We shimmered into place at the end of my Lived-Line in northern India. I dumped my Eldritch Tapestry Buffs on all of us, which among other things made Azaia pretty much invulnerable to ranged Qi attacks.
She was the one behind Legion on Sleipner now, while I was atop the Old Steed, whose flaming skeletal horn and fanged maw not-a-horse appearance definitely made Azaia’s eyebrows climb when he erupted out of the ground underneath me and lifted me proudly into the air.
She was also holding onto a fully infused blued-crysteel Staff with a Wand Chamber, into which was inserted a plain old Wand of Shards, topped with a humanish Baneskull burning red-gold. Not too impressive, until you also saw the bracer on her left arm, which had previously been gracing mine.
Sure, she didn’t have unlimited firepower, and it wasn’t very strong, with her being at a Two right now. But when Legion could toss over +11d6 to help out, that would more than do the job on single targets, and that was all I wanted out of her now.
She also had twenty of the Wands stuffed into a Quiver on her back, like so many arrows loaded with death. Since the Infusions were on the Wand Chamber in her Staff instead of the Wand, she could consume them with impunity, and they were cheap. I charged them up almost as easily as Master Fred did Cure Wands.
I set up our own Chat Box, as it were, Cast a Dawnstopped Widened Commune with Nature, and ignored her stunned expression as the sleeping awareness of the Land let me know what was going on for ninety miles around.
Lots of Qi sources, several small Shroudzones.
“Clean off the small sites, I’ll handle the Shrines still pumping Qi,” I said calmly. “I can Teleport to reach you at any time in this range, but with Legion there, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem as long as you stick to the outskirts. There are no major holdings of Cultivators, and don’t approach them. Learn to fight, get your Levels back, and build yourself up again.”
---
Azaia could only look at the hundreds of locations on the mental map, names and places filled in after the fact by some of the Marked and Blessed, or old maps.
Straight from the Land, they felt like rot on the skin, leprosy, a spreading infection that itched and scratched and the Land couldn’t wake up enough to do anything about.
Azaia had ridden through the empty villages and towns in China, now being covered unnaturally fast with greenery, total and eerie silence where once millions of people had lived and been sacrificed to form a new Shroudzone that, instead of demoralizing and stopping the Chinese, was now empowering them to fight back.
But seeing the after-effects of that slaughter, feeling that Qi on the landscape like it was a part of her, and sensing the massacres here and there that had blossomed into Shroudzones, that was something very different.
She liked being a Healer, and this was like the most invasive, corruptive disease she had ever felt.
Legion looked back at her. “We’re going to the Shroudzone nearby,” their manifold voices said together, each one somehow conveying distinct emotions despite the overlap. Eagerness, resignation, anger, resolve, determination, sadness, antipathy... they were all there in the overlapping words. “It is a more controlled situation, and we can use it to learn how to work together. Each of us gets some surface time to Level and work on our techniques, too.” They both turned to wave at Traveler as the Old Steed headed off, clawed hooves not quite touching the ground and searing it as they headed off towards a Shrine pumping out Qi about five miles away.
“We aren’t necessary here,” they said to Azaia, quite calm about it. “It should be obvious to you that Traveler is totally capable of killing everything here without us.”
Azaia could only nod. Cultivators couldn’t hide from Traveler because of the Commune, and Azaia couldn’t picture them putting up much of a fight. Legion went on, “She is not in a hurry here, but she is going to be thorough. She’ll shut down or reverse all the Qi-making Shrines, and cut down all the Cultivators in her way, but she wants us or others to wipe the small clusters, because it makes us stronger. The big ones she’ll slaughter en masse.”
Sleipner rolled into motion and headed for the Shroudzone, a compact, dense area probably formed by herded locals brought there and cut down. Dying close together, they would presumably be a greater threat when it came time to fight them, while at the same time being more easily avoided than if they’d been killed over a larger area and would be scattered when reborn. Their Dead Zone would only be twenty miles in radius maximum, too.
“How many of you are there?” Azaia asked, having gotten a quick word from Traveler on Master Fred’s situation. She didn’t know whether to be scandalized or impressed by the situation.
“Fourteen. We all need some practice time,” was the many-layered reply.
Azaia could only agree with that, and then consider the fact she was going to get fourteen times more practice than any of them, so she should catch up pretty quickly...
--------------
“Hah, haaaa...” Azaia breathed, lowering her new Staff, which she had decided to name Nimbus, on account of the way it glowed when channeling magic through it.
It had taken only one shot each to kill the Buddhist Cultivators, with Legion’s help. The swirling arrowheads of her Shards had been festooned with Wrath, pulled in through the Bracer. They had been coming at her with their own staves upraised, smiling serenely and chanting as they did, and run right into her Shards and a downright wall of burning lead from Legion... or Mei, who was their best shooter, and whose face was out right now.
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“Are you alright?” the former Amazon asked, looking at Azaia’s face.
“Yes. No.” She winced and forced herself to look at the burning bodies. “I-I have a Talent, Empathic. It’s... I can feel their souls when they die, and the vivus takes them.” She shuddered slightly. “They are so relieved...”
Mei’s dark eyes flickered as she looked at the dead. “Oh. So, deep down, they know what was done to them, even if it doesn’t show on the surface.”
“Yes. And if they die without the vivus, they stay enslaved...”
They had run into this small batch of Cultivators hiding in a small village... one perhaps unsurprisingly emptied of human life otherwise. The lama leading them had managed to bat away Mei’s first two shots, and then Azaia’s Shards had driven into his chest, detonated rather badly, and her next two bullets had put craters where his eyes used to be.
“As opposed to me, who jumped right into it,” Mei murmured, holstering the two Grits, one underarm and the other at her hip. “So, you can feel why we have to do this.”
Azaia bowed her head, then looked all around herself. The empty village that, if not swarming with people, should still have had some going about their lives. The filthy stench of the Qi in the air, overlaid with nauseating metallic and hallucinogenic effects, so repellent...
There was a silent woosh, and something pure ignited under her chin. She inhaled despite herself, feeling the ambient Qi get devoured, separated back into life and mana, pure and untainted.
“It must smell worse to you,” Nicole, the Wind swordswoman, said, Idiot extended out underneath Azaia’s chin. There was no sense of threat, the billowing vivus was simply a much-needed balm at this moment.
“It... yes,” Azaia admitted. She had no fear of the Sword, which had been demonstrated to her as being unable to cut her... by expediently slashing it through her a dozen times without leaving a mark on her. “There are echoes of horror and helplessness around. It does not make it easier...”
“Your loss of Levels has also affected your mental fortitude,” Nicole analyzed briefly. “We’ve been told and taught the Sun Saves, but Lady Traveler says they are a burst measure, a stopgap. Mental strength is mental strength, and one’s Will Save is the measure of it. A gift like yours is a double-edged sword, able to give you great strength, and which can also be preyed on by the opportune.”
Azaia turned to look at the Eurasian. “Empathy is something you were taught not to have,” she said gently, and the dark-eyed Amazon looked away as she flicked Idiot through the air in cutting arcs of unwhite flame, clearing the local air of the stinking Qi.
“And something to exploit in others, yes. Harden our hearts, wall off all emotion, and so do what we needed to do without guilt or remorse. Our Pacts made it very, very easy to do.”
Azaia had politely requested an introduction to all the members of Legion, finding it very interesting to have a whole bunch of people to talk to all rolled into one... and all of them with such grim backstories, so very different from her own.
She could only sigh, and brace herself. She did not like doing this. She had never been a violent person. She wanted to fill the world with joy and happiness and delight, the silver magic of Sylune showing everyone the right way to live.
But this, this Qi, this Cultivation...
Slavery, corruption, defilement, a lie of blasphemy disguised in the light, disguised with false happiness. Souls screaming for release, chained forever to the Mantra...
Unless they died in vivus.
This was something that had to be done. She felt it on so many levels it was harrowing.
“The Shroudzone can wait until nightfall, when the undead start to spread and wander,” Azaia judged. She looked at the Map in her head, showing the constantly updated Commune, the edges of it moving around as Traveler moved, the ‘expired’ awareness faded at the edges, showing they were not current. “We should kill the Cultivators while it is light.”
“Agreed!” Nicole said, inclining her head at Sleipner. Azaia bounced onto the unicorn-cycle (she really wanted to hear the story of how he was bound to his alicorn, then figured that maybe she didn’t), Nicole swung aboard, and Sleipner accelerated with magical smoothness into motion, heading for the next collection of Cultivators who Had To Die.
Azaia considered her options, and all the Karma she had to earn back, and realized that with this kind of constant, necessary killing, this whole process wasn’t going to take anywhere near as long as she had once feared.
------------
Azaia’s potential Karma problems were put completely to ease when I took down Lucknow.
It was Domed against our attack, and sucking in the Qi from the many Formations hurriedly put up in the area, inside and without it. They’d brought in an Arhat to buttress the whole thing, they’d enslaved every living human in the area they could, and they’d murdered the rest, creating a Shroudzone around themselves that we first had to settle to even get at them.
Or so they thought. When I Blighted the whole Dome, infecting the whole pattern of energy they were drawing and essentially ripping away any mana they were converting, well, the necroic power of the Shroud simply wasn’t affected at all.
The Dome itself had inspired massive resentment in the people they had slaughtered, and the numbers insured that Dark Ministers rose with great speed. United in their hate, they aligned under a Dark Bishop with great speed.
Congregants began hurling Negalances and Negabolts at the Dome constantly, without fail or cessation. Death energies crackled and wore away at the purifying Light, while I calmly reversed the exterior Shrines and cut off any mana or Qi flow to reinforce those within the Dome.
Suddenly, it wasn’t we who had to kill a million undead who loathed them, it was them!
The Shroud was totally capable of overcoming the soul-capturing of the Mantra, too.
When the Dark Clergy finally breached the Dome with hundreds of repeated and concentrated attacks, the undead, empowered by the overlapping Auras of their leaders, poured within to do battle. The Buddhists had no choice but to meet them.
They had sudden problems when I appeared overhead, and with a great sense of irony, snuffed out the most powerful of them one by one: those most capable of purifying the undead and carrying this fight.
I had Legion shoot that fat Arhat with a Dead Shot and deny the thing the Mantra’s power, so it could experience the joy and wonder of fighting thousands of untiring, hate-filled undead it had helped make, only without its power to purify them, all the while watching all its subordinates gradually die... and then those minions get right back up, their eyes burning with black lights, the power of the Mantra extinguished, but making them all Congregants; stronger, faster, tougher, and able to channel the magic of the Shroud.
Its soul wasn’t going back to the Mantra. It got to watch all of the hundreds of thousands of Enlightened who had brought it here die, and screaming defiance and disbelief, its will shattering under so much negative emotional power ripping into it, it died.
Died, and joined the undead.