There were several more minor waves.
“Lizard scum on burning birds,
Fodder for magic’s wyrds,
The Land takes all, She opens wide,
Down Her throat, show your pride!
Tremble, WE COME!”
The first was Firenewt knights on Striders. They didn't get very far, even after tossing hundreds of Minor Firebursts, mostly because their mounts were one-shot, and once on foot, they weren't fast enough to be a threat. Heaping up the bodies broke up their charge wildly, and Weirdboy cooked up a scintillating and polyhued AoE I didn't recognize that covered an area four hundred yards long and thirty feet wide that simply froze hundreds of them solid instantly. I didn't have any problem chewing up my side of the road, while the incoming survivors got to ride over the frozen stiff yet burning corpses of their fellows on the way to inheriting more Windfire and smoothly-cycled killing Rays.
“A dragonling charge, oh such fear,
Lances down, the brassclad near.
Fly them flags! Shout your cries!
Blizzards feast, and Fireborn dies!
Tremble, WE COME!”
The second wave was Ifrit on Drakes. This time, the mounts were actually tougher than the riders, but faux-dragons or not, they simply weren't prepared for the level of killing attacks coming in on them. The Drakes were big and took up a lot of room, making them concentrated targets. Thirty Tens were unloading on them, plus the Warlocks if they got too close. The Drakes died, blasted and frozen, their riders followed, and the trailing crew pulled containers out of nowhere to grab the blood, carving out the hearts efficiently while they skinned them and detoothed them with enthusiasm.
Former gamers and salvage experts, what can you do?, I noted professionally, keeping up with my stanzas, and the verbal pressure weighing down on them. Right in the middle of battle, plainly not worried about the fighting continuing on ahead of them. Love them negative morale modifiers...
“Heavy boot down, feel the Land shake,
Jotuns running, feel the quake
Of the Land gaping, hear Her cry,
You open Her jaws, your Doom is nigh!
Tremble, WE COME!”
The third wave attack was Fire Jotuns, all Four varieties of Ash, Coal, Fire, and Volcano, led by Rune Giants of Flame. These latter brutes were twice the size of their brethren, towering at forty feet high, festooned with burning Runes on their black skin, naturally dominating their smaller kin.
I killed them all. Argos' Melees pulled everyone back at a run, just looking on as his team outran the startled Jotuns, and I merely skated backwards. As I did, Shardings shot out unceasingly, and the onrushing Jotuns dropped one after another as I cut off heads, split skulls, and chopped off legs to gain openings, never bothering to let them get in melee range.
The burning Rune Giants could only watch me butcher their underlings impotently as I ate all the fire and lightning they called down on me... or rather, I ignored it all. Then I killed the first of them by splitting his seven-foot skull inside his helm way up there. The other three were already trying to pull back when the second one dropped, spine severed from a piercing Shardblade through the throat, and the other two finally turned and tried to run.
I hamstrung them both in mid-thundering step, literally skated up their backsides, and hewed their heads off before they recovered from the impacts, first one, then the other. Argos' crew followed along politely, making noises about the size of those Flaming Hammers and Axes. Lots of firemetal there...
---
“Little blot on the Land, brittle walls,
Winter is coming, the blood snow falls.
Wait, oh wait, for death to come
Pray, Land-food, but Fate is numb.
Tremble, We Come!”
The fourth barrier was that the doors of the fortifications ahead were closed to us, and giants were tossing burning boulders at us while Fireborn heaved flaming javelins and stuff. That silliness stopped after I started responding in kind, picking off all the missile throwers with the kind of accuracy they didn't really want to believe a mortal could possess. Soon nobody was tossing anything from those windows and archer slits.
“A door, a laugh, an open path
A Platter made to serve her wrath!
Gather up! Feed Her Well!
Tread ye proud that road to Hell!
Tremble, We Come!”
I aligned Tremble to Sundering Mode, and swept an infinitely thin Sharding through the meeting point of the great doors, splitting the stone bar beyond in twain with a One Sundering Strike, while Weirdboy accurately sussed out the pistons and counter-levers and blew their connecting links apart with two precise spells. The enemy was not happy to see me drag the door open, the nearest of them getting sprayed with Autobow fire, Tail-spikes and a whole lot of explosive magic… and Tremble was still Singing as I resumed cutting them down.
Flaming trolls assaulted me. I moved Tremble to Acid/Blooding mode and reduced them to sludgy ash. A massive Ooze of burning protoplasm was sent groping for me, and I sliced it apart so fast the ooze ended up just flash-frozen chunks of ruptured cells. They flooded the tunnel with lava, and I walked along the walls, also bypassing the pit traps they'd dug out. They tried another defense and tried to flank me through a secret door… I opened the secret door, butchered the ambushers, went to the far end, came out it and flanked the defenders before they realized what had happened.
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Trying to surprise someone with a Trembling Domain is not wise.
There was one final Rune Giant and four elite Volcano Jotun guards, none of them able to catch me and none of them able to hide from me to escape my range. Sure, they had forty feet of reach, or something. I had 150'. If they hid, that just allowed me to get too close to them. They were not amused when I came in gliding along the ceiling upside down and split the Rune Giant's skull from twenty feet over his head, for instance.
Argos commented about the rough grandeur and scale of the greeting hall, a couple of his people were taking notes about designs, and then they started cutting up the Jotuns.
Four Rune Jotuns. I wanted the hair and tendons, and some skin. And hands. Couldn't forget the hands...
The rest was Fed to the Land, and Fed well, indeed...
-------
"Hrn. Wasn't really expecting that."
"Well, they were living foes. You could have questioned them," Argos teased me.
"Meh." I worked my neck once. The Jotuns relied heavily on massive damage and Power Attacking to get by, and I relied on having a severely high AC and ability to roll with a Power Attack, so I hadn't really taken more than residual damage from these bastards, easily Healing Edge'd away, or Combat Vigor'd. "It's about the fighting. Wouldn't have changed much."
"That's a Firebird, you know." I eyed the burning pseudo-eagle of black, gold, and many reds; a flaming raptor larger than a Roc, intelligent, with a burning aura of primal Trueflame. There was a Torc about its neck, forcing obedience upon it, but I didn't have much sympathy. Firebirds were the most malicious and destructive members of the Imperial Birds, quite happy to turn towns and cities of mortals into ash, start forest fires, and generally watch the world burn. If I let this thing go, it would just come back to bite me in the ass.
I’d seen it flying around the volcano, but never getting too far. Its master probably didn’t trust it, either.
Standing next to it, and every bit as tall as the Firebird, was the Fire Titan, a Thanotopic bastard who should have been pushing dreggers around in the Pits, bemoaning his irrelevance to existence. Instead he was wearing a crown of red gold, some black plate Armor in an ancient style, and wielding a Maul nearly as tall as he was. The head of that Weapon had to weigh at least three tons. I'm sure the bastard looked dazzlingly handsome, but I wasn't of a mind to be impressed.
Would he try to fight me from atop his Firebird? That wasn't going to end up well for him. Tag team? They were too big to do it effectively. I could always maneuver so only one of them had access to me. Depended on his level of pride, I guess.
My Null didn't care about the Firebird's Trueflame, either, or the Titan's Profane version of the same type of thing.
He was probably waiting for something to come out of the big swirlie in the lava, however. I decided to not let it happen, and I had experience at that sort of thing. The Land liked to pop bubbles with me
"Yep. Those feathers are going to be worth a fucking mint,” was my reply, and Argos gave me a strange look and half-smile. I raised Tremble, narrowed my eyes as I moved Vivic to Blooding, Valorous to Obeisant, and swapped out Discipline Weapon/Ocean for Bane of Legends.
Tremble billowed in effective size, suddenly holding a blade-shadow six feet long, all of its edge peeling away at the Veil with the leashed fury of existence against these two supernaturally mighty entities.
I took off directly across the seething lava of the caldera for that Portal, cutting apart the fluctuations in the Veil and bringing the vengeful stillness of cold, hard Reality behind me, Tremble’s two-tones making all of reality echo in harmony along the Veil around her.
---
The Titan registered what I was doing, and was almost shocked. He only had a big long breath of time to consider diving into the hole he'd come out of and flee. From the house-sized throne whose dais he was standing upon, he took a single crushing step of thirty or so tons of weight, and paused, expression twitching on his overly proud features. I had the feeling that if he entered that Portal, he wasn't going back to Fire… or that if he was, it was going to be as bad as the Pits. Going back in failure was, for a Titan, a shame they could likely never live down.
When you're functionally Eternal, that's a reeeally long time...
“Dregs of the Pits! Luckless mewling dastard!
Foul Jotunic blight! Useless whining bastard!”
Oh, yeah, I had his attention.
Failing to something so small simply could not be on the agenda of the Statured. His fist clenched, his teeth grit, and his eyes blazed with pride and vengeance. I just smirked as I hit the edge of the reality swirls, cut into them, and dimensional waves crashed against the severing wall of my Null. In mere seconds, I sliced Tremble through the fabric of the Portal ripped through the Veil, and Terra's Reality and Laws came stampeding in behind me to seal off everything with a vengeance.
“Vomited from filth, never to return,
Useless fool to teach, a lesson you cannot learn...
Tremble, SHE COMES!”
His source of reinforcements and ultimate escape was washed away by existence, leaving him stranded here. Sure, he should be able to dominate a World full of nothing more than Tens, shouldn’t he?
Here, eat a +70ish Intimidate check on top of it, let me see that look in your eyes...
Frak, those were optimizing Power of Ten gamers alive behind me. He was so hosed. He could have brought his brothers and cousins and all the shat-king’s horses and king’s men, and he would still be doomed.
Here I was, coming at him with a +X Sword Singing for his blood and soul. Grand Angelcraft, sharp enough to cut a soul, slicing reality open as it headed in his direction.
He bellowed an order in Pyric, "Kill her!" and the Firebird bounded towards me. It flapped wings that might have been able to cover a football field… but it barely rose off the ground. The Imperial Avian did get some distance on the jump, splashing into the lava and throwing up a veritable tsunami of the stuff… and then lunged directly through it for me with a beak that was longer than I was tall.
“Stupid crow, ending flame,
Heart of coal, forgotten Name!”
I was already six feet to the right and ten feet off the ground as it came snapping down for me, cutting a One Strike across one great coalfire eye that was larger than my head. Those eyes were worth a lot of money, so this was quite a concession from me. I touched the side of its neck, kicked off, and kept going.
It screamed as a cutting cold greater than any it had ever known tore through the side of its head and sliced the fiery orb apart. Its Truefire Aura was making the magma burn to ash around it as it heaved back but I was completely ignoring it. It instinctively tried to get its other eye out of threat range, sweeping its wings to drive me back… except I was already behind it, braced in mid-air for just a second and waiting for it as it snapped back and impaled its cortex on Tremble.
“Feathered ash, a fool you die,
Chicken bone on white flame fry!
Tremble, She Comes!”
It was a big knot of nerve clusters, and it still impaled itself on my Sword, braced in the Archer Stand Thrust up there in midair, driven down but not back. Multiple tons of Imperial Avian slammed into me and stopped moving for a moment. Cold and silent death extended out along the yards-long feathers burning with their own fires, into the superheated flesh and blood, and slowed it all the fuck down to nothing.
Taking a charge of 500+ and then impaling yourself on a braced anathemic Weapon for another 300 or so is not conducive to a long life, even for an Imperial Avian.
I withdrew my Sword and skated aside even as I was dropping down under my own Stillflight effect. The Titan's multi-ton ancient Hammer went roaring past in front of me, thank you, Dodge Missile, with enough wind pressure to shake the air, breaking against my Vajra and ruffling my hair. The head of the Firehawk burst apart under the twin constraints of being frozen solid and hit with a big Hammer that freaking powerful, and down, down it began to sink.
Oops, ya missed, jerk!...
Hells, this bastard cost me the other eye! I could vaguely see that Argos had a very agitated look on his face, and I knew he'd be mobilizing to grab the corpse before the caldera’s lava could totally hide it away. A fucking mint, it was!
“Gold, gold, the Butcher’s bill!
Come to collect, come to fill!”
The massive Hammer dropped and slammed into the caldera's burning pool of molten rock, raising a big ol' wave of lava. Before it could fall completely out of sight, it halted in place, and then began to drag itself across the surface of the caldera, back towards the Titan waiting with his hand out and blinking in astonishment.
Yeah, dumbass, Stillflight fields affect nigh-telekinetic flight, and my Interdiction stops it from teleporting back to you…