They couldn’t keep pace with Sleipner, even with their enhanced mobility and ability to fly. Really, I could have screwed them all just by Stillflighting the area and sending them into free fall, but I happened to want to stay out of the hands of the crowd while I was freeing them up at three hundred a minute, and didn’t want to waste Merciful Shards to put them down while I did so.
Master Fred’s Grit boomed, coordinating with my Shards, following up on pairs to bring in a kill-shot and forking out to hit two others nearby if possible, raging over their Qi and eating it away with true Holy fire, which made them all shriek in outrage. While my Holy Metas were only good against true Evil, the Wrath of Heaven worked perfectly well against these Neutral things...
I’m sure they were cursing and condemning and the air about my Sound Bubble was vibrating from the power of the Chant they were directing at me, to the point where windows were exploding all around us, and even the stone and cement in the ground below was shattering loudly from the force of it.
If they got close, Fred was fully prepared to cut them down and through with Idiot, ignoring their shining fists and palms and just butchering them. If they had a Staff or Spear or something, he shattered that on the way in, letting them know that all the mystic Qi bullshit in the world doesn’t trump a functioning 40 Might or something, and someone who was really good with a Sword AND knew Crystal and Ocean Dragon ki.
Of course, they really wanted to go for me, but that was a pipe dream. Sleipner knew how to be a Mount, how to cut through and work formations, and was totally coordinated with who we were shooting and which way he should be moving. He drolly wheeled us through their numbers as Enlightened of all subspecies, sizes, and genders threw themselves at us, chanting and condemning us... and fell burning from the skies by Grit, Sword, or Shards.
Below us, the crowds of the Enthralled were thinning out. Not fast enough, of course, but it was still happening. It helped that they were gathering everyone they could here to stop us, instead of scattering in every direction and forcing us to hunt them down. They must have thought they could overwhelm us and outlast us.
Even not using extra Shards, I was still sending out over fourscore of them per Casting volley, and the Enlightened who were dying were more than enough to pay for all the Pool I was spending to do this.
Sleipner wound above the streets in circles and arcs, plunging through groups of exploding flying Enlightened, whizzing through circles above the crowds below, and watched as the ensorcelled people of the city below dropped in clusters and swathes as I broke the Mantra’s hold on them. Detect Qi picked out everyone I couldn’t save, and those simply died, as there was no way to return them to humanity.
There were a lot of people in the city who had been suborned. It wasn’t the metropolis it had once been on Terra-Luna, but there were still a lot of people here.
Using the Song of Life, I could have instantly Restored some of those below to their full wits... which would have instantly made them targets of those still Enthralled. Not wanting them to be swarmed by a horde of Enthralled, I simply let them sleep. I could come back to them later to do what needed to be done.
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It was about ninety minutes in when the Mantra’d people realized they should be running. By then I’d freed about thirty thousand people, either by shattering the Mantra’s hold on them or blowing the Node Enlightened out of existence. The Sattiva in charge realized it couldn’t stop me, and started pulling the people back, trying to get them to run.
Kill the node Enlightened and that command faded away. The Enthralled milled around, Chanting mindlessly until I shattered the Mantra’s hold and conditioning. Sleipner began to zip from location to location of Qi. There was no way they could hide even if they were splitting up, and we cut through them, and cut them down.
The Sattiva was being borne away on a palanquin by a bunch of Enlightened when we zipped around in front of them and intercepted him.
He looked truly ridiculous. He was nearly as round as a ball, his face in a permanent smile of beneficence; his ears were overlong and weighed down with golden hoops; and his hands were clasped, lit up by a false holy light that seemed to cover him in a saintly Halo of grace and provenance.
The group of forty or so chanting monks in red, orange, and black robes, their hands all clasped with malas around them, halted when we got in their way, spreading out slowly to face us up there in midair. Their wooden bead necklaces began to glow with protective Lights, gathering the Chant’s power to them.
The people on the ground below started to collapse as I broke the Mantra’s hold on them with repeated spells. Despite themselves, the Enlightened looked down at them dropping, their supporters’ numbers rapidly failing, and the derived power of their Chanting with it.
“Who are you, and why do you oppose us?” the chubby Sattiva murmured, rising to his feet, and then above the palanquin carrying him. His voice was serene and wise, above all the world, truly wounded by our resistance.
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The kickback was a bash on the inside of my skull, but it was totally worth it. The OMMMM gathering and resonating in the air shattered, and all the Enlightened screamed and clutched their heads as the falseness of the Mantra and their existence ripped into them. All the people below screamed likewise as their Chant was shattered and fed back into them.
Even this false Buddha was bleeding out all his orifices, staggering as he tried to overcome the utter truth laid out before him, beat it down with the Mantra’s insistence that IT was the Truth, the One True Way, and it would defeat this blasphemy that had torn into the heart of what it meant...
While they were stunned, they couldn’t Dodge.
The eight Shardrays each took half the formation, and they all ended at the Sattiva.
The Rays formed a pretty picture as they connected all these Enlightened caricatures of monkdom and blew them violently apart in coruscant eruptions of Force, Vivus, Chaos, and Banefire. All of the explosions were silent, and shooting vivus washed out to devour the last vestiges of the Chant in the air hungrily... and quietly.
The fake Buddha was especially large when he lit up, all those Chains converging on him at the same instant, overwhelming all his built-up Qi, feeding on it, and when he went off, he swallowed all the others detonating en vivus at the same time... serenely, gently, silently.
We let the blast wash past us for a moment, while I put a hand to my head and started healing up the 14d4 of temporary Soak feedback to the forebrain I’d just inflicted on myself.
“Let’s go find the rest of the Enlightened. I can use the Song of Life to fix up the rest of them, once the Enlightened are gone.”
Sleipner obligingly spun his tires and zipped away towards another group fleeing the city, eying the sensory map of Detect Qi and Commune with Nature I was sharing with him. I couldn’t be throwing out Break Enchantments unless I could regain the Pool used to Cast them, so the Song of Life would be much more useful for mass numbers, as it would literally last until I was done Singing it.
But this fight was effectively over. They couldn’t avoid the awareness of the Land, which wanted them gone like the alien infection they were, and they couldn’t outrun Sleipner, especially with their technophagery giving them a massive aversion to cars.
They were doomed, and I was Bringing their Last Day!
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Master Fred saw them coming, as they were only trying to be a little careful, not exactly sneaky. Traveler had a lot of people to work through, able to break basically one person free of the Mantra a second. Her voice was rising and falling in a wild, energetic vocal dance, and he knew that if she put any magic into it at all, this whole crowd of dazed people would be whirling and dancing to her voice.
That wasn’t happening, because the first ones she had cleared the Mantra from were telling the rest what was going on, and what to do. After all, there were a lot of people laying in the streets who needed to be watched, they themselves needed to get home... and this city needed to begin the process of healing and recovery.
The eel-folk of the Indian Ocean were not far away, and could only consider this an opportunity to attack, especially when so many potent defenders had been killed.
Those incoming looked to be chi-users, moving too fast to be human, lightfoot on display, ready to fight and flee. He didn’t see any spellcasters, which raised all sorts of mental alarms... there’d been a few lesser Casters among the victims she had released, but he hadn’t seen any senior ones.
That likely meant they had been surprised, overwhelmed by Enthralled natives, and killed as heretics and blasphemers. The chi-users were merely rebels and possible recruits, likely striking against their own and forcing them to be more circumspect as they tried to recruit/release more people.
They came out into the open warily when they saw the people stumbling away, their body language individualistic, no longer moving with the unconscious Cadence of the Enthralled.
Seeing Lady Traveler engrossed in her Singing as she moved through the crowd, freeing everyone she laid a hand on, they closed warily on him, since he wasn’t doing much more than keeping pace with her and standing guard.
“G’day, mate,” a slender fellow holding onto a gleaming Rapier said warily, clearly a bit nervous as he looked Fred over, and didn’t know what to think about the black eyes and silver pupils and burning Hellscars.
GOOD MORNING, Fred signed back in burning letters on his shoulder. The man looked at Fred’s throat, tried hard not to blanch, and took a breath. YOU LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN HAVING VIOLENT CONFLICTS WITH THE BUDDHISTS.
“You got that right!” the fellow half-laughed, wiping back his thin blond hair. “They rose up and slaughtered every senior Spellcaster in the city in less than a day, and we’ve been trying to fight back ever since. That was almost a year ago. We’ve been trying to get word out, but they’ve been very good about controlling the access of outsiders and not letting anything slip by. It’s been horrible!
“How did you know to come here?” the fellow asked in relief.
WE DIDN’T. WE’RE DOING A CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE CONTINENT TO BRING SOME NEWS TO YOU, AND JUST ARRIVED. LADY TRAVELER SENSED THE QI IN THE CITY, IDENTIFIED IT, AND PROMPTLY DECIDED TO TAKE OUT HER BOREDOM ON THE MANTRA.
“Lady Traveler? That’s a unique name,” the man said with feeling. “That a performing name? I’ve never heard Heartsong like that, even from that Morninglight girl.”
IF YOU LOOK HARD AT THE WORDS I’M FORMING, YOU’LL NOTICE THEY AREN’T IN ENGLISH.
The man, and everyone with him, blinked and stared at the burning letters above Fred’s shoulder, astonishment slowly rising on their faces.
I IMAGINE THE BUDDHISTS INTERCEPTED THE DATA CORES SENT HERE. LADY TRAVELER MIGHT HAVE THE MOST WELL-KNOWN FACE IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. SHE INTRODUCED US TO THE HUMAN TONGUE. At the total lack of understanding, he continued, HUMANITY HAS A GENETIC LANGUAGE. ANY HUMAN BEING ALIVE CAN UNDERSTAND THE WORDS IF THEY HEAR THEM, AND THE WRITTEN FORM IF THEY KNOW HOW TO READ. YOU CAN LEARN TO SPEAK IT IN ABOUT AN HOUR, TOO.
“Maker’s fire! For truth, mate?” the man asked, astounded, sneaking another glance at the lovely dark-haired halvyri singing away over there.
ABSOLUTELY.
“Wow.” The swordsman finally sheathed the Rapier he had out, suddenly feeling awkward being armed in the face of such peaceful intentions, and his companions did the same. “Uh, apologies. We’ve been very jumpy lately...”
Fred waved it off. UNDERSTOOD. WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET STARTED ON LEARNING THE HUMAN TONGUE?
They all looked at one another, and shrugged. “Sure, mate! What do we have to do?”
He turned his head to look at Lady Traveler, and just framed the request. She had Still and Silent spells, and didn’t need to interrupt her Song or progress at all as she waved her hand. He craned his neck back to look up into the sky as a hundred-meter Holo screen, which would be looking at you face-on regardless of what direction you saw it from, appeared in the air above them.
THE HUMAN TONGUE hovered there, and faded away as a familiar face, in very plain surroundings and seated in a chair in a studio somewhere, came into view behind it...