No Pyramid Domain was coming back up. If the keen-eyed might have noticed him suddenly appearing up near the top of the Pyramid, or the capstone going flying, well, they had all sorts of stuff up in the sky to occupy their attention.
The rolling thunder of a LOT of crackling lightning hit from every direction at the same moment, the very air vibrating with what sounded more like the tolling of dozens of fantastically loud, melodious bells that sent the Pharaonic forces below clutching at their heads and lurching back and forth, screaming in agony as Heavenly Thunder echoed and re-echoed damningly off the Sin stacked up in their souls.
The way to endure Heavenly Thunder was to accept it, realize you weren’t perfect, focus on the Sins it was highlighting, and resolve to do better with them, letting the Thunder fortify you and build you up.
Instead of what those below were trying to do, resisting it with all their might as it shook their minds and souls with terrible illumination, cracking everything they believed in and showing what a hollow lie it all was, and the terrible weakness beneath that it concealed.
Yeah, they were plenty busy to be worried about him.
Sama, however, they definitely had to be worried about. A deafened, half-stunned, reeling minion of the Netherworlds could have had the word ‘victim’ painted on them in bright primary colors.
Especially those Swordmaster Shades. They looked like dark, shadowy knights in some form of full armor, but Sama had met them several times before, as they were common Contracted Summons for powerful Shadow Element users.
She was as annoyed with their version of a code of honor as she was with their excuse for proper swordplay, and, well, she was a total bitch of an opportunist when it came to the undead, and not afraid of much of anything, let alone drawing some attention.
Flashing through their ranks and beheading them while they screamed and clutched at their ears, trying to ward off the sound that was echoing in their bones, was definitely a way to earn some attention, but what were they going to do about it?
Over a dozen of them were dead before the others caught sight of the falling headless corpses, and realized they were under attack. They shouted, but, oh, right, very loud Thunder present, shuckee-darn. Blonde beach babe with no chest and eight canines in a very wide smile was hacking through them, and they couldn’t even warn one another.
The dark clouds were pouring in their direction at great speed. Below them, the sky was falling. Even at this distance Briggs could see the silver and electrum in the rain, the whorls of unwhite mist... and the burning of Fire, the cold gleam of Ice, and the crazed flash of Lightning. Heaven was Weeping Holy Water, and its tears were bringing all the stuff with them.
The Thunder faded after about a minute, by which time half the Swordsmen Shades were quite dead, and Sama had moved on through one of the Mummy formations. Over a hundred more of them were fallen or falling to the ground at her passing, a lovely swirling path of vivus following Tremble as her Sword began to Sing.
Ah, it was so damn nice to hear that Song go live.
“Oh ooooh oh, Tremble, She comes! Tremble, Tremble...
“Heaven Wept at the Land’s Dark Pain,
“Mercy fell as a soothing Rain,
“Compassion’s Fires now burn,
“Life’s Cycle Turns in turn,
“The Bones of Ancients sigh as dead things come to Die,
“Before Nature’s Fane, Virtue’s Lesson learn!
“Tremble!
“TREMBLE! SHE COMES!”
Another crackling, tolling wave of Thunder punctuated the Trembling Song, and the Netherworlders who were just managing to recover and trying to organize screamed and stumbled, half-collapsing again.
The Thunder wouldn’t kill them, but it was terrifyingly distracting, and when there’s a Grandmaster of the Sword running around with a mad on, that wasn’t a good place to be...
Encouraged by Sama taking up the visible distraction, Briggs raised Endure, who was happy to contribute a stone-crunching, metal-rending Beat to Sama’s Song as Briggs and his Hammer went happily to work sabotaging the damn Pyramid.
The watching mages, still invisible, felt the Trembling Song rolling with a bloodthirsty, soul-empowering Heartsong effect greater than they’d ever felt just in Markspace. The full impact of the Heartsong did require actual sound, and if some of it carried through to everyone, only here, at the sound of an inhumanly powerful voice coming crashing down on the undead, did they receive the full impact of a master of the martial Heartsong.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
It was just like the Sublime Chord, only this was the full power of a Song made for killing, not boosting magic!
---
The Heavens Wept blew across the Graveyard in a deluge equal parts fiery and cold, sparkling and sizzling corrosion. It would have no effect whatsoever on the natural elements of the place, save for breaking down that which was already dead with greater speed, but all the necroic Elements in the area were under instant assault, effectively being immersed in full Holy Meta’d Holy Water that was also burning them, shocking them, freezing them, eating them with Banefire, and Disrupting them.
The corrupted undergrowth, trees, poisoned waters, and Tainted soil burned with vivus. Some of the larger Plants might even survive the Corruption being burned out of them, and regrow even stronger and more vital than before.
In most cases, first their leaves, then their bark, then their wood and stems sloughed away under the downpour, falling to the ground and rapidly dissolving into misting sludge that sank into the dirt and would provide massive nutrition to the next generation of Plants rising from the soil here.
The un-Animated bones and skeletons scattered around, many of them gathering Dark Mana in preparation to become inhabited by an enslaved spirit, ignited like oil-soaked candles and began to degrade immediately. Despite being harder than steel and strong enough to support castles, the bones were rapidly pitted, eaten into and falling to dust, be they exposed to air or long-buried in the accepting soil.
I watched the jungle crumbling and falling behind the advance of the storm. There were almost no winds, save those propelling the collapse of the storm towards the Pyramid, just stillness and the falling wall of Heavenly Tears wiping away the Taint and necroic energy.
The patches of Golden Sand soon dissolved into patches of whiteness, doubtless to become preferred homes to regrowing vegetation. About them were revealed the agitated and burning forms of the Skeletons of the dead Beasts.
Normally speaking, this kind of spell damage wouldn’t be all that dangerous to them... if it came in bursts and spurts. The energy in the Water would be expended against their own power, and they’d be fine.
But this was a deluge, effectively maximum Holy Water Damage with stacked Metas, doing a base 100 damage, before the multipliers from Stars, Seeds, and Disruption. The Kickers on top of that added another 100 points easy, the result being they were under a constant damage-over-time assault from a sky that was literally falling down on them and eating them away.
King Magogo could endure it because of the amount of Mana he’d possessed and pulling power from the ground, or he could have burrowed deep enough and far enough away to avoid it.
None of these Skeletons had the power or toughness to do the same.
Some of them tried to flee, but they couldn’t move faster than the clouds overhead, which were boiling forth to blanket the Graveyard entirely. The Skeletons were fleeing for the protection of the Pyramid instinctively, but no Domain of Undeath was going to come up and chase away the storm for them.
I watched them pounding for cover from the rains, something the Trees here could not provide, or would not provide. Some of the ones that had managed to stay mostly clean folded their leaves to make sure any bones moving or not beneath them were annihilated, contenting themselves with the Tears running down them and cleansing them, and perhaps drinking all they could through their roots.
All in time.
To make matters more fun, the Call Lightnings I’d been chain-casting were now coming into play, and Arias of Heavenly Wrath began to sound as I pulled down Thunderbolts upon those racing Skeletons, hammering them down, perhaps breaking them and letting the Tears of Heaven do their job faster.
There were a lot of Skeletons to bring crashing down, but that was fine. I had plenty of Thunderbolts to play with, 49 Mana backing each Call Lightning spell I’d Cast with Tier 6 Goodness and a lot of Spell Penetration, thank you.
The Heavens Wept was closing in on the Pyramid from all directions, driving their Animated forces towards it, and purging the Graveyard of anything else they might want to use as fodder. Nothing said its Domain couldn’t be re-established in time, but we were going to make it pay, indeed.
I could sense the Mick up in the sky, also Casting Call Lightnings, waiting for the Storm to arrive so he could send down some screaming wrath courtesy of Thunderbird Emperor.
Briggs was sending in the feed for Sama as he continued to shatter different and very important structures of the Pyramid’s exterior stones, disrupting its Rune Patterns and doing nasty things to the flow of power inside it.
Oh, it looked like someone had finally noticed them...
---
The invisible Undead Hunter Mages had not been idle. The netherworlders around the Pyramid finally managed to figure out how to use their power to withstand the Heavenly Thunder battering at their souls. It was very wasteful of Mana, but they had tons of it, so it wasn’t an issue to them.
Outraged at the pits, craters, gaps, and tumbled blocks coming down from the top of the Pyramid, they naturally made for Briggs up there doing his thing, probably trying to alert their masters and call for reinforcements, only to find the Pyramid stayed completely and puzzlingly closed.
The Symbols and Glyphs thoughtfully laid down on the sides of their own Pyramid going off didn’t help matters, of course.
The storm was coming, so the Undead Hunters didn’t hold back. They had copious reserves of Mana for Humans, and the Maces in their hands blazed with power as they were plied against the Undead and their allies below.
In no time at all, a whirlwind of multiple Elemental Energies, boosted with Disruption and vivus, was whirling around the base of the Pyramid and obliterating any Warrior or less who walked into it, while severely damaging many of the Commanders and forcing them to retreat.
The chaotic mixture of energies broke line of sight and effect, making it very hard to aim anything at the revealed Humans, and the Dark Mana tended to ignite as it went through the chaotic streams of power, burning up uselessly before it could find a target.
Sama was still out there and down below, less being chased by infuriated Shadow Swordmasters than using their Bladewind attacks and casually batting them aside into other hapless forces, helping chop down dozens and scores of other creatures at a time as the Swordmasters tried to catch her and utterly failed to do so.
If they stopped throwing Bladewinds of whatever level of power at her, she simply looped back and engaged them all face to face. They were utterly shocked to find out that their swordplay ultimately sucked badly, as Tremble danced through their attempts at parries, idly blocked their biggest hacking blows and redirected them into one another. The Sword Singing a terrifying Song in Necrus to them crooned and took off their heads constantly, burning bodies whose spirits were being consumed en vivus falling forever, again and again, as she danced through them in a terrifying display of REAL Profound Swordsmanship...