a winding trail of light and fire wound up its full length at incredible speed.
Ding! “TREMBLE!” she announced to it as she reached the massive three-foot eyeball at the very tip of its length, following the trunk as it writhed and bent underneath her, and hacked down with glee.
Stolen novel; please report.
+IV, Bane to Aberrants, Bane of Legends, Enmity to Evil, Brilliant. +X of natural-armor ignoring Sword swirling with massively enraged Lost Light tore at the thing as she plunged Quaver into that eyeball and the opening in its body behind it.
Stacked Banefires blew apart that massive eyeball, Quaver drove in, and Kris slammed her heavyfoot backwards and down.
A Weapon sharp enough to wound gods bit in, and she began to slide down the whole length of the fucker as Lost Light moved around the edge of a Blade of solid Light as it sliced through that hide and spiraling motes of the Lost Light forced it back and aside.
A massive gash over three feet deep split open in the side of the Arm as Kris slid back down its length, and even picked up speed as she fell.
She was hanging onto Quaver with one hand, using her Tremblesense to twist out of the course of any jutting eyeballs while Stand plowed a path behind her, the edge gleaming with the same magic as Quaver was via Main-Gauche, ripping away smaller eyeballs or slicing through larger ones she was sweeping past.
All the while, Quaver plowed a path of vertical disembowelment down the length of the massive thing.
Perhaps it could have pounded her flat if it could have flexed enough, but any bending sent her shooting to the side and around in curves and spirals that took her out of the path of any attempts to bring the tip down on her or the Arm to slam her into the ground.
Indeed, it was trying to whip itself back and forth to do one or both things, and simply couldn’t get her to stay on a predictable course with the speed she was moving at!
“Just fucking BURN!” I thundered at it, triggering a Silver Smite, and brought a Wall of Fire down it, right on that monstrous cut into its heart.
Holy Banefire’d energies blazed up in singing joy, finding much to grow on there. Electrum Flames blazing with mistfire raced down the Arm along that monstrous cut, closing in on Kris as she fell down it backwards.
She just grinned as she saw it coming, taking her slide all the way down into the inferno raging all the way around the base of the thing, momentarily lost from sight as the Wall of Fire followed her down.
The writhing tip of the thing whipped down into the area where she’d fallen like a whip driven by a god.
TING!
She arced out to the side of the impact zone, perfectly timing it as the tip coiled back up, shearing off the top three feet of the tip as it passed by her by, and a plume of something that wasn’t sap or blood spewed forth, igniting in Wrathfire as it did so.
A keening that was more in the mind than reality shook the air as she hit the ground, darted to one side, and the Arm lunged after her, effectively blinded and trying to see her with whatever remained of its roots.
It smashed right through another jungle giant, twenty feet of trunk smashed through with supernatural strength and force, and Kris just hopped over it, six eyeballs spraying apart in Lost Light as she did so.
I detonated a hundred more Shards around it into its eyeballs, and then Kris was well out of its range.
The Disintegration beam lashed out at her from an eyeball I hadn’t popped.
She leapt up, spun around, and Quaver flashed through a glittering arc, Spellcutting that deadly Ray into a thousand ineffectual sprays that were little more than streaks of light as her Null neutralized the shattered magic.
I noted the teams had very wisely gotten behind mana-reinforced walls so as not to be the target of that beam. The Mick wasn’t even going to attempt to cut that beam, either.
I unloaded more Shards, going for quantity as the entire length of the thing was now on fire. More eyeballs blew apart, Banefire powered by the Silver Smite digging deep and hard for a feast of siphoned mana that was now becoming fuel to an ever-increasing inferno as Flames not natural in the slightest, powered by Primal and Holy fury, ate at the thing and powered up a vivic feast for the Land.
The base of the hill there rumbled and collapsed in on itself, something down below settling, probably the last of the massive root system of the Deru Tree. The raging inferno out of sight underground blossomed up through the rents and crevasses there, and continued to build.
I whipped up a Burning Mire around the base of the thing, increasing all fire-type damage in the area, and watched the Flames blaze up even faster and harder.
---
Kris Skated up next to me, the Mick following cautiously. I moved my Hexar Shield to guard him, which he acknowledged with a silent thankful glance.
A half-dozen more Shard volleys had basically cleaned out the rest of the eyes that I could see, the others already popped by flames. I was basically just sniping it with constant Dartrays to add more Silver Smiting Kickers to its base.
“Did ye suspect this?” the Mick demanded of the two of us.
“It came up as a possibility as to why the damn thing didn’t fall down when all those tentacles were growing all around it, and not much else.” Kris wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Kind of were hoping there was another explanation, but when the vivus lit up on it, welp, that was a sign of Aberrant influence. Dead vegetation doesn’t trip up vivus without negative or other unnatural energies going through it.”
“Good disguise, eh?” I asked him, as we watched the burning thing twisting and spasming in frantic pain. The Fires at its base were extended for over two hundred feet around it in all directions through rents in the ground that had blasted through the stone and earth to release their fury.
“Too damn good,” he agreed, watching as I kept sending a Split Dartray boring into the base of the thing, my other hand raised up in a warding gesture if it decided to unleash something, not that I expected any such thing to happen. “Everyone always hated fighting those damn tentacles, an’ we had no idea how much real danger we were in…”
“The Blight T’Thuun brings is nice food for the Land if Burned en vivus, but a horrible corruption if allowed to grow. Aberrants are not kind to mortal reality,” Kris stated calmly, her gaze as focused and ready as mine was.
“How much Karma be it worth?” he asked, almost rhetorically.
“Better. It unlocked the Luminance advance for the teams when they finished the tentacle spawns,” I informed him, which earned me a startled look. “Aye, the Land is paying some sort of attention here.” I smiled hard at the crumbling Arm in front of us, its writhing struggles growing slower and more uncontrolled. “There’s a fair to excellent chance that the death of this Arm will also allow the Land to grow a new Deru Tree here.”
“The same way it boosts the green an’ flowers where things be dying t’ vivus, aye,” he nodded in understanding, his voice grim and satisfied. “Could nae happen t’ a better foul an’ corrupt Mythos thing, aye?”
“I think we are all agreed on that,” Kris nodded.
We stayed there and watched all night as it fell, Burned, and a great devouring fog was lit within in by underground flames going in and eating up the last of it…