Chapter 32
The Winds of Death
Our foray through the fourth colony almost ended in ruin when more than half our air defence passed out multiple times across two minutes. Most of the survivors, students, and faculty were now suffering from extreme mana exhaustion. The most functional kept forgetting the words they were trying to say, while the least functional were unable to do more than stare into space while drooling. None of them were fit to cast spells, as every time they tried to rely on their skills to force their bodies to comply, they passed out. Our method for passing through nests wouldn’t work without enough air defence.
My only solution for finishing our journey through the third floor involved committing acts universally condemned by every nation on the planet. That didn’t bother me, but everyone else would disagree.
Mandible clacks echoed through the tunnel entrance as Davina finished anchoring my death voids with runic circles, holding the spells in place to stop the workers and fliers from getting through. With the circles, the spells could self-sustain for a few hours before deteriorating and breaking apart.
Davina turned to me, leaning on her staff for support, as her zombifying body sapped her strength. Casting so many master-tier death bolts and being close to so many death voids was catching up with her.
“I’m done,” she said. “Where do you want me to begin making the next layer of death voids?”
“At the next intersection. Use the corpses to enhance the spells.”
Davina nodded, turned, and dashed off, moving like a blur through the glowing crystal forest. Her speed was still impressive but slower due to her constitution and growing mana sickness. I turned to the entrance and leapt between the dark vortexes of death energy, unaffected by the vacuum pressure that tried to drain my life force and leave me a withered husk.
A hundred feet in front of me, Angelica was crippling hunters while dodging workers and fliers as she slowly blocked the tunnel with bodies.
Helping me kill so many hunters had pushed Angelica and Davian’s level beyond the mid-200s, firmly cementing them in Dragon territory. My instincts were still screaming at me to wrap Angelica up with compulsions so tight she couldn’t think for herself, but I still refused to do that. Not only did the man I once was think it was wrong, but it was also shortsighted.
My ability to compel Angelica would always fade, given enough time. My monster was always going to gain her freedom. Reconciling her anger and bitterness, pushing her to have more self-control, and pulling her from the self-centred shell she’d created to survive her parents had been my long-term plan for her. Without those changes, nothing protected me from her wrath or her lack of comprehension of the horrors of what I’d done to her.
Angelica was my greatest mistake, and I wouldn’t subject her to any more mistakes, even if that cost me my life. Luke understood that. It was why he was so concerned when he left. He could see how quickly Angelica grew stronger and knew she could break free, even if she didn’t know that herself.
I’d once promised him that I would treat Angelica better, that I would be better so that he didn’t have to be the hero who slayed the monster she became. I was no longer certain I could keep that promise, but I couldn’t be anything other than the man I was. And the man I was, wanted what was best for my monster, even if I couldn’t always give it to her.
I climbed the hill of hunter bodies and stopped beside Angelica, raising my hand and snapping my fingers to begin slaughtering the hunters she’d already crippled. Angelica raised the end of her staff, filling the air with enough deathfire to impress a dracolich, before leaping towards another hunter that was trying to scale her wall of writhing victims. Deathfire surrounded her staff as she released a powerful necrotic strike on a hunter’s knee, shattering the chitin and destroying the muscle underneath.
She moved to the next leg and repeated the process until the gargantuan ant couldn’t hold its own weight. Then, she left it to drag itself to the ideal position before breaking its remaining knees.
With only the two of us killing the hunters, Angelica’s level continued to grow, though the growth was beginning to slow as she was getting close to reaching the same level as the hunters.
Her current skill was a mere shadow of the raw power her armour and attributes offered her, leaving her significantly less deadly than she could be. Currently, she’d be able to hold her own against an ancient vampire if they caught up, but she wouldn’t be able to kill it, even though her vampiric touch and aura were now much stronger than before.
The growth and changes to her equipment no longer concerned me. There were no signs of corruption from the base materials. The craftsmen's precautions to curb the darker nature of the materials I’d asked them to use seemed to have worked. If anything, the stronger vampiric influence seemed to be calming her down, making her more analytical and focused.
For the next ten minutes, we killed hunters, clogging the tunnel with their corpses until there wasn’t enough room for any of them to push through.
Angelica turned to me after knocking a worker from the ceiling with her staff. “Is this enough?”
I could sense that there weren’t any hunters left. The workers would take a long time to clear these bodies. The chances of them breaking through and destroying the death voids, allowing the fliers to chase us before we moved on, were low. But it was still possible. That was why I had Davina producing other death voids to slow them down.
“It’s enough.”
Angelica turned and leapt from the pile of corpses to the crystal-packed tunnel floor three hundred feet below, hitting the ground and exploding forward at speeds I couldn’t hope to follow.
I entered the Deadlands to catch up.
I stepped out of the Deadlands at the second intersection, next to the hunters’ corpses and the runic circles Davina was creating.
Two hours of fighting our way through ant territory had filled every storage item we had with chitin. The only thing we were taking now were cores, so each corpse had a gaping hole where Gorgath had torn the core free while he collected several of their more magically dense organs to eat.
I raised my hand and snapped my fingers three times in quick succession, creating three death voids. Davina finished empowering her circles, linking them to the spells above and anchoring them in place.
“Done,” she said half a minute later before racing off.
Several intersections later, each warded with death voids, we caught up with the vanguard. Gorgath was busy tearing into a corpse for their cores and organs while Gregory and sixty deathlords who could now fight the hunters alone inside the nest, stood guard.
I exited the Deadlands next to Gregory in a giant crystal forest.
The ongoing fighting had finally destroyed Gregory’s equipment. He was wrapped from head to toe in bone armour Davina had summoned. His aura radiated power to a degree that told me I couldn’t harm him without magic. He was too tough and fast, but he wouldn’t survive more than ten seconds against my kind without the necessary equipment to back him up.
Gregory gave me a stiff nod as he scanned the tunnel for threats. “You get the tunnel blocked this time?”
“As well as we can under the circumstances.”
“That’s what you said last time before we almost got the survivors killed trying to push through before we were ready.”
He was stressed, subconsciously or consciously, knowing we couldn’t survive another nest.
“That wasn’t because we pushed forward too soon,” I replied.
“I saw the barrier around the mobile palace flickering.”
“The barrier issue is because we don’t have enough air defence to keep the fliers at bay, not because we weren’t prepared.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He gritted his teeth. “We need to change our tactics, I take it?”
I nodded. “I’m going to summon a death wind.”
Gregory whipped his head toward me. “Fucking hell, sir.”
“Language.”
Gregory ignored me. “Are you trying to lose your soul and get us executed?”
“It’s the only way to ground the fliers.”
“Then get Davina to make it.”
Summoning a death wind would create a more toxic version of the environment that surrounded Contessa’s city. It would be like standing inside a basic death bolt spell and the more we killed inside it, the stronger the effect would become.
For those without the Death Magic Resistance skill, entering it would be fatal. It wouldn’t be fatal for the ants, not in a timeframe that mattered, but the fast-beating wings of the fliers would quickly burn off, corroding away in seconds, relieving them of their ability to fly.
“Davina can’t tap into the mana in your cores,” I said. “Her death wind won’t be big enough to flood the nest. I need all of you backing me up to achieve what we need.”
“Fuck.”
“Language.”
***
Summoning a death wind had more in common with crafting undead than casting a spell because of one detail. Death winds required large quantities of life’s bane to be summoned. Life’s bane was an undead material universally banned in every nation, even Murdell. Its corruptive and destructive properties made radioactive fallout preferable to it appearing within your borders because radioactive fallout didn’t self-propagate.
The first step of creating life’s bane involved turning the hunters closest to the nest into zombies. The second step involved withering their flesh to dust with concentrated death magic. The powdered flesh was then infused with the most corrupting forms of death magic and the core of a sharn beast to make it stronger. These magics weakened everything the powder encountered by feeding on its life force and magic to transform its flesh into more life’s bane.
Fire, life, holy, necrotic, or alternative forms of death magic were the only way to destroy the substance, though enough time away from life force would also do it. Creating a handful of the material was enough to get you banned from most nations, but only after a bounty had been placed on your head with every adventurer's guild in the country.
However, despite all that, it was still my least destructive option for getting everyone safely through the third floor, and everyone only agreed to my plan after I brought up the other options.
While I performed the necessary spells, Gregory had my death lords sit behind me in rows, gathering mana. The mana they gathered flowed from their cores into mine before I channelled it into the shrinking pile of life’s bane. A thick grey cloud of swirling decay billowed from the corroded zombie flesh and sharn beast core, racing down the tunnel towards the mobile palace.
Using the people's life force inside the mobile palace as an anchor would allow me to move the death wind through the Abyss without leaving a trail of bodies. However, doing it this way wasn’t without risks.
Everyone who didn’t have the death magic resistance skill was locked behind that barrier, protected by clerics and paladins who were cleansing the life’s bane leaking through. I'd lose my soul if they failed to do their part, but our choices were between this, something worse, or leaving the survivors to die.
I wasn’t going to leave them to die.
Kathrine finally cared about me.
As the last of the materials lifted from the floor and flew away, I wove an expert-tier spell to slow the deterioration and control the life’s bane. As the spell encompassed the swirling cloud, I lowered my hand and turned to Gregory. “You can give the order.”
Gregory grunted as he opened his eyes. “On your feet and to your positions!”
We’d spent nearly an hour summoning this death wind, but if I successfully maintained it, we wouldn’t need to create another before we left the third floor. With enough corpses, I could use the life’s bane’s self-propagating properties to drag the death wind to the next nest.
Death lords in bone armour blurred through the tunnel, forming a fighting wedge in front of the mobile palace, while Gregory and his team ran ahead to invade the nest.
Seeing everyone finally moving, Gorgath pushed himself to his feet and lumbered past me, heading to the mobile palace to join the frontline. The kid was already breathing heavily as his stronger life force attracted the life’s bane even as I tried my best to push it away from him.
Davina stood on his shoulder, absorbing the death magic in the air around him and nullifying the life’s bane that clung to him with spells. The life’s bane wasn’t likely to kill him in the next few hours, but left untreated, he would be dead before the end of the day.
Gorgath glanced back as he approached the edge of the concentrated death wind. “Gorgath better understands why Professor Vincent is so feared by his people now.” He turned and plunged headfirst through the cloud, making his way to the front.
I raised my hand and cast the death void spell as far behind the convoy as possible while maintaining the death wind. Death voids fed on all forms of death magic, including life’s bane. The spell self-stabilised in the death-rich environment, feeding off the taint I’d created. It would purify the tunnel, destroying the horror I’d unleashed before burning itself out.
My last job done, I blurred towards the mobile place and leapt, casting a basic levitation spell to lighten my weight. I landed on the barrier among the swirling grey cloud of life’s bane and sent a telepathic message to Carolyn to move forward as I ran to the centre of the mobile palace.
As the mobile palace accelerated, I drew mana from the Undead Enhancement Club’s cores. Most were true necromancers, so I’d been able to bond with their cores using my sorcerer sovereign skill. Moving the death wind with the mobile palace required more mana than just holding it in place, which was why the students had to step in.
With each nest we passed through, Gregory’s team had grown. Almost one hundred death lords could now survive in the colony. That was enough that I was no longer concerned about the hunters or the workers. If this worked, the fliers also wouldn’t be a problem.
As we approached the end of the tunnel, I sensed Gregory and his team leaving, having finished crippling the hunters blocking the entrance. A few seconds later, we reached the end of the tunnel and the entrance to the nest, and the amount of life force around me grew.
I sensed the crippled hunters lying across the tunnel floor, unable to lift themselves from the ground as the mobile palace passed overhead. I then sense the dead and dying workers on the ground below us, along with the fliers in the air around us.
Unleashing the death wind was as easy as releasing my hold over it. Freed from my restraints, it blew in all directions like a raging tempest, drawn by the stronger life force of the ants, filling the nest with a thick grey fog that poisoned everything it touched.
As my vision cleared, I watched the first fliers enter the new environment. Their fast-beating wings immediately began to corrode from the quick, repeated contact with the caustic material. Within seconds, they began to fall, dropping to the ground with frayed wings, unable to fly without them, like monsters on the lower floors.
The death wind moved like a shockwave, spreading through the nest and corrupting everything it encountered. It spread faster because of the fliers' dissolving wings and the worker ants' corpses, which were breaking down beneath us.
I raised my hand and cast the death void spell at the entrance to the tunnel behind us. The spell shuddered for a second and then stabilised, not needing my input to maintain itself as it fed on the death wind like the other death void, I’d created. My new priority was destroying the death wind once it had served its purpose. Letting this spread through the Abyss was not something I wanted.
I was almost certain that the Abyss had some mechanism to protect itself from this material, but almost certain and being certain were two entirely different situations.
I spent the six-mile journey through the colony creating a death void every quarter of a mile to cleanse the corruption I’d brought to the Abyss.
We entered the tunnel we sought without trouble. The threat from the fliers, hunters, and workers all accounted for.
A hundred yards in, the mobile palace stopped.
As ordered, Davina leapt from Gorgath’s shoulder and ran back to the tunnel entrance to join Gregory and his team. They then raced off to raise death voids at the other tunnel entrances to prevent the life’s bane from spreading.
I leapt from the back of the mobile palace to a barren tunnel floor near the entrance and was immediately surrounded by Commander Taylor’s people.
“Your Dark Eminence, we are ready to serve,” she announced.
“You know what to do.”
She turned to her people. The one hundred death lords under her command dropped to the ground and began gathering mana before she gave the order, proving my statement true.
I turned to the nest, drawing on their mana, and wove the spell needed to summon the death wind swirling through it. As I released the spell, the grey cloud began to pour into our tunnel, over the heads of the other death lords still holding the entrance against the workers. It blew past us to surround the mobile palace.
With each passing second, the cloud grew thicker and more destructive. I heard shouting coming from within as clerics and paladins did their best to control the leaks.
As I finished summoning the death wind from the nest, Sir Trent appeared beside me. With him standing so close, my instincts put me on edge. Not only was he stronger than Gregory, but he also had the equipment and skill to back up his strength.
Sir Trent stared at the swirling grey cloud around the mobile palace for a few seconds. It was even thicker than the previous one. The dead ants and high ambient mana making it easy for the life’s bane to self-propagate.
Sir Trent grimaced. “Can you truly control this curse?”
“It’s not a curse.”
“So, you claim.”
“Have you ever heard of a curse that was this destructive?”
“No.”
“So, not a curse. What do you want?”
“The princess wants to know if you foresee any further problems with our escape?”
I could sense exactly where Davina was, so waited a few seconds to give my reply. “So long as they maintain the barrier and keep the life’s bane leaking inside contained, we should escape the Abyss without any further problems.”
To punctuate my point, a death void appeared in the centre of the nest. Every ant froze in place for a second. Then as one, they all turned and ran away, rushing to defend their queen.
Sir Trent glanced at the fleeing ants, before glancing back at me, smelling slightly intimidated by the timing of my pronouncement and everything he saw. He stared at me for another few seconds, before leaving in a blur to inform the princess of the good news.