Pheus was running out of ideas. More importantly he was running out of magicka, and the mana in the air would have struggled to turn a teaspoon of water tepid.
The liches hadn’t had the fight all their own way. One of them lay in little more than splinters where the battle had began, a result of Pheus mimicking Erebus’ gravity hammer spell with gratifying effect. He’d even been fast enough to grab the lich’s fleeing soul out of the air, shredding it with vindictive glee.
What had been less gratifying was the way the spell had simply slid off the shields of the other two undead. Now that, he had to begrudgingly admit, was talent. To see a spell once and create a countermeasure on the fly… it would frankly be a disservice to call the skeletal mages opposite him one-in-a-generation talents.
The good news was that the lich he’d turned into bonemeal had been the entropy mage. The bad news was that the other two were between them more than capable of breaking his spellshield anyway with a somewhat non-traditional one-two punch of fire and lightning.
Fire and lightning was an odd combination of attacks, very different from the more traditional lightning and fire, and there was a serious difference between the two.
With the latter the goal was to massively and suddenly stress the shield, allowing the far slower moving blast of fire to break through and roast the caster behind it. It was a reliable strategy, only slightly undermined by the fact that a fast reacting mage, amongst whom Pheus ranked highly, could repair the shield before the fire hit.
Fire and lightning was a lot harder, mostly because the thermal bloom of the fire tended to dissipate the bolt of electricity. But with a sufficiently powerful strike it was a deadly combination, the fire stressing the shield evenly and heavily before the lightning simply punched through. It didn’t take much voltage either, at least on a mortal, just enough to send muscles to spasm, then the shield would drop and the fire would turn the unlucky mage into briquettes.
Fortunately for Pheus, gods were made of somewhat sterner stuff than humans. Unfortunately, that sterner stuff meant he was being electrocuted about as fast the lich could charge the spells.
Options running more than a little thin, the weary god opted for his least favourite tactic. Negotiation.
“You realize the fate of the world is at stake right now?” He bellowed, having to fight to make his words heard over the roar of the fire eating away at his thin bubble of mana and willpower.
To his surprise that actually got a response, the flames flickering out and the lightning failing to fall.
“The world is often in danger. It is yet to fall. Opportunities to finally purge gods from Reath are far rarer.” Lightning lich said evenly.
“Not in danger like this. You have to be able to feel her even from here right? This isn’t some prodigy mage with delusions of grandeur, that’s an imperator. Even I would struggle to lay a wound on her.” Pheus pressed, trying not to look too relieved as his divine spark steadily created fresh mana to fill his body.
It was a drop in the ocean to the power he could hold, but he hadn’t exactly been working with a full bucket at the start either. All three of Seruatis’ gods had been using up mana almost as fast their sparks could make it, whether to feed to the nascent spark, to help top up Seruatis’ mana gems and their host of functions or to pump it into the great obelisk in the centre. Mostly the latter.
Some things were more important even than their own safety.
The liches considered his words, no one became a pinnacle of necromancy by being an idiot. “By your own admission,” The fire lich began, “you would make no difference to the fight and I can feel the imperator’s strength dwindling even from here. I think you are just stalling.”
Pheus groaned, bluff called, “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t make a difference.”
“The Necropolis has already sent a response team trained for such incidents. We are trained to kill you. It is far more likely we would get in the way.” The lightning lich explained, electricity beginning to crackle between her hands again.
Desperately Pheus looked around, the street they were in was narrow, too narrow for him to get a sense how the battle was going beyond the yelling telling him people were still alive and fighting. It occurred to him that he’d been herded there for that very purpose, so that no one could interfere with an execution millennia in the making.
Of course some people didn’t care much for walls, or floors for that matter.
The Elder Wraith placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, bypassing his shield entirely where she’d risen through the ground. “Sloppy. Desperate.” She told him simply.
The god of dreams went statue still, not daring to speak. This close to him it would so terribly easy for the oldest wraith on Reath to pluck his spark from his chest.
“You got slow Pheus.” She continued, “Go plug the rift, or find someone who can. The Swordsman’s keeping it locked down for now but every moment he’s stuck in place is a moment our people are dying.”
“My lady?” Lightning lich asked, she and her companion had dropped to a knee, heads bowed in supplication to one of the very founders of the Necropolis. “Are you not going to take vengeance on this wretched creature?”
The Elder Wraith rubbed at her eyes tiredly, “Why on Reath would I do that?”
“…because he is our enemy? The things he and his people did?”
The spectral monster sighed, “I don’t need vengeance. I’m not even sure I want vengeance. What I am sure of is that this hateful wretch has done nothing since the war except labour night and day to protect Reath. To protect it from the monsters that live outside this world, the fools that live within it and even from time itself. No, I am no Medusa. I don’t need vengeance.”
It was hard to read a lich’s expression at the best of time, sun-bleached skulls couldn’t exactly emote, but the two in front of Pheus looked… lost. As if someone had stripped away the foundation of their world.
“When did you grow so weak elder one?” The lightning lich asked sadly, getting up to her feet. “So… irresolute?”
Pheus almost bristled on his ancient enemy’s behalf but the Elder Wraith simply laughed, “When I realised that all I was gaining from more power was more powerful enemies.”
For just a moment the god allowed himself to hope that she might actually have talked them down, at least until electricity began to crackle in lightning lich’s palms once more. “It’s a pity to have seen you fallen so far great wraith, rest assured we will ensure you are remembered as you were, rather than as the weakling you have become.”
Tempting as it was, Pheus didn’t stick around to watch the liches die. He had his own side of the bargain to uphold, and woe betide any paladins that got in his way.
As soon as he’d run far enough to be out of range of whatever spell the liches had been using to keep him corporeal, Pheus switched to his mistform, taking a moment to hover high and take in the battlefield properly for the first time since it had started.
True to the Elder Wraith’s word the Eternal Swordsman was indeed stood in front of the tear in reality, though no more demons were coming out of it. Even ragos had limits on how many of their fellows they could see diced into even cubes before they realized that fighting was a bad idea.
Still Seruatis’ great protector couldn’t just leave either, his presence was the only thing stopping legions of demons simply pouring in and thus just by standing on the other side the rage demons were more than achieving their goals.
Pheus would have bet several souls that the demons were just hirelings, muscle for one of the people actually invested in the assault’s outcome, and given they’d tied up the heaviest hitter Seruatis had they were money well spent.
The army from the mirror turned out to be a clan of odd looking ghouls that Pheus would later find out were the Drake-Eater Cabal, a group of undead consisting of ghoul and vampire who dined heavily upon dragon, wyvern and similar until they’d taken on some of the traits of their food.
Fortunately the hours of daylight had kept the vampires of the clan out of the fray, but Seruatis’ role as creche and daycare for young dragons had presented a banquet the ghouls had simply been unable to ignore.
Currently they were trying to funnel their way into the cafeteria, the great steel doors broken down, the runes on them simply melted away, and the stairs down an increasingly desperate melee as both sides made liberal use of dragonsbreath. The mortal defenders dying in droves whilst the ghouls all but waltzed through the flames.
Part of Pheus hurt at that, while Seruatis was no Olympus it had been home for a not inconsiderable amount of his life and knowing it was his actions that had wrought this destruction, however necessary, had him feeling pangs of pain in his chest that he had not expected.
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The cafeteria wasn’t the only place where fire was being used without any consideration for collateral damage. The Seruatis Library was a beacon of flame already, texts old as the fall of the gods vanishing at last from this world despite the best efforts of dozens of Seruatis’ retirees – many expressly forbidden from joining the fight.
There were other battles, small skirmishes, presumably where grudges lifetimes old were finally being given a chance to settle.
Several streets were all but filled wall to wall with statues, presumably where Dus had fought, each face a rictus of horror almost as terrifying as the bodies said grins were on, each a grotesque parody of humanity. The warped contingent it seemed had died as ignobly and immediately as expected.
What he couldn’t see was Dus herself, not a cause for concern in itself, the gorgon in his experience was the ultimate cockroach, repellent and damn near unkillable. What made her absence a cause for concern was that he couldn’t see either of his brothers.
An image came unbidden to his mind, of a gorgon, armed with an automaton’s god-slaying blade, plunging it into the back of a decision paralyzed Janus. Of Nemesis, their trusty guardian, ambushed whilst deep in the throes of battle.
Dus probably hadn’t betrayed them, unlike the liches earlier she had enough sense not to throw away Reath itself in the name of vengeance. But if she’d concluded the true battle was going well enough that Nemesis wouldn’t be needed…
Forcibly Pheus shoved that thought out of his mind. He had to stick to the plan. He’d already done all he could for the necromancer, now he had to save Seruatis.
*
“It hurts.” Janus sobbed, childlike as he stared at the blade emerging from his gut. The god of choices had never been wounded before. Never so much as got a papercut and the sight of his own golden blood had finally disproved the old myth that gods vomited rainbows.
“I know it does.” Dus said gently as she held the blade in place, an adamantine grip preventing the weeping god from pulling it free. The gorgon’s gaze flitted to Nemesis, the god of vengeance was just about holding the doorway as the automatons were forced to fight single file to break in.
Despite what their mad charge against Tsa’rahlitzek might imply, the machines were not stupid. The imperator had simply been a foe so great that their only chance of killing her was to just rush in and hope one of them got a strike in before she’d turned them all into slag.
When given a chance to prepare their attacks were a lot more calculated, like now for example.
It would have taken the machines an age to tunnel their way all the way to Seruatis from outside the bounds of Von Mori, and they’d have had to tunnel deep indeed to evade the dryad of the forest’s attention, for Von Mori held no love for the machines and would have gladly collapsed the earth upon them as they worked.
The prison beneath the sanctuary was one of Seruatis’ better kept secrets. Just about everyone who lived there knew there was an underground level where the more powerful artifacts were kept safely hidden from those foolish enough to use them.
A decent number had figured out that the farms that kept them fed lay even deeper still.
What only a select few knew was that the prison and the power source to Seruatis’ great barrier lay beneath even that, and what only the designers of said prison knew was that the two were one and the same.
Many had noted over the aeons the tendency for rogue immortals, devils with dreams of conquest and fae lords who’d scammed one mortal too many, to simply disappear, never to be heard from again. Nearly every single one of them had ended up here, the mana, chaos and other esoteric energies their bodies produced all harvested to power Seruatis’ defences and the obelisk.
It wasn’t done out of cruelty, such creatures were notoriously hard to kill, and in a couple of cases perhaps impossible, and they were even more difficult to contain. The only way to stop them breaking out instantly was to drain their powers, and to keep draining them until time took them.
So when the alarms on the prison had gone off, just about everyone who knew what that meant had made for it. A prison break here would mean chaos not seen since the Era of Invasion.
Only Dus, Nem and Jay had made it. The rest dragged into one fight or another.
What they’d found was the automatons going from cell to cell and skewering the occupants until they stopped moving. Their fell blades more than up to the task. Anathema swords they’d been called back during the fall, the secrets of their artifice had been lost long before the dwarves had fallen, because the dwarves had wanted to forget.
Smiths had taken hammers to their own hands just to ensure they could never make another.
Even with anathema blades the automatons had taken casualties, even without hellfire a twenty foot tall devil of rampage was still a twenty foot tall devil of rampage, more than capable of simply pulling the younger machines in half and leaving rents in the armour of the older models.
Nem had very nearly killed The Image as the disgraced immortal flickered into being in front of him, “Nem, thank yourselves you’re here. They’re making for the failsafe. You have to-“
The man snapped back out of reality as an anathema blade cut the air where he’d been standing, presumably fled.
Nemesis scowled at the machine, “I name you my enemy.” He told it simply, then simply grabbed the blade, yanking it out of the automaton’s arm before shoving it through its chest.
“Of course they’re going for the failsafe.” Dus groaned, concern in her sea-green gaze, “How long do we have until they reach it?” She demanded of Jay, grabbing the wide eyed god by the shoulder to snap him out of his daze.
“I don’t know. Things are… foggy.” He admitted, “I’m getting conflicting information. They’re ten minutes away, and no time at all.”
“Ten minutes.” Dus scowled, “Nemesis, give me that sword.”
The god of vengeance handed it to her without a word, stepping out into the corridor to retrieve another one.
“Okay here’s the plan. We get to the failsafe first.” The gorgon took out a scrying orb, within it two gods were struggling not to get diced apart by an imperator’s claws. “Unless… do you need to go Nem?”
The god gave the orb a glance, “She remains too much a threat.”
“Then let’s move.” Dus ordered.
They’d made good time, most of the automatons were busy executing the prisoners, and what few were in their way Nemesis had made very short work of whilst Dus had defended their rear.
The failsafe had been either a work of genius or of madness. A simple lever, tuned to the obelisk, that would use all that terrible energy to tear the entire prison from Reath, dumping the entire edifice into the void between worlds to dissipate or be devoured by Oblivion.
It would leave as great a wound in the world as Reath had ever known, from which Oblivion’s minions would pour without end. It was still preferable to letting every monster that had disappeared since Seruatis’ founding run wild but not by much.
To the relief of the three ancient monsters, the door to the failsafe was unmolested. It was a simple, unenchanted thing, made of oak. Any of the three of them could likely have walked through it without slowing down.
Some might call it an obvious weakness but the simple fact was that anything capable of getting to the door would have already overcome enough obstacles that mere enchantment might as well be meaningless.
With the corridor clear, Jay had taken the lead, Nem and Dus facing ever growing numbers of automatons now the machines had taken note of the actual gods in their midst rather than merely those with the potential to survive apotheosis.
With a smile the god of doors had opened it, the lock sliding in at his touch as he turned to beckon in his brother and oldest foe. The smile fell as one of the automatons waiting inside stepped up behind him to drive an anathema blade through his back.
They really were terribly clever when given time to plan.
Which was how Dus had found herself cradling her hated foe in her arms, having to stop him pulling a sword out so he wouldn’t bleed to death.
“It hurts.” Janus repeated, almost amazed, “Why does it hurt?”
Dus didn’t answer, getting out her scrying orb, the fight was just about wrapped up. Erebus busy teleporting out the last of the gods to stop Tsa’rahlitzek consuming his divinity. “You need to go now Nem.”
The god of vengeance didn’t even look at her, not risking a moment of distraction as he fought in the doorway, refusing with all his might to let them take so much as a step inside. “I can’t.” He hissed between gritted teeth. Dus was surprised to see tears of frustration hissing into steam as they met the fires of rage in his eyes.
“You have to.” She pressed.
“I won’t let my brother die.” He snapped back, head jerking to the side to avoid a stab before turning to simply bite the blade in half, chewing once and then spitting out the shards with the force of a shotgun blast.
“It’s us or the world.” The gorgon told him, putting voice to what all three of them already knew.
“Then I choose us.” Nem screamed. Dus could feel the heat of his hate and rage now, a furnace just starting to get up to temperature.
This was the Nemesis who had strode the battlefield with impunity. Who’s hate had burned to death demons. Who had slaughtered armies one man at a time, continuing the carnage long after they’d tried to leave the field.
The gorgon considered her options, placing Pheus’ hands on the wound even as he tried to reach for the blade itself. “You keep pressure on the wound. You do not remove the blade.” She ordered him sharply as she stood up slowly, rolling back her shoulders as she took a deep breath. “He’ll be safe Nem, my word upon it.”
This time Nemesis did steal a glance at her. “You are still a mortal. You cannot stop the anathema blades and your gaze means nothing to them.”
“I didn’t say I would win. I said that Jay would be safe.” Medusa stared him down for a moment.
“It’s no good.” Nemesis shook his head before ducking another swipe, his reply cutting the humanoid machine in half, kicking the top back into those waiting for their turn. “I can’t keep the door clear long enough for Jay to open it where I need to go.”
“Then he’ll open another door.” She assured him.
“Look around you, fool, there is no other door.” The wrathful god bellowed, the force of it caving in the chest of the next automaton to brave the doorway.
“There will be.” Slowly the gorgon brought Jay to his feet, “Okay Jay, I need you to focus for a bit.”
The wounded deity nodded weakly, “Okay, what do you need?”
“I need you to open that door.” Dus ordered, pointing at a blank section of wall.
“There is no door.” He protested, staring at Dus as if she were an idiot.
“Are you sure?” She asked quietly, “Close your eyes, I want you to picture a handle in your hand. Can you feel it?”
Janus went to protest, words replaced by a gasp of disbelief, “Yes. Yes I do. How-?”
“Don’t question it.” The gorgon said quickly, “Now… open the door. You know where it needs to go.”
Even Nemesis could only watch in amazement as his brother pulled away a section of wall to reveal the battlefield where Erebus was quietly waiting for the coup de grace.
Dus turned to face him, “Go.” She told him simply.
Nemesis went, the door closing after him, Jay sagging weakly to the ground, power spent, as automatons began to fill the room.
The progenitor of all gorgons turned to meet them, stepping over Jay to block their way, her face more amused than fearful as she raised hands sticky with golden godsblood to greet them. “Did you know gorgons can’t use mana?” She asked them conversationally. “It’s a terrible flaw, all our magicka goes into our eyes you see… the strange thing is we can use vitae.”
“We fail to see the relevance. Step away from the deity and you will be spared.” One of the automata told her evenly.
“I can’t do that.” She told it sadly, “And even if I could I wouldn’t. This one is not yours to kill. And it wasn’t really relevant… I mean I could use every once of vitae in my body and it would barely be enough to kill one of you.”
She raised a golden glowing palm, “Godsblood on the other hand…” Automatons couldn’t scream, but if they could have they would as the room filled with silver fire.