Chương 147: BECMI Chapter 146 – The Temples are Doomed

For this final push, a lot more help than normal came with us, as just about everyone who'd helped out over the past three years was there for the ending to this fight. Royal Marines and knights of Darkmoor. Elven scouts and archers who'd watched their kin grow in power at unprecedented speed, wrapped in grim auras of skill and ability that deserved fearsome respect. Dwarves eager to expunge grudges and blood oaths… and, it was quietly noted, serve under a royal dwarf worthy of the name and lineage.

Even hyn scouts got in on the mess, eager to prove their worth and ability and not be sidelined. With us also came the aliens of the Barhund, bearing weapons of high science, riding newly designed combat sleds with repeating laser and plasma cannons, and not a few warbots there to round out the numbers against the hordes of the beast-folk. Clerics from across the North came to fight the last of the servants of Nifl, assuring everyone of great amounts of Healing.

There would be casualties, aye, but everyone who could be saved would be saved, and I had personally guaranteed that any lost limbs or permanent wounds would be Regenerated for all who fought here.

We were not here to take ground, we were here to kill them all. This cave and cavern had no value to us. If it collapsed and the mountains fell down to bury it, that was totally fine with us. If we had to retreat, we retreated. There was no shame, there was only more slaughter. The hordes of undead, held beneath the temples in vast storage caverns, came marching out in vast numbers and perfect morale, certain to overwhelm any normal mortal defense with the sheer number of bodies.

Autolasers Infused with Radiancephasing and Vivic tore through them and reduced armies to white dust, literally a shooting gallery for the gunners. The few survivors who made it to the lines were disposed of with relative ease.

Then came the hordes, not subject to Radiance, but they had to charge into the teeth of incredibly bright lighting and then face the finest spear lines on the planet, as well as a virtual wall of laser fire, much of it accentuated with Bane against Nifl to prey on any faithful to the Immortal, or made of Her magic… which was basically almost everything here. Corpses that would normally be Animated into undead by the shamans and wokani of Nifl with the hordes instead Burned down to white dust.

Snipers picked off the spellcasters repeatedly as I noted them and marked them in the Markspace for attention. Lasers chewed through the living, spears impaled corpses that fell apart upon their tips in vivic dust, and we endured the charge. Golems wrought of bone and stone, massive gargoylesque horrors, rumbling skull-mounted Juggernauts of war, auto-firing Siege Engines protected by blood sacrifice and dark rituals, all came and rumbled over the stone ground and descended from the skies upon us.

The latter ran into the Stillflight Field, which also happened to bring down all the troops riding dragon skeletons, dead doombats, mutated fellwings, and even massive flies. The former found the way to us was a maze of pits of mud, holes opening in front of them, and ground reshaping itself crazily to slow down their rumbling charges and unstoppable momentum repeatedly. The warbots floated up on limited anti-grav and deployed treads, and gave them some futuristic hell.

It was the first time any of the troops saw the warbots really unleash. Heavy autolasers, plasma guns, arcing grenades, and flashing missile launchers ripped into these heavy, elite creations with weapons thoughtfully treated with jet-flaming Bane against Nifl so they could harm all these magical things without problems.

The Interdiction meant no magical whizbang surprise attacks or incorporeals popping up among us, and the attempts to drown us in massive Swarms of crawling insects and Plagues of Insects ran into Pyroclasms and towering banks of poison gas that devoured the buzzing, skittering masses wholesale.

Dedicated groups of shooters with Ghost Touch on their weapons were more than happy to annihilate any spirits drifting into range, the things unable to phase into the rock or any kind of cover to approach us, and standing out like black suns in my Detect Evil IX+1, The Vista of Sin Absolute. Vivic mist covered the ground as we moved forwards slowly and efficiently, watching for surprises, making sure all the dead were Burning en vivus, and everything was dead.

We were there to kill, and if there were still things to loot on the dead, we did indeed gather them up, heap them up on Disks quickly sent to the back of the lines, but we did not delay over them. I was on a Behemoth-class warbot so I had elevation, standing up on the command deck to look out there at the battlefield from a high point.

My Detects roved the area, looking for enemies, finding them repeatedly, often concealed underground in disguised tunnels and holes if undead, or slinking in shadows trying to get around us. My Free Company led the kill-teams flushing those out, a tossed grenade or hosing down with a plasma blast enough to do the job, or simply drawn Weapons and a hackfest of violence to send the infiltrators on their way.

A cheer went up as the first temple roared and collapsed under its own weight, precise missile fire taking out its foundations and precipitating its collapse. If there were countless treasures buried within it, well, too bad. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. I could feel a seething hate explode forth from the temple…

which was patiently held back by other presences here and watching this battle, ensuring Nifl took no direct revenge upon us for this effrontery, which She definitely was of a mind to do. Captain Emeril looked upon the ruins of this first temple with great satisfaction from his place up on the Behemoth's head next to me.

The racks of Deepnail STS missiles slowly lowered behind the shoulders of the Behemoth as we watched the ruins rumble and settle, then collapse again repeatedly into the dungeons underneath the place, hopefully crushing whatever remained below.

"These things… are abominations," he said carefully, looking upon the walls made of mortared bones, able to animate and claw and thrust at things which drew too near. Volleys of Vivic auto-lasers strafed them repeatedly, setting them en vivus, leaving the screaming fanatics charging forth from the collapsing ground behind them to the lines of spears and shooters.

"Over a hundred thousand corpses were involved in the creation of the walls and temple proper," I informed the Barhund's captain, watching him blanch at my words, all those rows and ranks of skulls and ribcages of so many different shapes and sizes suddenly having even more meaning.

"Doubtless there is more unclean stuff below that needs to be cleansed. How will you do it?" he asked me, eyeing the pit of the collapsed temple with great distaste and some trepidation, as if some bony horror was about to heave itself out of there… as had happened thrice in the past two months.

"A very good question. Buck, deploy the Fountain!" I Said calmly in Magevoice. Two hundred yards away, my hyn companion barely looked at me as he grinned, waving his hand and gathering a shield-team from the Free Company around him. They kept tight formation as they broke free of the spear line and headed towards the main gates, which seemed to have run out of fanatics willing to walk into a wall of hot, hard light and die rather explosively.

Nothing dared to shoot at them as they trotted up to the main gates, just beyond the Stillflight effect, and Buck simply took an Item Scroll out of his purse, set it on the ground, and ripped it open. The silver basin flowed up out of the torn Scroll's remnants, gleaming softly. The group pulled back instantly as it seemed to tremble, vivus billowing up and then down from its edges.

Then a rumbling geyser of clearest, softly glowing water jetted up from the top of it, rising a good thirty feet in the air before it fell down splashing, and the ground hissed and writhed and bubbled with vivus eating away at dark energies. Then it began to flow away towards that gaping hole in the ground, carving a bubbling, hissing path as it streamed forth, then fell over the edge in a steaming stream as it plunged into the dusty darkness below.

"The unwhite fire eats the negative energies of death," Captain Emeril analyzed, nodding approval.

"You're going to drown them in… holy water?" he asked with a partial smile.

"Not true holy water, but close enough for our purposes, yes. That Fountain was made by the hyn. There are two more, crafted by the elves and the dwarves, waiting to be used here." He eyed the rising waters now raining down, and not incidentally rendering them unapproachable by anything undead which might rise here. The ground around the Fountain was already stained white, as were the stones and bones of the remaining walls washed by the waters flowing past them.

Then he looked up at the two temples still rising in the distance of the cavern, and smiled slightly.

"It's like you've been preparing for this fight, or something, Lady Edge." I followed his eyes up, Eagle Eyes looking at other things.

"Indeed, Captain. All forces, we have movement on the ceiling by massive amounts of spider-riders. Point defenses, elevate for vertical fire and prepare for web-drops. Snipers, fire on your Captain's command. Archers, pick your fields of fire and eliminate any targets who come into them. Spears, I expect you to be right underneath anything that gets past any of our shooters and to kill them as they hit the ground.

"Reserve Casters, fire as they hit range. And do not get hit by falling giant spiders or their riders, or I assume you will be tagged with some very annoying nicknames." Also, I'd be using Funf to push descending corpses aside so they didn't fall on my people.

"You actually trained for giant spiders falling from the ceiling?" Captain Emeril asked in only mild disbelief. The spear line thinned out and dispersed, since there weren't a lot of things that wanted to charge us right now.

"This is the twelfth time we've had to face cavalry that could walk on walls or ceilings, although four of those were cave lizards, which I believe we'll face from the third temple there. Corporal Horst!" I called down.

"Lady Edge?" one of the gunners inside the Behemoth called back immediately, a former computer technician who had decided that more excitement in his life was necessary, and was carefully being guided away from Wizardry and to Artificing.

"I want at least a ten-story break in all six of the nearest connecting ground-to-ceiling stalagmites. Be precise." The missile pods being reloaded by a dedicated team of humans and greens lit up again.

"Yes, ma'am!" the gunner replied back enthusiastically, missile after missile being slapped into place and the autoloader cycling them into position. The ceiling of the vaulted cavern here rose to a good mile above us, but massive stalactites still hung down from them, sometimes merging into equally massive stalagmites reaching up to meet them in many places. Those naturally formed highways to the ground for the spiders, while the ceiling above was literally covered in the webs of the things.

When its boxlike missile attachments were reloaded, the torso of the Behemoth pivoted, moving them into targeting position on the closest stalagmite to our left, a good hundred yards outside our outer lines.

"Fire in the hole to three o'clock. Beware falling debris!" I Stated so the entire force could hear it.

"Master Daffid, please task your Earth Elementals to intercept any large falling debris that rolls this way." The red-headed archmage lifted his Staff in acknowledgment, and the Elementals he'd brought in to deal with what had been at least a dozen burrowing attacks so far moved swiftly in gently rolling waves through the stone, spreading out to stop any boulders from smashing into our positions.

His neutral position was against the Empire and fellow Humans, not Beastials, and he'd been delighted to accept invitations to participate in this fight. Behind us, smashed and scattered across the floor of the cavern, were three different gargantuan stalactites, prepped to fall upon and crush invaders like us.

I had gone up there and triggered all three of them, precipitating great plunges into the enemy hordes that had killed at least four thousand Beastial attackers under the impacts and shattering shrapnel, with the ground quakes crushing a bunch of surprises hidden below ground, too. Did they think I wasn't looking up, or something?