Blackheart thought that he was immune to fear, by the grace of the dark gods of his people.
He found out otherwise. His bullox lowed deeply, quaking beneath him at the sight of the woman walking up to him, sensing in her something profoundly terrifying, and mere divine help wasn't calming down his rider's heart.
Nothing had come out of the Warp Rift for a full day. That would have been a great time to rest and eat up and arrange matters for the next day, and indeed a full-out feast was going on behind him... but there was none of the raucous celebration that accompanied such a thing normally.
After all, two ancient titans were standing over on the other side of the battlefield. They had casually wiped out all the Warpbands that had come out since their arrival, and from the way tiny figures had been moving over them, they were very clearly working with the humans, elves, and others.
They were miles away, and everyone could feel every footstep they had taken when they arrived. Now, even more eerily, there was neither sound nor force when they moved at all...
"Hey there. I understand you are the acting Warlord for your forces over here?" the human female asked. Her blue eyes spit him like spears, her golden hair fluttered like a cape, and Blackheart knew that if he tried anything, he was dead.
"I am," he said simply. It wasn't totally true, but it was true enough that no one else there had anywhere close to his influence and authority, regardless of their tribes. He was strong, murderous, ruthless, and cunning, and all the tribes had seen and acknowledged it. He couldn't rule them, but he could lead them.
"You don't have to worry about the big fellows. They have a job to do, and they are going to do it. Something only they can handle is going to come out of that Rift, so you don't want to get anywhere near it anytime soon."
Blackheart took that warning straight to heart. It would be like fighting a mountain that could fight back. He had no wish to be close to anything like that.
"I understand your warning." He didn't say he'd obey, although he would. He would salvage what tiny amount of pride he could muster before her.
"Good. Also, how do you feel about hammering in the final spike to these bastards?"
Blackheart blinked, and a very strange beat thumped in his chest. He could feel a massive stirring, as if the opportunity of a lifetime was unveiling before him. "What... do you mean?" he asked.
The human female explained in direct, short terms. Blackheart listened closely, his heart seeming to beat stronger with every word this dreadful female spoke...
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The Rift was changing color.
As it was basically the main thing everybody was concerned about, the little threads of pus yellow and puke green, rotting black and corrupted brown were immediately noticed, alerts went up... and just about everyone pulled back to at least the Camp, and most even further, being the not-stupid sorts.
I held out my hand to Fuzzy. He growled and flipped me a gold coin, grumbling too loud. There were quiet sniggers and lamentations as those who bet against me paid up.
Most of The Camp was abandoned, and the number of scouts was fading drastically. The Kings, Elder Arg, and a few of the Nulls were on the Ring surrounding the fused lands around the city, but not even the Exemplars really wanted to see what was going on.
The Brothers were watching with interest. The only one not here was Wavespear, who never liked to spend time away from the Waters. He was being called south, and away he went, walking along the Veil. Things were going to happen soon.
Brother Firesword was standing near the two of them, feeling the presence of corruption coming, so invasive it was infecting space itself, making the Rift rot around it. "That is possibly the second or third most foul Aura I have ever felt," he admitted out loud. The other Brothers murmured similar agreement, while Shadowknife held up five fingers, and nobody gainsayed him.
"It didn't reach number one for anyone? Should I even be asking?" Briggs queried gruffly.
"Avatar of Skulos, in the East. About thirty-two years ago." Several of the other Brothers spit to indicate agreement. He waved at Shadowknife without looking. "Elder Brother has a longer career, and runs into those Outside Creation intermittently, even if they do not fully materialize."
"One simply does not want to hear the mad singing from the heart of the madness Beyond Creation," the hyn whispered in his androgynous voice. "Likewise, the Crawling Herald of the Old Ones... it is a master of hiding its aura, and extending it across time and space, an insidious and infectious rot upon reality..."
I wrinkled my nose. "Things you have to foil, not just fight, then." All the Brothers nodded somberly. "Well, congratulations. What's coming is effectively the same thing... only we get to see it get fought." Despite themselves, they smiled grimly.
Far above us, Ape and Tyrant huffed together, watching the Rift with the calm patience of predators defending their territory. They could naturally feel the incredible aura of rot coming out of the Rift.
"I see streams of pestilence spreaders coming out of the Rift," I noted, Mask of Clarity zooming in on thin swarms starting to wind down from the infinity beyond the Rift. They'd be spreading a necroic plague that only magic or being Forsaken could stop, a harvest of death and rot pleasing to Riggibuhl.
The streams wound through the air in our direction, because really, the big fellows were just too big and noticeable. They began to thicken, forming dark clouds whose drone began to build and build and-
Fuego spat.
He was a LOT better with his fiery breath. This blast came out like a solid Ray of power, hitting like a laser and then fracturing into countless zillions of beams of light. They weren't that strong individually, but they didn't have to be, they were only killing large bugs.
The sky lit up with endless amounts of bugs popping, and suddenly the droning was gone, and the sky cleared up.
Up above, Mono hur-hurred in amusement. Fuego's only smug reaction was a twitch of his tail.
The veins were now as thick as a man was tall, pulsing with corruption and pestilence, pushing forth an aura of absolute decay and rot. We all watched a darkness growing in the rift, wriggling forward like something neither snail nor snake, improbably quick for its motion.
It didn't really leave the Rift, more like being vomited out in a spray of curdling space upon the Land. I had given dire orders that nobody was to Communing with the Land right now, unless they wanted to go mad when it touched the ground here.
"Ugh!" I said, and had to look away despite myself. Helices swirled up, and Brothers looked away, as did Briggs. Even my memory of it was starting to rot, and I had to cut it away. I saw steam rise from Briggs' nose, and blood trickle down from his eyes, while the focus of those Helices was on the eyes of their wielders.
"Wow," Briggs said for all of us. Soulfire flared up and into his eyes, polarizing the light coming in, and everybody followed suit.
It was rotting the light touching it, carrying that to whoever looked upon it. I knew that in the camp of the anthros, some idiots had looked at it, and their brains were already rotting, on the road to becoming plague zombies.
"Told you," I noted without any hint of smugness. Everyone dipped into a pocket and got out the wrap-around glasses I'd made for them, and hooked them on.
A pseudo-nat Sluggor kaiju, a Pandemic Sluggor. It could infect and kill the whole planet all by itself. As a kaiju, it was virtually immune to anything we could do to it. Short of dropping an enchanted asteroid on it, there was basically no way to kill it.
It was simply indescribable, every kind of disease, rot, corruption, decay, gluttony, sloth, and willing surrender to horror imaginable, and then stacked on with some utter horrified corruption from Beyond. It was pulsing and transforming with limbs and heads, each change spewing forth new disease, rot, and bile, diseases, and poisons to make alchemists go mad in deranged glee, healers insane with the impossibility of facing them.
As those blobs of snot, mucus, pus, ichor, sanguine fluids, sweat, and excrement dripped forth, they also began to bubble and rise...
Briggs' fist creaked on Endure. Plague spreaders naturally spread plague in many, many forms, and this thing was spewing out Sluggors of all sizes like shit and piss...
Nope, we wouldn't be sitting this one out, either.
Four orifices opened at the same moment, flaring with the same gore-pus hue, and vomited out four figures perceptively different from Sluggors. At the same time, in sprays of rotting-blood, decaying hide, and running, bubbling fat, five multi-headed forms heaved free of its backside, spreading fungoid wings as cries from the mouths at the confluence of their six necks made the air ripple.
-They made some fun for the Kings and the dragons,- I /noted for everyone as they grumbled at my prediction. I mean, come on, this was a Big Monster fight. How could the Warp Gods not get these wonderful monsters on our side involved in the fighting? Naturally they would set things up for a great monsterbash on their side.
-Thessaldragons?- Briggs /mused, shaking his head on seeing them take flight. In the distance, silver and bronze flashed in the fading light, and clarion calls rose in challenge. The dragons had lured away and killed quite a few Warp Dragons before, but nothing like this... but they weren't afraid.
While they knew the power of having riders along, they also had spent a year getting stronger themselves. In particular, they loathed pseudo-nat creatures, taking them as a model of the kind of shit they had to be able to overcome, and taking that job very much to heart.
Dragons with mortal Class Levels were absolutely terrifying once they set their minds to getting stronger, because their Level Limit was their natural Hit Dice. All of them had 14 to 16 Hit Dice, and combining a dragon's natural Stat line with Class Levels... and Exemplar Lite... made for a very, very dangerous opponent.
Those thessaldragons were probably immune to cold and lightning. Man, they were not going to like it when the dragons used their Fourteen Sorcery to change their breath weapons...
As for the things on the ground, they looked like a set of pseudo-nat creatures, too: a Nine-Tail Fox, a Dire Tiger, a Dire Rhino, and a two-headed Pseudo-nat Dread Linnorm well over a hundred feet long.
The dragons weren't the only ones who had gained Class Levels, however. Primary for all three Kings and Elder Arg was Druid and Shifter, which came as no surprise to anyone. In the two hundred or so days of Karma-earning Slaughter all of them had experienced, they'd all made at least Ten, and all had Monk, Melee, Soulshaper, and Scout Levels to go with them.
They were all incredibly deadly, much more dangerous than they appeared... and they also had Gear. Having devoted help was really beneficial, as there was a tremendous difference in their power between having and not having it. Sure, they didn't WANT to need it... but they did, so they made allowances.
The Pandemic Sluggor stopped moving less than a quarter-mile outside the Rift, spewing out a growing army, surrounded by plague flies and swarms... which didn't go spreading into the distance. Hundreds of eyes of various sizes and designs bulged out and vanished just as sickly, looking in all directions... but most of them focused on the two waiting Kaiju.
The army of pet demons and mutant excreted creatures didn't slow down at all, however.
"We're up!" I announced, and we skated forwards, as the Kings and Elder Arg bounded down from the Ring, the great Ape towering over Elephant, Lion, and Wolf, and we all headed for the fight at full flank speed...