The White Worm was dead, burning with vivic fire at furnace intensity. The meaty, fatty mass of it was boiling and dissolving with the fury of the vivic flames eating at it.
They had gone right up it, opening it up, treating the hide of the trapped creature inside the glowing Seal like tofu, splitting it open like overripe fruit, and then the white one had leapt right into that mass of Taint within, her Sword burning, and began to carve it open from the inside.
The one in magenta continued gutting it like a fish, broad swathes of vivic flame flaring and eating the spewing Taint in the air with explosive hunger, down and around as the Blighted thing tried to suck power out of the land, the earth, and the sky to heal its wounds... all to no effect.
The killing cold it radiated could have been a breeze to the two, the blackening rime soon ignited into a circle of unwhite fire feasting happily.
And just like that, huge chunks of it falling off, its massive might contained in that rising pillar of Light and unable to evade them, the foxwomen hewed it apart.
He saw the massive head, twenty feet thick, hit the ground and promptly explode into flames after the magenta one hacked it off. That didn’t stop the worm, of course, but then the stump of its neck had been left burning like a living pyre, and all its wounds were only burning unwhite faster, harder, and more viciously as non-stop impacts and shredding wounds from inside and without tore it apart.
The magenta one wedged her Axe into it and ran right down the side of the worm, opening up a massive eighty-foot gap in its hide. A virtual waterfall of misting white fire erupted from the innards of the White Worm behind her.
The one in white came splurging out of that opening about twenty feet up, and a flood of innards followed her out, blazing with mistfire as they fell. She kicked easily free of them, the contagion over her white fur and slender limbs burning off and away before she hit the ground and skidded twenty feet to end up next to her armored associate.
The White Worm couldn’t even fall over until it was dead... but when the golden Lights fell, it had stopped moving a long minute before, only twitches from within and gouts of vivus stirring its bulk.
It basically fell over right in front of them... and right on top of the altar and dais where the motionless and crippled Queen Diminova was still sprawled. With a wet crunch, the mass of it reduced her to blood and pulp, and the altar to crumbled shards.
“We done here?” the white one asked, throwing a look around and meeting Dmitro’s eyes. He had the very sudden impression that she knew where all the Borea still alive were, and he knew without a doubt that if she acted, they were all going to join their packmates...
“I’ve had enough of inbred cursed mongrels,” the magenta foxwoman snapped in a curt voice, watching the Worm burn with cold savagery, the energies it had stolen and been fed now being returned to the Land. “If they get in our way again, we’ll just kill them all again.”
“That works too!” the white one laughed, smiling with all her teeth at the thought.
The two of them took one step together, just as the dimension-sealing about the caern faded, and they were gone.
Dmitro stared at the corpse of the beast whose threat had loomed over them for so long, whose Sealing was one of the great triumphs of his clan.
Feeding the beast?
Their queen, Possessed by a demon all this time?
The Worm, slain so easily, by foxwomen, of all beings?
He looked up at the sky above them, remembered the golden pillars of light tearing it open, and even now could see flashes of mistfire raging at the edge of the Haze that was trying to move in and seal off the sky once more.
Had they the assistance of HER, the mortal half-breed, who also had the power to tear open the sky? She could probably Seal the White Worm so easily with such strength...
Mocking them, the Borea! Insulting them, killing them, flaunting their power...
Dmitro snarled, trying to call on the rage within, the great fighting spirit of his Pack and his ancestors... and instead finding a cold and empty dread inside, as if he had looked upon some great unholy truth about his people, and found his blood running like ice, not fire...
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I materialized right next to the two of them. I TK’d up my tunic as I turned around, and they both looked in satisfaction at the screaming face of the lilithi frozen there in the Sealing Tat, faint mists of unwhite fire swirling about it.
Sama and Briggs had both returned to their normal forms. I’d arrived last because I’d dispersed the dimensional connection from their Teleports, so they couldn’t be tracked.
“Good,” they said in grim unison, and knocked knuckles with a crunch. I rubbed my ear theatrically as they grinned. “How’s it working out for you?” Sama continued.
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“It turns out that she was a Cleric of Demonium, not a Witch at all, but that’s fine. It’s all flowing into my Ur-Priest Levels. I should reach Twelve in Ur-Priest with it.” My Tails also flowed into silky, poofy existence, but there was something sharp at the tip of each one of them. “Also beneficial. I can apply the Karmic cost of her Sin against future Succubi Racial Levels, and should be able to apply them flatly when it is time.”
“Ugh, Powered. So cheap!” Sama rolled her eyes as my Tails evaporated, and I let my shirt fall back down. “Twelve in Ur-Priest would be your highest Class, no?”
“Correct. The net effect will be... almost nothing. It’s not my Primary Class, so I can’t gain Hit Dice from it. My Wizard Levels already have Mystic Theurgy. I believe the only major benefit is Wisdom Slots for Valence VI into my Pool.” Twelve more Spell Points was fine...
“You can’t choose any Masteries or Feats?” Briggs huffed. “What am I saying? No sympathy! Free Levels for denying us the pleasure of cracking that bitch’s skull and watching her die forever personally!”
I promptly dumped my full awareness of her screaming and burning slowly inside her Seal into our shared /tell link, which we basically kept up all the time to help coordinate Allegiance and Warlord stuff going on. I was better at logistics; they were better at the strategy and tactics.
Both of them smiled in response. “And here we thought you were going to be nice and spare us the pleasure of her long, slow demise!” Sama grinned ferociously.
“She is responsible for a lot of dead. No, no, you can listen to her scream all you like. Let’s just say that if she burned a minute for every innocent soul she is responsible for killing, she’d be burning for at least ten days.”
Sama’s smile just got wider. “And now she’s a stepping stone to someone who has death tolls in the tens of millions. Feed her some of that Cultivator slaughter, and let her know how insignificant she is in both what she achieved, and compared to the power of some of the things you already killed.”
“Huh.” Well, why not? I dumped some memories of places like Bombay and Delhi, dead Arhats and Outsider Cultivators and the like on top of her.
She had been responsible for a lot of the shit Stalin had ordered done, culling the numbers of Russians, subverting the purging orders and magnifying the effects of them.
Still, she had done nothing like my direct slaughter of multitudes. She could only realize that she was a peon, she would only ever be a peon, and she existed only for the purpose of me taking whatever I wanted from her, as she had from so many before her, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
“Ohhhh, nice scream there,” Briggs murmured in grim approval.
“The two of you alright?” I asked calmly.
“We are wondering if the werewolves will zero in on you, if they deduce that you were the one helping us,” Briggs said with some concern.
I acknowledged their worry by saying, “If they bug me after all the shit I’m picking up from this bitch, I am just going to wipe them all, Sama.” Those sacrifices every new moon weren’t there to contain the Worm; they were to make it stronger while hiding its growth and recovery. She’d been fooling the Borea and the other Packs the whole time, and they had eaten it up and gone along with her.
Many of the great victories she’d led them to had been against her own demonic rivals, as much as anything else. Even the Uncaged were just targets of manipulation for her through her influence on the Banes and Dark Spirits that they served.
On the other hand, I was picking up a lot of knowledge about werewolves, the spirits they messed with, and some shadow history of the world, all of which might be useful.
At least, until I had to move on to another world. I suppose that meant I would have to write it all down. I set orders out to a scribe on one of my thoughtstreams...
“Working on anything important?” Sama asked me.
I shook my head. “Einz is finishing up Sacred Protection, and going to be starting on Luck Protection again. Clavus is opening up Slot Zehn so I can get the Commander working on it. He’ll be ready to go in a month. The Shroud has been feeding me Logistics Mastery the last three days.” I just shrugged helplessly. “I just initialize and farm out the lesser stuff.”
They both beamed, and I knew they’d beaten me to it. “The Commander Opened Slot Elb for both your Weapons?” I asked archly.
“It’s slow filling them, but we’ll get there!” Briggs promised. The twenty goldweight a day equivalence was not a small amount, nor the two thousand forty-two goldweight total cost. Even with Legendary Crafting, that was a hundred and four days minimum to actually open the Slot... which I was also going to be faced with, except I wasn’t a Legendary Crafter.
A lot of Cultivators would be dying to fill those Slots. Some final generosity on their part, making them useful for something in the end.
They’d both had a considerable head start on me in advancing their Weapons with Naming Karma, so it was only reasonable. Having a Legendary Weapon ready to go when the Shroud came down only made logical sense.
“You heard Legion can make Legendary Toys, right?” I asked the pair of them.
“On my advice,” Sama answered, nodding. “They might be our sole source of Legendary upgrades if the Commander gets reassigned. Arms and Toys covers the key things.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Legendary Rings would be nice, but it didn’t cover as much stuff. “They are Initializing Dreadskulls for me.” I popped off Hastsezini’s Skull and handed it over; they both took it eagerly. Tremblesense rippled through it, studying the lines and flow of the Runework, and they both sighed and shook their heads before Briggs handed it back.
“Yeah, we can see it all, but the Why of it is still past us,” he confirmed. “Nice that it’s powering itself up. Benefits of the source?”
“They said my Ice Dreadskull is doing the same thing, so probably.” Which turned thoughts to the Old Gods still around that nobody needed to be around anymore. They likely would have been very angry to learn they were being thought of as potential magic item components...
Well, they thought of mortals as raw materials; it was only proper to return the favor.
“That move with Ughril was inspired. What brought it on?” Briggs had to ask.
“The Mick’s move with the Shoggoth. The Old Gods are very susceptible to how they are perceived by their worshippers. Being seen as the noble protector of a pristine land is very different from an uncaring mistress of winter,” I answered him firmly.
“Dammit, Trav, you’re taking away our Karma and violent solutions for everything!” Sama complained loudly, throwing up her hands and stomping her feet.
“Yeah, I’m here to pick up a tube of blood for the Chinese, and I’m going to take a trip to Antarctica and see if The Mick’s method is still viable. I’ll have some of Ughril’s help to control one for the initial try. Mr. Burble definitely wants to get a Peer active here.” None of us took Sama’s complaint to heart. Non-violent solutions to a problem garnered just as much Karma as violent ones, and often more in the long-term... as long as the problem was actually solved, not delayed.
Quicker... maybe not. But the broader effects made it worth it, if you could pull it off.
Shoggoths helping of their own will instead of menacing us? Definitely worth it...