Chapter 075: The Fall

That was… surprising. Not shocking - I knew it was going to be an artifact, and they are all overpowered by default. I still didn’t expect it to be of SEVENTH GRADE. Three to five, more or like. Beyond level six using the artefact in a right way was a pretty solid way of ascending to daemonhood.

Bashing people’s heads with your artefact was the most primitive way of using them. But as long as it got the job done...

The weird parts? That it was a genuine inrithian relic, and of such a rarity. A part of True Cross?! The Cross itself was a solid tenth grade artefact. This… Beacon of Light sounded like it was grown from a splinter or something like that.

Also, that it was INRITHIAN to begin with. Wasn’t I essentially outside of it’s potential striking zone? Holy Artefacts AND Relic subtypes required the user to be a part of their religion.

Finally, the choice was… weird. Sensible, but weird. Sanity Resistance was pretty self-explanatory. Purifying meant that the artefact countered Pentagram’s Corruption merely by being around. Indestructible X meant that it was… well, indestructible: you could throw it into tokamak-type reactor and have it bath in superheated plasma with few million degree Celsius and it wouldn’t even notice.

But Inrithian magic reinforcement for a person with no spells like that… and MORALE RAISE?! It was more of a strategic-level magic. True Cross had level tenth and it’s said that no army equipped with it was forced to a rout - ever. This few times they lost (even when they were a bunch of peasants) they had to be slaughtered to a last.

I looked back at Deviation.

“Taking it from a sealing array of Vortex?” She nodded. “Isn’t this kinda a suicide?”

“The array is strong. It will keep this shard imprisoned for many, many years.” ...which changed nothing, in long term. “Fear not. We’ve already picked a hero to slay it, though he is still a kid now, just as his future companions. A part of the province will be decimated, but the Shard will also destroy a lot of things that would decimate it on their own, so it’ll balance itself out.”

That last sentence was one of the saddest and most nightmare-inducing thing I heard in a while.

“We just don’t really have lots of options left.” She continued. “That’s one of three artefacts that could work in this particular situation. But the other were too troublesome. One would require you visiting the Tyranny, while the other is in the hand of the Imperium. And you’d have to steal it. So, unfortunately, the only way for you to survive is to take it.”

I sighed internally and then went on to take the staff. It was almost weightless. And filled with power.

Such power. Terrifying, but also… pure, calm and in a weird way kind.

I could feel the magic of the artefact accepting me, lovingly ignoring all known religious limits to artefacts that were considered a physical law of this world.

“Wonderful! Everything should play fine in this… adventure.” Deviation looked pleased. “A bit of depression and then you’ll be fine. Saving Hlla’s little revolution. Preparing the final confrontation. It’s still hopelessly improvised, but…” She shrugged. “Well, you’ll be fine now. See you later.”

Then she disappeared.

“Hey, how am I supposed to get out?!” I shouted. My words echoed through the ruins.

***

I ended up returning to the shaft through which I fell, right in time to see faces of Leria and Simea looking at me from above.

The explanation’s were going to be awful.

We tried to use a rope to get me out, but we failed spectacularly.

Ok, alright, it was ME who failed spectacularly. I’m completely squishy and frail due to the being a sorcerer. I mean, sure, I could survive a modern Main Battle Tank shot - not two, but one was fine - but only due to pre-deployed magical defenses. And I even did spent a while or two cult… TRAINING the aura, but that was mostly for an improvement of reflexes.

So, I couldn’t even climb on the rope. In the end Leria had to strip off her armour and spend a lot of time jumping down. And then carrying me up.

I’m a disgrace to all men in the world.

“So, what the heck just happened?” Simea asked me, seemingly worried.” We walked through the corridors, and for some reasons we didn’t notice you were gone until now!” I have to make a joke about that, right?

“For my own wife to forget I exist?! What a betrayal.” She made something that was half a chuckle and half ‘THIS IS NOT A TIME FOR JOKES’. “Well, Deviation kidnapped me for some weird and totally Great Game-compliant sweet randezvous. I also got this.” I waved the staff in front of them.”So it’s not all that bad!”

We’ve spent almost half an hour talking about that event. I omitted the Vortex part. I mean, no reason to get too active on that. Just one another case of an eldritch abomination being imprisoned around here.

What was much more important was the part about Tzikimi.

Firewing was going to love that knowledge. I’ll just censor the bits about the nature of Vortex, his name, and the fact that it’s bound to free itself (at least part of it). But that had to wait for a while.

After we recollected ourselves and re-assembled as a party (all supernatural phenomena in the area - save for, you know, hundreds of ancient mountain elves and their afterlifes - ceased altogether), we decided to continue onwards.

Of course, not immediately. We seriously needed a rest. Then we moved onward.

The route went through the burial site, and then - after last, lavishly decorated set of doors probably belonging to a king or queen or old - suddenly turned left, towards the deeper part of the wall.

High time.

For a while I was thinking it was just an entrance to an unfinished burial site, but no. It took us a longer while, but we did reach the other side. The descent wasn’t exactly nice (they civilians would need to use ropes for a bit) but it was certainly passable.

“So, mission accomplished, huh?” I uttered, gazing at - admittedly quite spectacular - view of the giant ravine.

“Let’s just go back. It already took too much time to get here.” Simea answered. The rest remained silent.

Right. And let’s hope that Hlla punched her way through the collapse (or that Deviation took it away after leaving) or we’ll end up walking into a stone wall.

***

We returned to discover that no, Deviation didn’t take the random tunnel collapses that she used to divert us to the mureakai burial site. Which was… mean. She could NOT be a pain for once.

Our aura-users conjured pickaxes from their inventory and, without a word, started unearthing the passage back. It was going to take a while.

Like, a long while. While we were going to stay in what essentially was an antechamber of a massive burial area. Wonderful.

***

After about seven hours we started hearing a noise of pickaxes (hopefully kept by a mortal - and alive - arms) coming from the other side of the collapse. It was an awful seven hours. Full of awkward silence. A lampad - grave nymph - seemed to have gotten close to us (judging from the floating, unsettling ball of light beyond the door to the burial site.

But then she left, probably scared off by all that negativity, despite being nymph equivalent of goth girl. Wonderful.

We - or, to be precise, our warriors - continued to dig. The sound of digging from the other side began growing in frenziness. I had no idea what to think of that.

We finally breached the collapse after two more hours. I was sleeping at the time, and Simea waking me up for me to see Hlla’s face sticking through the hole was… a bit surreal.

“So, everything went well?” She asked.

“Yeah, kind off.” I answered. “The further passage is clear, we just need to clear this collapse.”

“Wonderful. Hurry up, the undead are here.” The head disappeared.

Uh-oh.

***

We’ve managed to make a crevice wide enough for a person to crawl through - without causing another cave in. Wounded adventurers started pouring in, together with sounds of intense combat.

We directed them towards the tunnel. We also gave few of them - those more conscious - some additional baubbles (the ones we put in the corridor disappeared by the time we returned to the beginning).

I expected the civilians to walk in after all, but instead the sounds of battle turned much louder… and non-wounded insurgents started coming in.

What?

After few more minutes - during which we send all the non-wounded combatants their way -it was time for Hlla and her sidekick. They must have been the last ones, as she immediately cast some rather powerful magic, collapsing the entrance further.

“Phew, talk of a last minute rescue.” Hlla said. She seemed… bloody, though very little of the blood on her seemed to be her own.” I was almost sure you abandoned us, or just failed the mission.”

“Not a chance. Not after a Chosen of Shadow…” I said, trying to be… diplomatic. Simea had no such interests.

“What about the civilians?” Yeah, good question, my always wonderfully blunt wife.

“When you pull a rescue in a last damn minute, there are always casualties.” Hlla answered calmly. “That’s why a non-last minute rescue is always preferable.”

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Wait, she couldn’t mean… could she?

“They are dead?!” This woke Leria. Lena and Vaera looked equally livid. Simea simply looked like she temporarily forgot to breath.

“Dead, or soon to be.” Hlla shrugged, with a face suggesting not being interested at all. “We managed to mostly decapitate that army and kill most of undead, but there was a regular army of the Unmakers behind them. At least two thousands soldiers and a hundred necromancers of various power level. They will reach the survivor camp soon.”

“And you left them to die?!” Leria, please, don’t do anything stupid. “Hundreds of people, including children?!”

“Feel free to go outside and try to save them.” Now Hlla looked pissed. “I need to save every soldier I have. They take precedence over those unable to fight. This battle was already a disaster because of the living army. I will not lose even a single soldier more. It’s their own fault for being a weakling.”

“A weakling?! YOU FUCKING…” Leria actually drew her sword and would probably attack Hlla, if Lena and Syna didn’t grab her immediately. Quite courageous for a believers to physically restrain their own Chosen One, I had to admit.

Sigh. I would have said ‘cultural differences’, but it was more like a combination of cultural, societal, political, and religious differences. Philosophical too, I guess. In short, just differences. And a lot of them.

Hlla was a staunch realist, whose very religion was deeply soaked in ‘I did what I had to do’ with a lot of ‘might makes right’ approach to morality. She was waging a war and she was completely and utterly dedicated to winning it, regardless of consequences and collateral damage.

Her victory would mean at least temporary improvement of the lives of the locals, if only because she would have to consolidate her power before the another step of her ‘conquer the world or at least significant neighbourhood’ plan.

Leria, in the same time (and most of us too, I guess) would absolutely refuse to bend their morals to that, and would prioritize saving civilians, even if it meant that the war was going to end up in a defeat. Worst case scenario we would just evacuate as many people as we could through the portal, screw the consequences.

“So? Are you going to charge outside, or can we go now?” Hlla disregarded Leria entirely, it’s not like the righteous fury of the Overtyrant incarnated could succeed in killing or even maiming her.

I’m done.

“Yes, indeed. We WILL go save the civilians.” Hlla didn’t expect it, judging from the looks she gave me. Hell, even I didn’t expect it. It just kinda happened. But… why she didn’t expect that with her blessing? That was a good question. “Thus ends out short and… interesting cooperation. Go and die in a ditch, but not before slaughtering the Unmakers’ to the last one.” I turned my head towards Leria (and her two sideckicks). “We’re going back to the Hold, the usual way.”

I already had a plan. And then I killed myself. Again.

***

“Well, I must say, I didn’t expect that to happen.” Simea admitted after we emerged from the altar and began quickly donning our equipment.

“Neither did I.” I answered with a statement of my own. “Up until now, we always ended up scoring a victory despite the odds, if only a marginal ones. I don’t want to change it. “

We were already shocked - almost stunned - enough by Hlla simply stating that we failed to succeed in time to save the non-combatants. We were much too fragile of a team to survive a major defeat at this point. How long it would take Leria to accuse me of being the cause of it? Especially with me ordering an unneeded break and wasting some valuable time that way?

That was me rationalizing it. I was just SO. DAMN. PISSED. Hlla was such an asshole - even if probably useful for a good guys victory - that I just couldn’t stand her. To hell with her.

“So, what’s the plan?” Leria seemed almost cheerful, surprisingly.

“We run.” That was the first point. The point 0,5 was to ignore chuckles from the side of some men and women that just happened to be in the entrance hall when we emerged naked from the altar. Sigh.

***

We ran, the fastest we could, towards the portal. Of course, we ended up with our aura-users just carrying our magic-users (me, and Vaera). Damn the crippling overspecialization caused by our inability to die for real.

On the other side we encountered some undead prowling the now-abandoned Hlla’s encampment. They haven’t found the portal. It seems that Hlla covered it in some rather complicated illusion magic - Shadow was also a goddess of illusions, so no wonder her Chosen One had some powerful illusion-based transcendentals.

The combat was swift. The undead were widely dispersed, less numerous than when they were fighting Hlla, and we haven’t encountered any archdaemon-class undead until the footsoldiers were mostly dead.

The archdaemon was a Revenant. A spirit of a person too wrathful to fully pass away. Immaterial, powerful telekinesis, ability to steal life by touch or proximity, and both Death Magic and ability to resurrect things as undead (even the slain undead).

Frankly, enough to stall us for a while, but not enough to kill any of our party members. Revenants still had their souls, still were (when they controlled themselves) on mortal-level of intellect. This meant that all their wrath and hatred were essentially sins, and this made Holy Magic of Overtyrant work wonders on them.

We tore him into pieces. Took us a while, but the end result was obvious from the start. There was a lot of screaming, Vaera almost got dragged underground by the enemy, and then he almost got torn apart by the screaming Revenant (I smell a trauma for mountain elves. Or traps), but the angry spirit finally broke.

After establishing a bridgehead, I communicated the plan.

“We need to find the survivor camp.” I said. “Then we need to find the Unmaker’s army. And then we destroy the army.”

The looks I got were far from favourable. Imagine my surprise.

“Isn’t that a bit… impossible?” Simea voiced their concerns.

“I have a plan.” To which, now that I think about it, Inri must have prepared me by exploiting Deviation. It’s quite nice to know that I have someone looking at me from above. Like, without sexual thoughts. Or the burning need to use in a genocidal crusade. “The whole point is to have the army in our place.”

And, also, to avoid some random group of undead getting to a survivor’s camp. Firewing was en route with the militia. Badly pissed off by what the Hlla did. Gloriously pissed off by what the Unmaker’s were doing. And feeling something I don’t even dare to describe about the discovery of what Black Hand was planning to do with her and where did he get the knowledge for that from.

In short: a walking bundle of fury with almost godly magic power. Just… not very fast, and she couldn’t be everywhere. Hence the militia to cover her blindspots.

We just had to secure a pathway.

***

And we did.

We ran all the way to the refugee camp. Encountering one more group (this time led by, surprisingly, an Archlich) of undead, that we managed to… lose against. Archlich was A BIT too powerful, especially when surrounded by a host of undead.

We lost Vaera and Syna in that battle. But we’ve managed to kill half of the undead, and chop off the archlich’s legs. Unlikely for the enemy to move forward before he regenerates them, so while tactical disaster, it was also a strategic victory.

We pulled out and, after a short while, reached the refugee camp.

It was under attack. Some adventurers separated from the Hlla’s forces must have retreated here, probably expecting her to come rescue them. The undead were on the verge of breaking inside, most adventurers wounded and tired.

They didn’t expect the attack from behind. And their leading Revenant was weakened by a desperate adventurer strike team (that he mostly slaughtered at this point). It was a swift victory, even without Syna and Vaera.

The refugee camp smelled of fear, festering wounds and feces (they had serious hygiene problems, with too many people pushed into too small of a fortification). Few days more - if the undead didn’t come - and they would be decimated by a plague.

I got the highest ranked remaining defender to talk with me. Told them of Hlla’s… corner-cutting. They weren’t pleased at the slightest. The adventurers and surviving village militia’s that made for entirety of the remaining forces in the area were so much defeatist that they decided to listen to me.

Two hours. We repelled several attacks from the roving undead hordes. The now orphaned Hlla’s soldiers played it defensively and just held the line, while my group went in for a kill and took down stronger undeads. The strongest enemy we encountered was a Death Knight, nothing we couldn’t handle.

Several better faring adventurers - and some hunters - we send out early on, to locate the Unmaker’s army. It was the most important part.

Then Firewing came, with fifty militiamen from the Hold. And a lot of medical equipment. We sent the local soldiers back, to get their wound bandaged, and for a badly needed rest.

They encountered the archlich en route. Firewing continued casting powerful fire magic until not even ash remain from the partially ascended necromancer.

Militiamen seemed a bit scared. Mostly of their first actual combat, but seeing Firewing burn things like that was a bit of a scare too. Especially with the look on her face.

Our soldiers were scared... but also determined. There was one more roving undead band that attacked us, but they held their line quite fine. They kept zombies and skeletons off our backs, while Firewing took down the Destroyer Knight and we killed the Death Knights and Dullahans that flanked him.

We lost nobody. Many were lightly wounded.

I kept engorging myself on a mana potions. And insisted on the others doing the same. Potion sickness? Screw that. We needed a hell lot of magic for the Great Plan. I might start vomitting blood after that for all I care.

Finally one of the scouts came back. The army reorganized itself after pushing Hlla’s out of the furrow, and already figured out that there was an another hostile group nearby. They were marching at us.

Perfect.

One of the local soldiers more or less knew of landscape surrounding the camp. I grabbed him in the break between the assaults and have him spit it out. There was a large, open plain starting maybe two kilometres before the camp, perfect for the Plan.

We repelled two more minor attacks of the undead. Their numbers, already whittled down by Hlla, were steadily dropping down. Unmakers’ easily lost close to five thousand undead during this battle. We slay few hundreds.

The problem was: if we won’t defeat the enemy entirely, they will just bring the undead back. We needed time for either proper burial (cemetery, graveyard nymphs defending them and so on) or impromptu cremation. But we lacked it. That’s why Hlla targeted the living necromancers accompanying the horde.

We left Firewing to defend the refugees together with local soldiers. We already fought the defensive battle for several hours, they had a time to at least rest. And an archmagician could be used to decimate the enemy, and to kill their archdaemons. They should hold the ground.

Then we departed with the militia, in a short period of break before another small horde of semi-mindless undead storming the camp.

We moved in to the open plain, our soldiers deployed in a line. I told them to pray as fervently as they could. We had Firewing prepare us an illusion spell that she anchored to a small crystal. With it, I conjured many more illusionary soldiers to stand behind the first line.

Hopefully the enemy will see the true militiamen and not take a closer look at the ones behind. The whole point was to have enemy deploy themselves in preparation for an open battle. It was a desperate bet.

And we succeeded. A column of soldiers under a banner with some skull-like symbol (not very original) entered the plains, marching on a road. They noticed us, and immediately reorganized themselves into line. Two thousands, more or less. And some hooded figures behind.

“Well then.” I grabbed my new staff and took out something from my inventory. “Time for a risky moment. Send me as much of your mana as you can.”

They didn’t understand. But they did as I asked them, while the Unmakers’ army marched towards us, shouting some north-aevarian battle chants.

The thing I took from the inventory was my trump card in case of shit hitting the fan badly. Long time ago, we stormed the Red Mist’s cult headquarters. Among the loot were magical scrolls, with some tasty Transcendentals inside. We handed them to Kovacs group that needed them more… with exception of one scroll.

Firewing - then under the alias of Grandma - failed to decipher it, because it was in a thaumaturgic language used by inrithian priests. It took me a long while of work with the elderly priest in the Hold. It wasn’t a simple scroll. We understood that quickly. Parchment made from a skin of an inrithian archdevil. Secret magical ink of the Church, with the only known component supposedly being ‘Shepherd’s tears’. High spec stuff.

Then we managed to finally decipher the complicated grammar and a bit outdated vocabulary. And we understood. Highest tier Transcendental. Theurgic inrithian equivalent of an archspell. I won’t even dare to speculate how it ended in the hands of Pentagram’s cult. Or who made it. But I was thankful for that.

Fall of Sodom. The name described the spell well. It also betrayed the fact that Inri wasn’t above recycling ideas from another worlds. Then again, our world was supposed to be a part of the same multiverse. With some (but not all of) Gods supposedly playing Great Games in more than one universe.

Just as the enemy army closed in, I took in the power of me and most of magic-talented party members - and from the militia sorcerers. Barely enough, even with the massive decrease of mana requirement thanks to the staff I so ‘randomly’ got.

“I almost feel bad for them.” I said, with only the party members there to hear me… right before I unleashed the spell raging in my mind.