Chương 523: BECMI Chapter 522 – Wrath of the Eternals

They were coming. Zaestershellim, Elder Magi of the Most Exalted of Races, of the Progenitors of All, the Apex of Evolution, endeavored not to think of it as the Gate opened.

The Staff in his hand, subjugated by it and to it by the hissing commands of its untrustworthy Entropic maker, drove Immortal Power into the magic, allowing the spell to radiate and punch through the interference from the ancient magical field first noticed in the Hollow World of this planet, which had then spreadthroughout the world entire afterwards.

It had made it much more difficult, although not impossible, to open Gates to other worlds, and to Teleport here and there about the world as they wished, evading their enemies, coming together to attack chosen targets, escaping again as they wished from unfavorable circumstances. Usually. Their foes were quick. Too quick. They came, they locked down the dimensions, and they fought savagely to make sure his people couldn't escape by other means. Too often, it had worked.

The first firulghenim came lunging through the open Gate in the archway there, the dark and fiery world beyond, with its sulfurous atmosphere and cracks in the sky, revealed for all to see. They'd been careful to saturate the target area with pulses of fire and lightning, which would draw the attention of numerous members of the savage, brutally-powerful fire-wielding species who served one of the many irrelevant Entities of Beyond.

It was vaguely humanoid, with skin like bright red rubbery stone, flames burning on the ends of clawed hands twice the size of his own, and on the end of a long tongue extending out of a fanged mouth sampling the air here. A second firulghenim pounced through the opening, the first barely leaping out of the way in time to avoid it as it scrambled around with ease and speed on all fours.

A wave of a hand sent a purple-black Fireball rupturing against one of the walls of this chamber, but as more and more of the creatures came leaping and bounding through the Gate, they looked up to the cloudy sky above, seeing no sky they knew, and their excitement rose in their alien cries and calls, hungry for blood and battle and carnage! Good enough. Zaestershellim took a quick, perfunctory look back, but all of the others were on the platform and waiting for it.

It tapped the Corrupter of Ages to the stone, Immortal Power forced back Immortal Magic, and the Teleportation took them urgently up and away. In the sky, in the distance, it saw the first formations of lights already appearing and coming this way quickly. But then they were away, and the ripped skein of dimensions passing, feeling jagged against the edges of its mind as it swept past them, assured it they were free.

When the natives cut off the dimensions, it felt like running into a steel wall with its forebrain, a sensation it could do without. It heard a slight grumble from Crslez, the young Warrior who had replaced Shaqnigolliuntriu, as they materialized at the most recent Creche.

"Problem?" it hissed, looking over the others carefully for signs of in-fighting, something that could not be tolerated with the way their numbers bled.

"We run again!" Bluntness was encouraged of the Warriors, if they dared to speak. Silence was fine, but lies and simpering from Warriors were punished far more than even the most insulting bluntness.

"When will we race to the attack again, and reap our share of flesh once more?!" he called out, affronted and displeased.

"Your predecessor thought the same. It managed to cross blades with the enemy exactly once, and now you replace it. Not even my strongest magicks have been able to return it to my service, and it was at my side a thousand years before we were freed from our prison." The young Warrior fell silent again. It had been decades... centuries?, since they had been able to raid effectively. Always they retreated. Retreated, from the edifices of stone that rose from the land like dull, crushing teeth.

Within those Domains, they could not fly, could not bend dimensions, and their shape-changing was thwarted by limning fields of false flames picking them out easily. They were exposed, and tracked readily and quickly if they came into the overlapping Domains of the monuments of stone, their enemies swarming to the attack with rage and endless energy. They were coming. They were always coming.

The firulghenim were strong, powerful, and dangerous, every one of them born to be equal to the least of the Carnifex, with mastery over fire and resistance to flames from the hostile alien environment of their native world. They were killing machines, evolution leading them only to fight and slay to stay alive, and here, on a soft, cool world like this, they would have raged across it like bringers of the apocalypse, flooding into this weak land and making it their own. They were going to die.

But in doing so, they would keep the enemy diverted, use up energies and resources that would otherwise be spent looking for this Creche, which was still not completed after a full month of effort, mostly because the same teams that had founded it had already been dispatched to make another, keeping ahead of their relentless hunters the way they had to, or they would die. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Too many of its compatriots had thought that because they were superior, and that they could fight off anything, anything below the Immortal beings who had bound them into the ever-falling plane, a place where Carnifex had died merely from falling and being worn away by the wind! They had met the natives, and the natives had brought with them a teaching experience that far too few of its peers had learned in time.

Immunity to magic, on warriors girt in the finest of Armor and Weapons, possessed of the highest levels of combat skill and no fear whatsoever of Carnifex Warriors. Magi, whose powers rivaled, and, it did not want to admit, often exceeded its own. Clerics, their Healing powers given them unstintingly by their gods, instead of the untrustworthy entities the Carnifex pried favors out of with recited blessings and sacrifices to appease them.

Walkers in stealth as fine or finer than the best of the Tricksters, helped by their smaller size and some incredibly foul luck. The Carnifex had feasted on many worlds, glutted themselves on whole species and civilizations, holding grand banquets that could never be equaled since the creatures they were composed of were all now extinct, all now merely a part of their conquerors, tributes to the eternal power and greatness of the Carnifex.

Until they had stirred up the beings calling themselves Immortals, who had proved nigh-impossible to harm at all, and who had sealed all of the Carnifex, in all of their hubris, into a world of all sky. Now, they had been released by mortal fools, and yet even those fools had proven dangerously adept…

a sign it and its peers had ignored, for freedom had beckoned, and the Staff of Shadowed Mirrors was there to ensure that the strongest among the enemies would only be fighting themselves, rendering them weak and exposed to the Carnifex! That… had not worked out well, either. So many of the enemy warriors had proven as immune to the Staff as they were to any and all magic directed at them.

Their spellcasters had identified the effect in but seconds, the undead doubles had died with ferocious speed, and the Staff, the Staff that was going to turn the tide of battles by neutralizing the best of the enemy champions… had been chopped to pieces by a magic-immune mortal warrior moving impossibly fast with her blades through a dozen Carnifex Warriors. Her hair had swirled like flame, snatching the scattered diamonds embedded in the Staff in midair…

and then a great Hammer even a Carnifex would hesitate to wield blew through the ranks closing on her, opening a way out she took so smoothly the Warriors might as well have been swinging at air. The weapons that shot light, lightning, and flame to ranges greater than a spellcaster. That could take out a mountainside from miles away.

That soared through air faster than any dragon, and dropped explosives greater than a dozen Fireballs across acres of area at one time, clearing away chaff, minions, and even the Carnifex themselves with their eruptions. That was what was coming for the firulghenim now. Were the claws and teeth of the alien wastelanders better than the weapon skills of the Carnifex? No. It had fought firulghenim for sport before, and the creatures had died to its staff and claws as well.

If its opponents were immune to flame, a firulghenim was merely strong and savage, and simply took some minor time and skill to overcome. The natives would discern their fiery nature within minutes, and if they weren't protected now, the troops that would be dropping in from their flying machines would be protected from fire within minutes. The firulghenim were strong and agile, jumpers and climbers needed in the badlands of gulches and canyons, caves and scattered rocks they called home.

The natives were fast and moved like hunting wolves, tracking their prey, surrounding it, cutting it down with incredible speed, and moving on to the next. Watching them cut through the young Carnifex born since leaving the Everfalling World had been instructive, the young fools too proud to fight in tandem and protect each other like they should, and so they had died with appalling speed to the elites of the enemy.

The Empress, hair like flame, blade like a quicksilver thunderbolt, moving with impossible speed, grace, and a laughing, mocking savagery that even now lingered in its thoughts, her daughters following her like hunting hawks, eager for more blood. The Emperor and his sons, towering over their followers around them, Hammers in hand and treating the mightiest of the larger Carnifex warriors and the greatest of Summoned beasts like entertainment at best and trash at the worst. The Ranthas, the Imperial Family.

Looking like Hags and their enslaved spawn, not some frail and sheltered bunch of mewling Imperials, the standard on so many worlds… but not this one. Surrounded, trailed, goading on, leading forth, defending a multi-species force with skills as great as any Carnifex, as much or more determination than their own, and a savagery on the hunt that forced respect with the sheer ruthlessness with which they fought back.

The firulghenim would hurl themselves at their smaller foes, and they would be surrounded and die with speed the wastelanders would not believe and were not prepared for. They'd try to run, and they would be run down by smaller mortals clad in metal moving faster and farther than they could, somehow. They'd watch their primal fires breaking over their enemies with no effect, as if they also came from realms where the seas, skies, and land alike burned all who dwelt there.

They would die, and the native champions would press in, find the Gate, and destroy it, if not bomb it out of existence from the sky and save themselves a lot of trouble in doing so. Perhaps using frost bombs to do so, and kill all of the firulghenim still trying to crowd through the Gate, too. They would try to track the Teleportation, but that was not going to happen, it knew that.

The Carnifex were VERY meticulous about such things after losing a dozen reinforced Creches to murderous surprise attacks from within, somehow bypassing all of their own defenses to strike right into the heart of the compounds and destroy so many of the gestation tubes. The Carnifex the natives killed could not be brought back. The natives made rigorously sure of it, even as the Carnifex tried to do the same for them, and found it a much harder task. Being immune to magic made the task so much harder…

and turned the standard tactic of erecting a Graysphere to engage spellcasters and those reliant on magic into a convenient way for the Carnifex to get themselves killed. Their hunters would eventually find this Creche, as they found all the others. Did they have enough time to gestate more young ones, encode them with the knowledge of their forebears? Zaestershellim did not know. He only knew they were coming, and they had to prepare to move and flee as the Pyramids marched inexorably closer from all directions…