I could naturally completely fix the dome at any time, even if the Shroudlord’s bony arse started pounding through it. It needed to do 16 points of damage to exceed the stone’s hardness before it could start inflicting a single point of real damage, as it wasn’t using tools designed to chop stone, always a nice requirement when you are trying to Sunder something. Hardness is indeed a thing.
The Greysphere wouldn’t stop its supernatural connection to its horde as its leader, but it would totally suppress the active link once I Cast the Protection from Evil Area Effect around the dome. That meant its +10d6 negative energy damage boost from its status was not in effect. Oh, how terrible for it...
Telepathic connections had been instantly severed by the spell, as good as having a five-hundred-foot circle around it. It forced the undead to come to it!
To come to ME! Cue Extremely Effective Mass Dead March Slaughter Tactics 101...
Satisfied with that, I walked to the center of the chamber, and the gaping hundred-foot hole there, with a single walkway of stone and circle extended perilously out over a howling abyss.
The place was so cold and dry there was no moisture, no ice, and a hurricane of wind was coming down from above into this place. The pit was reaching up with soul-chilling cold to meet the wind, and thence was sent shooting in all directions out from the many passageways going every which way from here.
Tainted. This was a Well of Frozen Souls, the primary Cold Node for a whole planet. I sniffed despite myself, and then I Blighted the whole Damned thing... using Heavenly Wrath to do so.
The whole Well ignited with a howl of protest as I wrenched the flow of Cold magic away and sucked it into myself and Master Fred.
My blood shimmered as Cold flowed through me with terrible serenity, met the Fire beating at my core, and mixed and merged as only two energies that were actually the same damn thing could do.
Master Fred’s share blew into his Heavenpact, accentuating the clear serenity of the High Heavens to its power, and bore down on his Hellpact. Even the Hellscars he tolerated so stoically dimmed before the incoming Elemental power bolstering the power of his Pacts. Perhaps the silver in his nonesuch eyes was more crystalline now?...
His skin didn’t turn blue, which was the normal result for someone going through this Ceremony. I was sure that the process was incredibly painful, which meant he just accepted it as one more short-term ache to work through, instead of a soul-chilling terror threatening to shatter his spirit to shards...
------
The occasional undead was starting to stumble into the place, heading directly for the Rune-scrawled hemisphere being pounded on ineffectually by the lich within, now doubtless regretting not learning some martial techniques to increase its melee damage.
I pulled out two Staves I’d made from the femurs of undead Fire Jotuns, while Master Fred deposited a bunch of minor magical items left behind by the abrupt demise of a lot of Casting undead on the Disk floating next to me. Said Items became the sacrificial fuel for the Permanent Wall of Fire I Cast with all the Buffs up next, anchored to the black Jotun Bones.
I set the Firebones next to that walkway extending out over that pit, and the Wall of Fire extended all the way around the Pit, up and around that long walkway and the circle out there, and back to me.
It was Cast at Fifty, with all the +1’s I could toss on it, Consecrated to complete the Holy Metas, Snowcasting topped off with everything as Cold and Fire shared all the power this time, and I lit this damn place up like a sun.
A roaring pillar of super-heated vivus blew up to meet the incoming super-chilled air. The entire pit was basically blazing as the necroic energy from below ignited in the area affected by the Wall of Fire ringing the pit, and a massive 130ish-point holy flame rode that ignition into staying around and having a real effect on the world.
The subzero temperature of this place began to rise almost instantly as the compounding effect of two huge sources of Cold suddenly became a meeting of superhot and supercold, neutralizing one another before rolling and getting shoved out in all directions, just like normal King Thermodynamics instructed the world on proper behavior to do. A nigh-cyclonic whirlwind of temperature exchanges was rising above us in reaction to what was going on.
I had a distinct feeling that this world wasn’t going to be quite so cold in the future. Neutralizing the effect of the Node didn’t shut down the far vaster source of Elemental Air coming in far above, but the compounding effect was going to be gone; a negative was now a positive acting against the mammoth cooling effect of the eternally cold winds about this peak.
Once the vortex started up, the incoming undead didn’t really have a chance, as vivus-filled air currents were basically everywhere in the chamber, and incoming undead began to burn and disintegrate as they were helplessly compelled to head in this direction. Every path they took to get here was now going to be like walking into corrosive holy acid or something, so it was only about waiting the whole thing out.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The Extended Greysphere I’d Cast would last for thirteen hours, and I could re-Cast it to keep it going.
There was only to loot, monitor the situation, and wait for every damn undead thing under the Shroud to get pulled into this mountain, burn, and die.
--------
I Hallowed the cold manaflow to remove the Blight, which did not make whatever the source of Death mana was down there any happier.
This was still an Ice Node, and the flames I’d put up actually had no effect on that fact whatsoever. The fires were carried away by the winds, out into the world, not affecting the ley line below that I had now Consecrated to the Powers of Good, doubtless NOT what an Old God keyed to Death wanted to happen.
I was completely unsurprised when the first roars came in, sounding like hagclaws on Hardened slate screeching up from deep in the Pit of Frozen Souls. I turned to the Wall of Fire, burning as hot as any lavaflow ever, fueled by the very purity of the Cold mana here, golden glory spraying vivus into the winds at the heart of this world.
Master Fred was picking up stuff, and simply withdrew from the chamber when the roars started getting closer, going off to check on the progress of the undead who didn’t seem to be reaching us.
The distortion in the manasphere when the creature arrived below the lip of the pit was pretty bad, weighing down on the average soul, holding that familiar Old God feel that was mixed with Death.
Unfortunately for it, there was a burning Holy fire laden with vivus forming a howling fireswirl hundreds of feet high right there at the entry to normal space. If it wanted to get out the pit, it was either going to have to make its own entry point, or take some damage.
It could take the damage, sure, whatever it was, and by the skittering sounds of legs driving into stone, rasping pincers, and irritated chitters, an image on the great doors leading into the mountain kind of came to mind.
Cold, Death, and insectile...
I waited for it to steel itself against the pain of getting out of the pit, pulling out a vial of Holy Water Master Fred had been kind enough to Energize for me.
I also pulled out a certain sphere of Hardened Adamantine which was pleased to see some further use.
--------
It came surging out of the pit in a hundred-legged arch of motion, trying and failing to avoid the Wall of Fire and all its super-heating splendor, bits of vivus clinging to it and following it as its dead white carapace smoked. It arched over and beyond the flames, incredibly powerful and dangerous legs clacking sharply as it hit the floor, drawing over a hundred feet of its body after it with impossible grace and speed for something with an exoskeleton.
Its insectile head, still steaming, turned on me with multi-faceted eyes, and it seemed to tense.
The Shards that smashed into it were all of the acidic variant, empowered by Wrath-charged Holy Water. They splattered against its neo-crystalline shell, driving in deep, melting through the steel-hard exoskeleton like snow.
The Sphere slammed into the middle of the mushy mess made of its shell as it staggered for a second, realized it wasn’t really hurt, and then lunged at me. It crossed two hundred feet like a locomotive, jumping and lunging with multiple legs rising like spears, pincered jaws spreading wide, a maw of hellrime opening...
Repeated Spell, re-align to Fire. Primary Spell, to Fire. Fastcast spell, to Fire!
I was pretty damn sure that its crystalline carapace would just bounce any normal Rays or Shards. The liquid form of Shards was like hitting it with rain, and hadn’t actually done ‘damage’ to it, just eroded the shell so I could ground a Heat Sink into it.
Ground it? Yes, Lightning Rods had two variants: one was for combat use, absorbing and neutralizing lightning damage internally, and the other was absorbing it and passing it down through a grounded circuit, a favored use by Alchemists for not-forbidden experiments, no, no...
Heat Sinks were just Fire variants of the same spell, and I pumped all the Fire out.
Since the Sphere was just passing the heat on, there was no need to worry about melting the thing, which I very well might have done otherwise. Instead, all those spells converged unerringly on the dark mass of metal I’d shoved telekinetically into the body of this Old God whatever (I lie, the carvings said one of its names was Iriickik, the Devourer of Frozen Souls) and were transmitted directly onwards and inwards.
It was a lot of fire damage, the Spell Penetration check was Spell Resistance Wot?, and then the Old God, a devoted creature of Cold and Death, got to eat some Holy Vivic Flames to the tune of Oh Shit That’s a Big Number of damage.
It was still in midair when the fires lit it up inside, and then it exploded.
Shattered body segments and broken pieces of carapace went in all directions. Sharp legs and edges buried themselves in bright white stone everywhere, as an ancient yet new smell filled the air. Something that should have died long ago finally did, releasing its power to the world, and joined that massive rush of vivic energy blowing through the mountain in quite the killing wave of power.
240 Shards x 40ish damage each to the innards is a lot of damage to have to eat, even if it is your mountain and you have a lot of Health Qi. That vulnerability to Fire, Vivus, and Holy powers is just killer...
I healed up sixteen punctures in the dome trapping the Shroudlord I maybe not-coincidentally ended up sprawled against, which the lich was probably thankful for. A partial beam of godly essence en vivus had cut into one of the openings and smoothly taken off its leg, sending the enraged and aghast lich clattering to the stone in disbelief.
I looked at the massive cracked skull of the Old God, its mandibles driven into the stone wall over there and holding the thing in place twenty feet off the ground, unwhite fires burning inside upon the contents thereof, which were probably still wondering exactly what had happened.
Hey, that might make a good Dreadskull, too. All these carapace parts, and the sections that hadn’t immolated when blasted directly through the Wall of Fire over there, would be worth something to someone who wanted some great Armor or Spear materials...
Sooper-powahful Caster me, picking up bits of a godly bug. Oh, how the mighty get their due...