Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

Lost Light, trailing wisps and streams of vivus, poured down the shabby, decaying cloth of the Stone Collector’s arms, and actually wove right through cloth and rotting flesh and bone as it did so. Little points of Light trailed misting flame behind them, moving down into his body, through and around his chest, and only grew in speed and brightness as they punched through his torso, spread down his legs, and rapidly encircled his head.

Gordi Tanhoffson tilted his rotting skull back as vivus ignited over him, and for a clear and wonderful moment, the faint image of the man he used to be burned over meat and bone that was falling to white dust and less.

And he was smiling, smiling in sublime joy.

There was the faintest of puffs, and vivus ate the magic binding him to the mortal world, his long-dead body fell away, and his spirit was gone and set free.

Bunita dropped into the Mick’s hand, subdued, but the chromatic edge of it seemed brighter than ever.

“His fellow citizens, he said,” the Mick said roughly, staring at the moldering clothes being consumed after long necroic saturation had kept them raggedly intact all this time.

“The undead I limned in white,” the Lady Magos told him quietly.

“Fucking doomed in life, and then twice doomed in death. The fucking bastards, all of them,” the Mick fought down his choking.

“Amorality is the best kind of morality in the view of the undead. Especially if it’s grimly entertaining.”

“Shall we go see if there’s anything these fine citizens might not want to tell us before they go?” he asked her.

“That seems like a wonderfully honorable thing to do, Lord Mick.”

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“I heard the old pyreal mines in the golum foundry on Aerlinthe are still open!”

“The Gelidites are still pining to get their Bloodstone operation moving again! Brave adventurers might want to do something about that!”

“It’s said that the Virindi might be trying to harness the Ampherelion Vault’s power! Surely that can’t be good for the people of Dereth!”

It didn’t really look like a smile, but the manic grin was visible in his eyes as the Town Crier cheerfully related lots and lots of gossip, and didn’t repeat a single thing while we gave him one pyreal coin after another patiently.

The Mick was standing there with Bunita laying across his arm, hilt offered to the Crier. The dead man had watched as twenty-three separate human undead had taken up the Sword, and the Lost Light sent them on to their proper fates.

From that point on, each single pyreal coin offered to him unleashed a brief yet surprisingly informed piece of information which I was listing out. Both Briggs and Kristie were listening to with some fascination and grave curiosity as the Crier cheerfully related the movements and politics of what the undead had been doing around it for the last fifteen years, while I calmly kept feeding him coins.

“A long-lost daughter of the missing Isparian witch Nuhmudira has appeared on the scene. Is she planning on finding her mother? She has spoken with several undead lords about certain matters…”

I stiffened, as did Kristie, and the Mick scowled deeply, while the watching Adso frowned and his eyes narrowed.

The Crier didn’t miss it, and if anything, the grim glee of satisfaction in his eyes only grew brighter.

“The undead are whispering about a white fire that kills them forever, and making plans to destroy this threat to them. Brave adventurers should head off their efforts before Lord Rytheran can properly organize them!”

Oh, that wasn’t good news, either.

“The deranged shades of the Tou-Tou Peninsula have been destroyed and are finally gone! Nobody knows how the Isparians did it, but they are flooding back into the southeastern lands of Dereth once again! Who knows how the undead will react to such intrusions from the pesky vermin they chased away not so long ago?”

Talking about that rather quickly. So, the news had spread.

“The undead have mobilized a force to take out the isolated Isparian settlement of Stonehold! Obviously, their patience and tolerance for annoyances has reached its limit, and they are heading out to destroy the pests! Whatever can mere Isparians do against such great forces of evil?” the Town Crier went on dramatically.

The Mick looked at the Crier before I offered another coin. “May I present to you Commander Briggs of Stonehold, Master Patrich?” he bowed to the looming Ancient grandly.

The Crier looked up at Briggs, who nodded down at him, and his grin threatened to tear open his face.

“Isparians have attacked the undead-held town of Zaikhal, and liberated those long caught in undeath therein! Remember their valor and kindness forever, brave adventurers!” he sang out as he pocketed one more pyreal coin, turned, and grabbed Bunita.

We all watched him Burn down in a show of light, an ecstatic grin on the shadows of his face we saw for the moment it shone bright and clear.

Then his clothing fell, and for all that he’d pocketed over a hundred coins, there was nary a one in the misting dust that was left of him after vivus riding Lost Light was through with him.

“It’s like a lot of bastards have been busy for fifteen years, and they just ignored the hapless trapped in their jobs,” the Mick sighed, watching the robes of the Town Crier Burn away.

“He was waiting a long time to unload all that stuff. Best use of coins I’ve ever seen,” Kris agreed with a nod. “Knowing the Graveyard threw them out is huge. That must have been jarring.”

“And the virindi are pissing off everyone, being inscrutable and all,” Briggs rumbled. “How many different Entities did he mention pulling shit?”

“I counted six we’ve never heard of. Empyreans seem to have known of a lot of arseholes of the Mythos,” I said, noting the ‘news’ that I had flagged as key. “The Direlands are going to have more places of interest if and when we ever get back there.”

“I have to wonder just how many Dungeons are out there, packed full of undead of all kinds just waiting around for a fight,” Kris grunted with feeling. “Like, they have no purpose left BUT to fight.”

“Aye, but more important to us, there are no more Empyreans around of their people. They’ve just discovered the worst thing about an undead society that draws from the living. When there’s no more living but the undead, there’s no way to replace those who fall.” Briggs looked around at the surrounding town, wiped clean of all undead with remarkably little damage to it.

“Except to create more slaved undead, which dinnae replace their own undead people,” the Mick followed up quickly.

“I was interested to hear that Harlune is alive, and presumably somewhere in the Olthoi North,” Adso spoke up from the side. “Master Oswald knows that area well, and never ran into him.”

“Strange that a famously reclusive Empyrean Archmage is hard to find when he doesn’t want to be found?” Kris asked him archly.

Adso just shrugged. “Master Oswald has always been exceptionally good at finding people who don’t want to be found.”

“And Harlune has been exceptionally good at avoiding those who want to bother him,” Kris rejoined with a wave of her hand. “Age and experience versus youth and enthusiasm.”

Adso opened his mouth, paused, and then closed it. There was absolutely no doubt that Harlune was at least ten times Master Oswald’s age, if not a hundred! “Indeed,” he finally conceded, somewhat ruefully.

“The looting is mostly done.” Nearly twoscore additional Disks had been heaped up with all manner of loot, focusing first on goldweight-equivalents in coin, gemwork, or magic, and then with practical things, like sets of chairs… or lots and lots of scrolls from the Scholarium that Translator Kuyiza had once worked in. It would all be allocated swiftly or Burned away with speed, given the number of combatants here today. “Let’s finish that up, and get out of here.” Kris’ pale violet eyes gleamed slightly. “I understand Al-Jalima isn’t that far down the road.”

Wolvish smiles broke out all around at that. Indeed, while the road would wrap around, as the crow flew it was scarcely five miles to the next Gharu’n town, and the hills weren’t going to slow them down at all...

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Hours later…

The sun was starting to dip down as they left the ruins of Samsur behind them, cleansed of undead and of enslaved NPC’s who’d been unable to leave their places and stations.

They had loot and they had no fatalities. The undead hadn’t managed to warn one another of what was coming, and any they’d encountered on the overland trips between Zaikhal, the trade city of Al-Jalima, and the residential town of Samsur had also been wiped clean with vivus.

The one thing they had not stopped to do which they might have was investigate the smaller settlements they passed by. Some may or may not have had an undead presence, but there were too many and they’d waste too much time.

The Mick regretted the necessity, but their positions were noted in the Markspace to investigate in the future. There were a lot of them to come back to, which at least gave them some motivation to do so.

His heart was more at ease than it had been in years. The reanimated NPC’s had not been able to tell them much, save for the Criers, who had been willing and able to share all sorts of gossip with them gleefully, one pyreal coin at a time.

But they’d all chosen to take Bunita in hand, and smile in joy as the Lost Light sent them gently and carefully to their rest.

It didn’t matter that he’d run over a hundred miles in one day already. He was going to make it across the desert now, and they were going to slam into Yanshi, confirmed as the western-most outpost of the undead in Dereth, and they were going to wipe it clean at speed.

Then, as night fell, Princess Kristie was going to take up the running, down along the Blackmire, into lugian territory, cutting through any of the Gotrok Summons and scouts they ran across, and they were going to make it over the hills to Baishi in its river valley where the Hea and Gotrok often met for trade, over the Tukals to the marshaling town of Lin, and then down the trails to Mayoi at speed.

They might even hit the marching Gotrok army from behind, if the words of the scouts tracking the force coming east out of Tukal were right.

It was a lot of ground to cover, but the Mick’s heart felt light, his ki was flowing nicely, and he didn’t feel tired at all as he poured it on in the direction of Yanshi.

Vivisized undead carried no battle reports to their seniors. None of them had any idea how many undead had fallen into slavery to the System and were little more than automatons. The number could be in the millions.

But every one they killed as a Summons was one that wouldn’t come back, and eventually, eventually, they’d all be gone, and no undead would be Summoned into the world again.

The same fate was going to befall the undead not slaved to the System, and their superiors literally had no way to replace them once they were gone. After all, there were no living Empyreans left that they knew of, except possibly on other worlds.

And were the undead going to leave here, go and try and find them on other worlds?

His gut said no. Not even that they might not want to, but that the powers that had brought them here in the first place simply wouldn’t let them go, whether they knew it or not.

They were prisoners, but the chains holding them here were woven of time, tradition, pride, and arrogance. They thought they were the masters, and instead they were just pawns who didn’t know it, hapless pieces in the game they thought they were playing.

Pieces whose time could now be measured.

His pace picked up, and the hot stone and sands of the desert flew by beneath him. Just as impossible as the rest of the island, true desert springing up and then fading away within miles, as if painted onto the island just for a little variety.

Just one more sign of the things that had made this place and turned it into their pet stage for interesting things to watch.

They’d be in Yanshi in an hour, and more ‘living’ undead and Summons were going to bite it violently, brought down in fire and vivus, and then there’d be a long run to Mayoi in the evening and the dark.

The Gotrok weren’t going to like it when they arrived.