The Power of Ten

Shvaughn pointed, and a pulsing beam of wild light guided the way, the unicorn adjusting course instantly.

The droning of the Swarm grew louder and louder, and I kicked free of the drag-lock fifty yards from the edge, muttering a Protection from Law for myself as I did so, and glided to a halt. The trio kept going fearlessly, and I could see the bubble they made in the Swarm as unicorn and riders entered... and the area behind them promptly thickened as the drone of the Swarm changed, and the bugs gave chase.

-Overlap your Walls of Fire. I’m going to pulse a couple Pyroclasms through you to get their attention-, I Messaged Master Fred.

I held up the arm with the Bracer that linked us; it allowed him to transfer Wrath to me to insert into a spell, and me to transfer a spell to his Wrath for the same, just like Eldritch Theurgy allowed. We’d spent a lot of hours practicing that back and forth, extending our range, and if I did nothing but concentrate, I could easily do a transfer across nearly a klik of range, which should hopefully be enough.

The Swarm was swirling thickly in their wake, trying to whelm to overcome the power of the Obelisk and the spell I’d put on it. They’d eventually be able to, and its very presence was infuriating them... but there were flashes of the unwhite light of vivic fire over in that direction, so something was still alive and killing them over there.

The flames that suddenly burst out ahead of me were all sorts of colors, and their eruption seemed to send a shock rippling through the Golden Swarm. The thunderous droning reached a whole new maddening level as the beetle-like constructs all began to stream towards the hated, dancing power of Chaos.

I dropped a Pyroclasm into the transfer, with Banespell on top of it.

The explosion of the azure-tinted Pyroclasm, carrying Chaosbound and Demonbound energies with it in a warring kaleidoscope of eldritch energies all over two spectrums, was over two hundred feet across, and chewed through zillions of the things. There was no way the things could miss the explosion now. The area of the Swarm began to shrink, and my view darken behind raging golden fury, rapidly. The Swarm collapsed on the fires of Heaven, Demonium, and Chaos raging together there, all of them impure and only fit to be devoured and silenced before the unflinching, austere power of Law.

I fed two more Pyroclasms there, raising two more massive eruptions through the thickly packed Swarm, depleting their numbers faster and faster. I didn’t trust them to have any effect without the Banespell, and I didn’t have it Weirded, so that was my limit. I just sat there and watched as the dome of conjoined fires, extending outside the Warding field of the Obelisk, sat there and ate the beetles of the Swarm madly descending upon it.

Vivic fires from Idiot ignited upon the shattered, fused ruins of the Swarm, and soon there was a bonfire around the two Warlocks, eating away the last of the essence of Law upon them, completely consuming them and delivering their power to the Land.

---

It didn’t help Hermitage at all. As the Swarm gathered and was consumed, it naturally shrank down and revealed what it had done to the town.

The town had been eaten down to the earth. There was no building left intact, no trees, no greenery, no roads. There were pits here and there in the ground, that looked to have been dug out and realigned with the instinctive precision of Law into abrupt ditches and gullies by the super obsessive-compulsive beetles, probably where sewer and water lines had once been.

There were sparkling bits and pieces of metal and stone arranged in some artful greater mosaic, but anything organic was gone, crushed and reduced to basic particles. You could only tell where buildings had been by holes in the ground, said holes often lined with sparkling remnants of metal and glass chewed apart and inserted into the ground to form a rigid, defined landscape that, for all the horror it represented, had a harsh, stark, abstract beauty to it.

Such was the power and attractiveness of Law...

------

Ringed by the basement remnants of several buildings, the survivors of the area became visible as the Chaotic power drew off the Swarm from harassing them with its greater anathema and stimulation.

There was a familiar balding figure sitting on top of a black van, hands clasped in prayer. His eyes were slowly opening from the sweat dripping down. He didn’t dare stop the concentration on his spell, looking down at the multiple figures standing all around the van, also looking around a bit wide-eyed and grim at the swathes of vivic fires devouring golden insects coating the ground around them.

You could see the precise edge of the area Warded, because the asphalt and underlayment had been eaten clean through as precisely as a cleaver at the edge of it, and heaps of shattered golden bugs were burning there.

“A smiley face?” one of the shaken men gawked, pointing for everyone. Helix looked around alertly at that.

Briggs clapped a hand to his ear as the Message came in. “That’s Traveler,” he stated, and all of them sighed in relief despite themselves at the distant glowing face that was coming closer to them. “So, who owes me ten bucks?” he half-laughed, and there were multiple wry groans around him.

“Well, that’s good. We need some tires fixed.” Everyone glanced down to where the rubber tires had been eaten clean through, and the only van that had survived the Swarm was now sitting on its rims on a circle of asphalt a foot above the ground swept clean around them. It looked very much alone, sitting there on the devoured, levelled-off ground, the tallest thing around in all directions...

The golden-haired woman who had spoken sheathed the quavering Sword with the golden edge around it. Behind her, out in the asphalt area, were circles and swathes of heaps of glowing, burning beetles, forming a large half-moon around the front of the van. It contrasted with the thicker, heavier heaps behind the van where Briggs had stood, idly spinning Endure around his fingers. He was tall enough to look right over the van and watch the Swarm converging on the burning area. “I think that’s Master Fred, the Silent Warlock, over there, but he must be working with someone else...” He trailed off at some of the colors he was seeing inside those flame, which were definitely stronger than he remembered.

“Indeed,” Sir Pellier murmured, Lady Florentine put up to his shoulder, also watching those colors. “But who?”

“They’re luring in and roasting the Swarm with Chaotic damage,” Sama noted, watching the display with professional interest. “I’m seeing pulses of Banefire, too, and you can see the vivic fire finishing them off. Good planning, good use of Wrath. There’s at least eight different effects at work there...” she said thoughtfully. She looked around knowingly, and kicked at a fallen golden bug, head cut off, tossing it into the nearest vivic fire that was making them pop apart into uncounted numbers of tiny golden parts. Clearly there was a lot of energy invested in this, as the vivic energy was burning low but densely, streams of mist flowing off the mounds and seeping into the dark earth.

By tomorrow, this entire area where a small town had once been would be covered in green.

“Start taking pictures, like now,” Briggs ordered, seeing the blue-haired and uncharacteristically somber Stormblooded Sorcerer Helix with his phone out, recording everything. His crew of shooters scrambled for their phones and cameras, and quickly began to record everything.

“Hey, there’s a signal now!” Helix reported, and a second later a cartoon gnome popped up on the screen of his phone. “Uh, hello?” he asked, as the image seemed to look at him.

“Where’s Master Fred, Helix?” the gnome’s voice came through on speaker. He sounded grim.

“Uh, that’s him over there in the fires eating up the Swarm, I think?” Helix replied reflexively at the use of his name. “Um, who are you?”

“Gregorigori, Master Fred’s handler. You’re coming through the relay attached to him. We just got word there’s been a catastrophe at a small town in Arkansas...”

“Yeah, we’re there now. Take a look at the video being streamed.”

“Accessing all of your phones.” There were beeps and startled exclamations as the secure phones of Briggs’ team were accessed without so much as a by-your-leave. “Fuck! They did it again, didn’t they?”

“Who did what, Master Gregorigori?” Briggs asked, his booming voice having a sinking feeling as he met Sama’s eyes.

“Lady Traveler says that’s something called the Golden Swarm of Imprus. It’s used to wipe whole cities or nations off the map. It could have endangered the whole planet if it systematically started wiping everything non-Axiomatic away... which means literally everything.”

Sama closed her eyes for a moment, muscles rippling on her cheeks, and when she lifted her eyes, they were truly frighteningly intense. “Am I correct in expecting that they needed to have this in place before we got here, Master Gregorigori?”

“This is direct-instrument-of-a-god Summoning shit, Miss Rantha,” the gnome replied, somehow identifying her voice. “I can ask the Angelos, but this is Divine shit, and his memory of a lot of the non-core stuff related to that has been wiped from him.”

“Let’s operate on the paradigm that you don’t Summon in an apocalyptic Wrath of God effect quick-like opportunistically. They would have had to been waiting for us, and specifically, they were waiting for us here.”

Everyone understood what she was alluding to.

“Wasn’t me!” Helix promptly blurted out. “I didn’t even know what route we were taking, nobody told me!”

Sir Pellier, his eyes hard, nodded. “Briggs told me the route personally, and I didn’t tell anyone, including Father Bower.”

Briggs’ eyes fell to the six shooters who had come with him, and he closed his eyes, sighing softly. The stomachs of all six men plummeted on seeing that.

“Sir, you can’t-,” one of them started to say, and Briggs closed his fist. Knuckles popped like gunfire, and he shut up.

“Walk over to Sama, look her in the eyes, and tell her firmly that you didn’t leak anything about our route to anyone,” he said firmly.

All their heads turned on the frightening woman who had come out of nowhere not very long ago, and promptly somehow stolen the heart of their much-admired commander.

Five of the men stepped forwards promptly. The sixth hesitated a half step, and then halted as several dangerous sets of eyes focused on him.

He bowed his head, sweating visibly, and thinking hard. “Sir...” he said, reaching up to his head. His hands were starting to shake. “I don’t, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t-“

Briggs moved with a speed that had surprised a whole lot of people who thought big meant slow. His huge hand slapped down on the head of Sergeant Mulligan, whose face was starting to contort, writhe... and then a glowing golden Sword drove right through his face, pale white mist around it, and something shrieked... from inside his skull.

His skull cracked and split away violently, his head falling away in three directions as something impaled on the Sword swelled in size and forced its way out of the confines of brains and bone.

It looked like a floating fungoid thing as large as a human head, multiple eyeballs of various sorts spread about it. Tendrils manifesting black ichor flashed out of its hide, whipped at Sama as it hung there impaled on her Sword, drilling for her head.

The problem was that Briggs’ hand was still right there. He simply pressed his hand down against the force of the extended Sword, and clenched his fingers as easily as if he was holding an unskinned orange.

The thing popped like a water balloon, spraying some truly vile liquids in every direction, some hissing against the paint and metal of the van, and everyone else close by leapt down into the vivic mess of beetles to make sure they were out of the way.

The expression on Sama’s face was truly something to behold as she withdrew Tremble. “Cephalovores,” she spat out, glaring at the thing still twitching in Briggs’ gauntleted hand. “The Templars...”