The Swarms that had combined for this Horde were still huge further to the west, buttressed by Scorpions and Snakes instead of Ants, the latter of which were killed far more easily. Me taking out a thousand-foot radius killed a lot of them, but certainly didn’t end the numbers that were still incoming.
However, I was far from the only one devastating the Horde here. I was just fixated on killing the chaff instead of spillover from killing Commanders and stuff.
Still, the huge holes I blew in the Horde were attention-getting and effective in getting breathers for the defenders, who were all hard-pressed to keep their bombardments steady between the greater fights going on with the more powerful Beasts.
Some of the Commanders tried following me. Thunderbolts sang down from On High, and flattened them, with a Shardray follow-up to make sure they poofed into vivus and got very dead, very quickly.
If they ignored me, they could live, and maybe tussle around with some of the Mages making their lives exciting.
In the end, I blew a lot of Mana, but not on the travel. Reynard handled that without effort, moving us twenty miles across the entire length of the front and blowing multiple massive holes in it as I did so.
Made a lot more Soul Crystals, too.
They could all see me coming, and if they didn’t know who was initially responsible, the white-haired woman on the golden winged Fox was soon identified, and my name was spreading like mad. They didn’t know who I truly was or where I came from, but the fact I was here and fighting was enough, and I definitely had some eye-catching magic, right?
The Sublime Chord moving past them also had definite effects. Spells suddenly grew brighter, more explosive, and more lethal as their Caster Level increased. I had bolstered the effect with Mana so it carried everywhere Sound Magic could reach, which was literally a couple of miles, and Double Song was being helped along by Noble, who didn’t have to worry about vocal cords giving out. +4 to hit with spells and +4 to Caster Level didn’t seem like much of a combination, until it more than doubled the damage of the Novice and Adept Casters, and even the Mages and Archmages were noticing the effect if they let their magic Sing along.
The crescendos from Above as the Thunderbolt Arias came down and lit up the whole battlefield were nearly driving some of the soldiers wild with fervor.
Reynard had never seen me use the Heartsong quite like this, as it would have made me an immediate target of the more powerful Shades. He was a bit wide-eyed as the Heartsong thrummed about and through him, but contented himself with kicking around any wounded Warriors who got in the way.
-What’s your read, Reynard?- I /asked the new Celestial Fox, keeping up my Singing with Noble as we scythed down the tougher Scorpions and a few giant Snakes who had survived the last Pyroclasm. We were at the end of the Western Line, twenty miles away from where I’d started and more sparsely populated now, as the Scorpions and Snakes hadn’t come in anywhere near the numbers the Spiders and Ants had.
-If Kings run, Horde will break. Kill either Kings, rest will flee!- he /replied confidently, landing on a Scorpion Commander and expeditiously ripping off its stinger before slamming Mass Helices down onto its many-eyed head like a hammer, once, twice, thrice, and the pulped remnants settled to the ground, pincers clacking one last time impotently.
The severed tail was hovering next to him. He sliced it up and began to wolf down the pale white flesh inside as I dealt with the other incoming threats with strobing Dartrays, killing more of them they closer they came to us. The Scorps were cutting through the vivic mist like sharks with their upraised tails or heads and frenzy to get to me.
-Which is more dangerous?- I had my own judgement, but his assessment would be clearer.
-Spider is nearly a High King, Scorpion is less, and Snake is new King.- His lolling-tongue grin wasn’t lost as he chowed down more pale Commander Scorpion flesh. -Scorpion more dangerous, but Spiders breed faster. Would be best kill both, yes?-
-Not sure that is possible.- I turned my attention to where an Archmage in military fatigues, primarily using Light Magic, was harrying the Scorpion King a few miles away, avoiding the jets and clouds of acidic poison via use of Wind Magic, forcing the Scorpion out of the ground with Earth Magic. They were generally each just harassing one another and making sure the other didn’t pull off any mass slaughter spells.
Poison was the only ‘natural’ Dark Magic, and really wouldn’t even have been that if true Dark Magic hadn’t come into the world and affected the nature of the power. It was telling that the three Kings who were present all had some power in the Poison Element, effectively making them all Dark Beasts, and so their spirits were going to the Dark Realm when they died.
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My head turned back around, and I swore to myself, even as my Song continued unabated. -I don’t see the Snake Queen,- I /told Reynard.
-Mile that way, underground and coming!- he /informed me cheerfully, swallowing the last of the tail meat as I was cleaning off the last of the survivors within range. More chaff was overflowing into the area of the spell, but the waist-high vivus and the mistfire-burning remnants of the more powerful Scorpions and Snakes were clearly making them hesitant, even if the fogs didn’t hurt them at all.
It wasn’t trying to tag-team one of the Archmages? I guess it didn’t like me killing its minions... but if it was oriented on me instead of one of the other Casters around, there was no way I could help them take down a King.
I looked up at the brooding sky, flaring up every now and then with drum-like Thunder coming down, Holy Light spilling forth that actually made the night-time battlefield more like a full moon or twilight at worst, a LOT of Lightning Magic moving around up there.
Twenty Call Lightnings in play will do that!
-Well, then, let’s set the stage for our Snake Queen, seeing as how she’s volunteering.-
-Going to kill Ruler?!- Reynard was definitely excited about that, having missed my earlier Ant-bombings.
-Setting the stage is important here.- She was coming quickly, too; she would be here in under a minute, burrowing like a living subway train or something. I spun out the first Glyph as I didn’t see any more viable targets closing in on us, held off by Reynard’s Aura as an initial Commander-class Beast. He was far, far below his sire in terms of power, but it was still a massive leap from the Warrior-Level he’d been at.
24/7 Heavenly energy getting pumped into him for the win, I guess?
The fact I shouldn’t be able to Summon him, and that he was higher Class than I was, was basically immaterial. I still dominated him on Will, and that was probably the criteria here.
Could I take this Queen in a straight-up fight? Probably not... but this wasn’t a straight-up fight. I’d had plenty of time to set up the battleground, abuse the magic and Mana of this place, and prepare for her coming.
Oh, and I might have asked the Archmage over there for just a spot of help, for when the time came...
------
The Silver Sierra Maze Sidewinder Queen literally came up straight out of the ground underneath us, jaws gaping wide, and snapped them down on the two of us as we stood there in midair.
They were Illusions, of course, woven with Mana, actually more than solid enough and emanating magic to confuse her senses, with maybe some Psychic pressure from Reynard to sell the whole thing.
The Glyph went off, and the Curse Magic, likewise Mana-boosted, crawled all over her brown and silver hide, which seemed to crack all over as it did so.
The Crackling Cacophany erupted all around her, ghostly violet voltage Singing an energetic song about the Wrath of Heaven.
I blew a Smite as I brought a Thunderbolt down.
I hadn’t used a Smite before. They were hugely overkill for most of the stuff I was fighting here, but a full Queen was not overkill. I had to get through her natural defenses, and a Smite was the best way to do that.
Girt in the argent flames of the moon and burning with Starlight, the Aria as the Thunderbolt came down right onto her head sounded more like a whole Heavenly chorus this time. Heaven’s Hammer dropped on down, and despite her size and power, the Silver Sierra Maze Sidewinder Queen was smashed back to the ground she was still coming out of.
The Archmage, one Colonel Abraham Forester, promptly shifted the Light Spell he had Cast and which the Scorpion King was awaiting over directly over top of her, and brought it down.
Multiple heavenly Swords made out of solid Light, each of them like ten stories tall, came down like lightning, punching into the body of the Sidewinder Queen for the second her crackling, lightning-charged body was convulsing on the ground, and pinned her to the soil there.
She was still my Smite target as I brought down ten more Thunderbolts down right on top of those impaling Swords.
Each of the Swords blew apart under the impact, but that was fine. Their effects weren’t going to keep her locked up for long, regardless. What was key was bypassing her armored scales and getting the damage conducted right into her insides.
She was a good four hundred feet long, and the entire length of her lit up like a fluorescent light bulb, silver lightning and multiple hues of fire blazing out of her insides as the combined force of all the spells ravaged her.
Reynard Blinked in right over her skull, setting down on the side of her face. A great slitted gold and black eye managed to turn and regard us as silver swirled around Noble and coruscant fire blazed a thousand fractal colors.
I Smote Noble down upon her eye.
The Shards bypassed her armored scales and went right into her brain, Mana-boosted and Smite-Enhanced, ravaging and ripping. Her eye exploded, and her brain glowed like a furnace inside her Skull as the various energies had their way.
Reynard bounced away as the Sidewinder Queen’s gleaming horns seemed to pulse, and her massive mouth gaped open as a last cloud of greenish-black Poison, flesh-melting and stone-corroding, was vomited forth on a death reflex.
Reynard was laughing as he flitted away like the wind, outracing the rapidly-expanding, heavy cloud of lethal vapors with aplomb. I watched the massive carcass shudder as vivus erupted out between the Cursed cracks in her scales, and there was a massive sizzling as fountains of white mist blew out of her.
They hit the Poison cloud, and billowed into the air in pursuit of the Dark Magic empowering it, rapidly swelling with silvery enthusiasm to devour it faster than it could expand to get away and actually harm anything else.
The whole battlefield kind of fell silent for a long minute, save for the drum-like rumbling of the Thunder overhead.