The Reaping Shade Emperor locked onto a shadow in the damning white mist all around them, an elusive soul it felt for just a moment by the power of its own Will. The mighty Emperor expended a huge amount of power, reaching out to create its own shadows within the damnably burning Light, stepping forward and raising its scythe to administer a lethal blow to the cursed and elusive Nine-Tailed Silver Fox Emperor.
It tore a wedge of darkness through the mist, which felt more like steel than air to his Magic, and arrived in front of the laughing Flowing Silver, who simply raised His shining sapphire eyes to look at it mockingly.
A thousand-foot wingspan swept past His head, and widespread talons, each one of them burning with multi-hued fires, swooped in with thunderbolt speed as a shriek of fury that could shred stone slammed into the Shade and locked it shaking in place for one terrifying moment.
Talons which could rip through steel like tofu sank into the Shade’s face, clutching and tearing and burning. The flaming beak came down exactly once into the top of the Shade’s skull, punching in deep and leaving a burning crevasse behind. Then the Shiningwing Emperor flapped once, flitting off to the side as a massive screaming spiked chain whipped past him. The great Raptor vanished into the whiteness around them with a mocking cry that hung for far too long in the air.
The Staring Moon Emperor lumbered forward as it pulled its chain back, noting the terrifying injury to its ally and not really caring about it as the Reaping Shade Emperor reeled back, nearly dropping its deadly scythe as it did.
There were two Beast Emperors here, and they hadn’t sensed the other until right this moment!
Flowing Silver was already gone, only a mocking yip and masking Psychic power lingering in the air. Then triple windblades came in unerringly from two directions, boxing in the Reaping Shade as they drove concentrated vivus into its unliving body, great open unwhite wounds blasted open and burning to match the devastating furrows in his face and head.
A creature uncaring of honor or pride, the Staring Moon Emperor realized it was both matched and at an immense situational disadvantage, and astutely chose to retreat. The Reaping Shade retreated as well, patting at its face and the immense pain of the mistflames burning there as it vented power, trying to extinguish them.
So preoccupied, neither Emperor was prepared for Flowing Silver to amazingly come leaping out of the mists, jaws with fangs treated with Burning Eternal Lights crashing into the Reaping Shade Emperor, and Flowing Silver literally tore out its throat.
The wound, mortal on a living creature, was nothing but an inconvenience to the unliving Shade, but its hands were occupied. Its automatic clutch at the Silver Fox and instinctive swing both missed, as the Fox wasn’t where it thought He was, and Flowing Silver yipped mockingly as He melted back into the sparkling White Wind.
The Reaping Shade clutched at the burning wounds on its neck, the Flowing Silver Emperor’s fangs treated the same way as Shiningwing’s talons. Still, the wound was nothing...
Except an opening for Shiningwing Emperor.
The wing was five hundred feet long, and the blade of vivic wind in front of it was rumbling like a constrained thunderbolt as the massive Imperial Avian came in faster than the speed of sound. There was an explosion of Lightning and Thunder that could be heard a hundred miles away as Shiningwing’s rigid pinion cut across precisely into that opened wound, and with a momentous crackling boom, relieved the Reaping Shade Emperor of its head.
The skull of the Reaping Shade Emperor, frozen in one final grimace, was still rising into the air when Shiningwing vanished into the mists all around, leaving a swirling whirlwind of mistfires spiraling behind Him as He was lost to sight, a shriek of triumph echoing over the world behind Him.
The Staring Moon Emperor realized it was in great danger suddenly. Its dark Chain of spiked souls, burning faintly as vivus licked at it, spun about the mighty undead Emperor as it began to retreat at speed.
Around it, yipping barks and shrieking taunts chased it, letting it know the Beast Emperors were still on it, still hunting, and it had better run until it found more assistance to help it fight, or it was going to die...
Behind it, the towering body of the Reaping Shade Emperor finally fell, landing conveniently next to its massive skull in the clearing. Vivus raged over both, unheard howls of agony rising from the unseen spirit of the Emperor as it was unable to flee to its home plane, the vivus all about it caging it in, pressing in, and devouring its spirit as surely as its corpse began to burn ever-more speedily, vivus finding much to feast on there.
------
The White Wind covered it all, but news of the victory and death of a Shade Emperor spread quickly, conveyed by the Silver Foxes across many miles and to all the other Beast Emperors. The trap had been countersprung, and even now Shiningwing and Flowing Silver chased an undead Emperor back across the miles, while a White Wind set a whole Tainted forest on fire...
I just nodded at the news. “Tell the two Emperors that the moment the thing they are chasing turns to fight, they should give up the chase, because it has help arriving, or already in place.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Yes,” Winkle acknowledged, his eyes sparkling. Using Psychic Magic to completely hide the Presence of Shiningwing had proven to have deadly effects, and the Imperial Thunderbird’s mastery of Air, Thunder, Void, and Lightning had proven devastating.
I’d naturally had to treat the mighty Raptor’s talons and beak personally. With all that Holy Banefire leading the way, the flesh of the Undead might as well have been a rotten potato instead of something harder than steel, and I was sure both Fox and Raptor had noted the difference in expected defenses.
Silly little furless primates and the stuff they could think up.
With their Emperor fleeing, the subordinate Rulers and their minions were also faltering, realizing that both Flowing Silver and Shiningwing could easily double back and dispose of them... and that was exactly what they were going to do once that Undead Emperor was far enough away.
Lack of resolve meant lack of determination, and the advancing Undead began to waver as the powers behind them began to lose spirit. After all, they obeyed because they were dominated, not because they were fanatical followers.
The thousands of Avians who came in low over the trees and suddenly plunged into them, bearing Flaming talons and beaks of their own, didn’t help the sudden morale problems of the undead at all. Ripping off arms and heads or landing flaming pecks square on gaping skulls, the Avians didn’t risk themselves, sometimes just grabbing the Undead and dragging them into the sky to drop, but they nevertheless tore apart the Undead lines very quickly, and that was before their magic was added in, and the White Wind began to blow across the Undead ever more strongly.
With each Undead that fell to the mistfire, the vivus only burned more strongly...
“Find me a place to start the Healing, and let’s see if we can’t draw out some assassins,” I murmured to Winkle, who barked a laugh and scanned the area, both picking out a clearing and sending out word that I would be there.
------
Another thing I innovated among the Beasts was helping one another get to me.
Avians would carry in smaller wounded Beasts. Commanders would sometimes have a dozen wounded Warriors clinging to them. A Forestheart Moose even came in with a Firespot Panther with its back spine shattered sprawled upon his back.
Elder Jasperhide returned with the severely hacked-on Wolverine Baron Red Fury gripping onto his back, of all things. The volatile-tempered Wolverine was hanging on, resisting the urge to rip and tear at the mighty Bison, and instead slowly removed himself from the back of the hill-sized Buffalo when Jasperhide politely laid down to let him off easily.
I moved Red Fury to the front of the line, both to acknowledge his efforts and sacrifice during the offensive, and to make sure he could leave before something minor activated his hair-trigger temper and he started lashing out at stuff.
Amusingly enough, he didn’t leave after I combined an Emotion (Peace) spell with his Restorations, simply trundling over to the side and amazingly falling right to sleep in the middle of all the other Beasts, something he would never do out in the wild.
Here, at least, he was safe from everyone, and if nobody really liked him or his species, at least they all acknowledged the Wolverines were at least as dangerous as any of the Bears or Great Cats on the attack, with far more nasty persistence and endurance.
They liked the flaming claws and fangs, too, just like the Buffalo, Stags, Rams, and Antelopes did the horns and hooves.
Hundreds, then thousands of the Beasts came streaming in to get Healed, and went flowing right back out after I finished with them. Some of them stuck around for their own Burning Eternal Lights treatments after the Healing was done, and given the pace I was working at, especially for the weaker creatures, they actually didn’t have to wait all that long, relatively speaking.
There were only three hiding assassins this time, and I just asked some Commanders I Healed up if they were willing to deal with the twats for me. They went raging out into the forest, which was still burning vivic, and generally made enthusiastic short work of the startled Shades trying to hide and avoid the mistfires.
--------
This is a Good fight.
The forest was still burning hours later, which was no surprise. Uncounted numbers of the great trees had already fallen, of course, but new growth was already starting to arise as the sun came up, while the trees that had survived would be true giants of the forest, rising above their lessers and evolving as they did so.
Whether they would Awaken and become sentient was a different matter, but skyscraper-sized trees were already possible here, so I didn’t doubt it would happen to some of them.
For a time, this was going to be a young forest, exploding with life, and it all had the Shades to thank for it. It made me smile to think about, as there weren’t many such things in the Beast Plane, unless some Nobles fought and cleared off some areas in doing so.
I stowed the coconut-sized Soul Star Jewel away in my Pocketspace. I wasn’t sure when I’d ever be able to put it to use on my Stars, and doubted it was worthwhile to do so. A dozen Dark Nobles had fallen last night, as well as tens of thousands of Undead and Shades and Tainted Beasts of all kinds.
My second thoughtstream was busy consolidating the Soul Crystals for the future, combining Cores into Eggs into Gems into Jewels. There was a lot of work to do, but it was a good problem to have... and it burned through a lot of the things.
If what I was told was correct, the Sage level boasted 16,807 Stars! I could already meet that requirement in basic Soul Core Crystals. However, each Soul Crystal Egg required 30 ‘points’ worth of Crystals to consolidate, the equivalent of ten 3-point Crystals, which meant an absolute minimum of ten of them, up to as many as thirty, to consolidate Cores into Eggs.
That... was a lot of dead Beasts required. Sure, if I could just grab dropped Eggs it was less, but still... lots!
I didn’t doubt I could do it, I just wondered where and how. It was a lot of slaughter.
I was also very clear on how the math worked on them, after combining them and applying them to my Stars.
Servant-Class Cores needed to combine to Tier Four to exceed the basic triple refining of the Stars I could do myself, which was the equivalent of twenty-eight Stars inside them. Add up all the Stars for the Cores merging together, and once they reached 28, it was good enough for the job.
The Warrior-tier Stars required ten times the ‘normal’ base of Three-time refinement. It took ten Three-point Cores (’21 points each’) to make a single one-point Egg. Any Egg could bring a Star to Five, so that was fine, but if I wanted a Star at Six, I then needed a Gem.
A Commander-tier Gem took ten Tier-3 Eggs to make, which each took four Tier-1 Eggs, two 1’s making a 2, and two 2’s combining into a 3.
This pattern continued, ten 3-point Gems needed to make a Jewel, and ten 3-point Jewels to make a Star Jewel.
Multiply by the eventual number of Stars that needed to be treated, and it was a bunch of big numbers!