There were plenty of people outside the volcano, watching projected Holos of all this with their eyes popping.
It was so surreal. An army of the damned, falling out of the sky like lemmings into an ocean of vivic fire getting higher and brighter as it devoured more and more of them, and they just didn’t stop.
Their master, burning with demonic, unclean flames, raging at the invisible Wall that bound Him, as Holy magic burned at Him with raging intensity. As they watched, the white basalt around His prison began to arrange itself in Seals and Circles, which were filled up with vivus instantly, and His scream grew louder and more panicked as The Light threw Him back from the Wall of Force holding Him in place.
She had put another one of those in place, too, glowing with Holy Power of its own.
The thousands of people watching from outside the Shroudzone could see the Fireshroud was collapsing precipitously, the hate lightning within was dying out quickly, and it was retreating with visible speed, almost back to the Caldera itself... No, on the far side it was past the caldera, as it seemed to be centering on a location close to the eastern rim...
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There were undead Elementals on the ground, also trying to get to their master by the shortest route... a route now blocked with icefire and vivus. It was hard to tell if they were coming to attack or to be Dominated again, now that He’d lost his connection to Fire, but it didn’t matter, in the end.
They all still had to die, and I killed them.
One part of my mind keeping the Gust going, and I kept up the dance of staying Featherweighted, making sure all those Walls of Icefire were Renewed, as was the Wall of Force. In between I pounded down anything that tried to keep moving and get close to their ex-boss.
I had no mercy, only determination. They all had to die, and it couldn’t end before they did.
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It took about ten more minutes, all told. The Formation around the Old God was getting brighter and brighter, and the Pillars and Columns I’d added to it, almost crystallized in the flows of vivus there, were further adding to His torment. He couldn’t even beat on the Wall of Force successfully now, as all The Light coming in seemed to bend and converge on Him the closer He got to the end of His new prison, and He was in far too much pain to get off any magic.
The last of the undead Elementals crawled into the burning blue-white Walls to their doom; the last of the pyre knights had fallen from the skies; the last of the burning dead had crawled out of the lava and shattered themselves into frozen fuel for the vivus.
I looked at the four succubi, all four of them just outside the raging Icefire Walls, staring at the barriers in fear and horror. They were helplessly plastered against the Circles I had erected there, pinning them in place.
On my shoulder, I knew Bey ‘Azzar was watching, and no doubt swallowing hard as He watched me deal with the entire army of his former master.
I finally came down from my air-surfing, the Featherweight expiring as I touched the ground, and an ominous stillness came over everything.
His Dark Clergy-derived Health Qi was quite all gone now, and now it was Him burning, in icy fires stronger and purer than anything He could possible imagine. I didn’t have to renew the spell again. The way His skin was shattering, burning away in vivus, and His profane flames were weakening rapidly assured me He was falling, falling, and His screams were fading too.
His Fire was finally dying.
He probably didn’t even see Master Fred over there, stuffing the Wrath of Heaven into the Circle here, or The Mick, standing there next to the Obelisk He’d taken out of Sleipner’s sidecar, hefted upright, and was leaning against with a grim smile on his face, its big Protection from Evil effect covering the whole area with the extra vivic juice, and expressly covering the Old God inside His cage.
I snapped my fingers, shattered the Wall of Force, and shards of rigid energy tore through the Old God. He stumbled, fell inside the raging cold of the Walls, and looked up with eyes that had shattered and burned away at me.
He wanted to say something, but it was too late for Him, and I really wasn’t all that interested. It was the End of His Eternity.
“I bring your Last Day!” I told Him, thumping the Nail in His coffin on the ground, and He lit off.
Stolen story; please report.
He was much bigger and brighter than that little Dark Minister down south, and there was a lot more energy invested in this. The Light that poured up to the sky as He was sacrificed to Heaven and the Land was a new sun appearing across the land, filled with a golden brilliance and warmth that nobody born here had ever truly experienced.
It blew through the Shroud, tore it open, and peeled it back for ten miles in every direction. The Haze retreated, flaming and burning, and the true night sky gaped above us all.
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I blinked my eyes to clear them of the vivic flash, the shouts and calls on the /tell informing me of the sky gaping open above me.
Master Fred had been unaffected by the brightness, of course, and was examining the stars above with interest and a relaxed expression.
“Lord Mick, secure the Crystal Skull and the Weapons,” I told him as he was standing there cursing and rubbing his eyes.
“I got it,” he told me, as I started walking towards some demonesses writhing in pain after getting blasted by The Light. Happily for them, there’d been some burning Walls in the way to provide them some cover.
They weren’t going to miss me coming, either, scrambling back to their feet, long tails twitching, torn between trying to look seductive and cowering in abject fear, and sneaking peeks at the new sky above regardless.
The Walls of Fire went out, and I TK’d the Permanent rods of them back to my hand. As the rods touched, the active effect of the spells was snuffed out, and they could be stored safely. I bound them up tight together and slipped them casually back into my Masspack as the succubi stared at me, not daring to speak first.
I looked at the four of them, considering how much ancient history they represented, the stories they could tell. They were all clad in now somewhat-tattered remnants of ornate, embroidered traditional Native American attire, and their appearances and coppery skin brought such tribes to mind.
The Summoning Circles I’d Shaped in around them had saved their lives. That didn’t mean it was going to save them for long.
“The first one of you to give me your True Name gets to live.” I flicked up eighteen Shards around my arm calmly. “You have thirty seconds.”
They understood Demonic perfectly well, and stared at me, then one another.
“Me!”
Six Shards split three ways, and three succubi were blown apart, limbs and torsos flying in every direction, vivus quick at work.
Master Fred patiently trotted around to salvage the heads. Baneskulls against Fiends were always useful to have, and probably only moreso in the future.
The back of my shirt split open, and the very ornate Binding Circle Tatted there glowed and began to spin with energy. “You are Bound, and you are Sealed. TRUTH!”
She screamed, and there was a flash and swirl of light. She vanished from the Circle, and I felt the hum and clamping down of Binding magic on my back and against my Aura. I also knew the Circle there had just morphed and turned into an image of the demoness now Sealed there.
I could plumb her for historical knowledge at any time. No urgency.
My shirt rewove itself, and I turned back towards the new crystalline crater six hundred feet across and a hundred feet deep, sparkling with the purest of pure white fires. The only colors were The Mick, Sleipner, and the Obelisk I’d made, the latter also streaked with white from the blast now.
“I’m going to Consecrate and Hallow the area to remove the Blight,” I informed Master Fred as I walked that way. “That will also tie me to the Firezone here, especially when I raise a Node Tap and Vivic Beacon here.”
He considered that. IMPLICATIONS?, he asked calmly.
“I’m a mortal. All I can do is prevent other Powers from controlling the pyromana ley line under here, and tap it for spellcasting if I’m standing here. If I was Eternal or something, I could probably sponsor Firepacts.”
He eyed my totally scarlet skin. YOU HAVE FLAMES BURNING OFF YOUR EARS AND HAIR, he informed me, somewhat amused.
I flicked up a burst of fire without effort, popping it on my palm. “Elements of my Bloodline are getting energized by this.” The popping flame looked like drifting feathers, slowly eaten away as they dispersed. “I will be immediately heading to the Antarctic to complete the Ceremony of the Frozen Soul when I am done here.”
THERE ARE A GREAT MANY PEOPLE WHO WILL WANT TO TALK TO YOU, he noted calmly.
“Tell them I’m burning up inside, and I’m going to go cool off.”
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Weaving together holy and natural energies, removing the Blight, bringing in other energies and weaving them into the massive flow below, capitalizing on my attunement to the flow of pyromana to put a grip on it, mark it, and make it impossible for any wandering Fire-attuned creature to do the same and mess with the Flow without first getting rid of MY grip on it... and good freaking luck with that...
I couldn’t move it around at all, just tap it here and there for personal use, and as a result it was quickly pulling back to the natural flow and dispersal, which was totally what I wanted to happen anyways.
Putting the Node Tap in place on this Greater Node, setting up a Tri-Elemental Guardian defense, putting the Argos Obelisk in place, and establishing a Vivic Beacon were all things meant to keep things happening naturally instead of artificially.
I was aware that a whole lot of people were coming to this area just to lay down on their backs and moonwatch, but the Haze was already starting to recover and slowly push back. At sunrise, the view would be gone.
Even the most cursory scan painted into my Visual File was enough to confirm it wasn’t the old sky, and at 50x magnification, my scan wasn’t cursory in the slightest.
My eyes popped open and I looked off to the side and down.
Standing there on top of the gargantuan field of lava was Hastsezini’s mount.
It wasn’t a horse, and it wasn’t undead, and it wasn’t a Nightmare, at least in the traditional sense. It did have flaming clawed hooves, it was mostly skeletal, and it had a big flaming ball in its chest, with no organs there, and a bone structure that clearly indicated it wasn’t a truly natural creature. It had a triple set of horns, almost like a trident, thick and sturdy and definitely able to impale something as effectively as any alicorn. The outer horns even looked like they were sharpened on the outside...
It was, however, a creature of Fire.