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

Well, it wasn’t exactly subtle.

The Mick grinned as he looked overhead, unable to hold it back. It was a smile reflected on many faces around them.

The clouds above them should have been dark, a roiling, seething mass of gray, threatening to break into rain and winds and just plain misery for the fighters racing along beneath it on their Disks.

Instead, it was flashing and pulsing with light, bursts of crackling Silver Lightning seething inside it and over its edges as wrathful winds pushed it along, lit from within by a high and profound Light that was not natural in the slightest.

Nor was the Thunder that rang out with each bolt that danced inside those clouds. Each was less a rumble than the long tenor of a ringing celestial bell, heralding a coming of something that was something much, much more than a storm.

It was the Wrath of Heaven, and it was Good!

-Hey, lass, what if this were to rain?- he /asked the Lady Magos about this, head craned back as he rode on his Disk, ignoring the breeze as Princess Kristie hurtled along as fast as a racing horse.

-Holy water, shining in gold and silver, washing away at anything evil or dark below it. Shades and undead would melt away like acid eating away at them. This kind of magic is one reason why most undead hordes keep an iron fist on the weather around them, and are accompanied by dark clouds. They don’t want to be washed away by Holy rain.-

Casters kill armies, the Mick reflected to himself. An’ for this one, especially undead armies.

The lugians couldn’t miss seeing them coming. The brooding, flaring clouds were clearly visible on the horizon, sweeping their way down along the mountains. They couldn’t see the people on the ground, of course, the weather pacing them at a breakneck pace. The warriors beneath the clouds were either laid back, looking up at the show like he was, or had their eyes closed, listening to a melody that was rumbling in their soul with a greatness and Goodness they had never felt in all their lives.

He glanced over at Adso, Oswald’s favored student, noting the slack jaw as the hunter and killer stared up at the sky. Good rumbled down back at him, saying things the man had never heard or imagined could be heard.

Thunder in the Soul. Berserkers could grab for their rage. Disciples sought out their fanaticism. Evil men indulged in bloodlust.

Heaven, Heaven went for Thunder in the Soul. That moment when you fought not for a Cause, but for the true and pure foundation that Cause was built upon. For doing the Right Thing, not something you were told was right, but something you KNEW was Right, and you were part of something infinitely greater and grander thereby.

The Lady Magos said that Oswald was Emerald, that he’d chosen a philosophy that didn’t ascribe to any path but the one he determined. Naturally it had rubbed off on his students, who were basically Greens themselves, and even the Stoneholders had elements rubbing off on them, though many tilted to independent Orange, not much unlike himself.

But now, they looked at the sky, at a storm filled with Holy power, and had to ask themselves some really serious questions about what they believed in. That was Holiness up there, the essence of what it meant to be Good, woven throughout the spell. It was not just some other energy a spellcaster could add onto their spell, like the Divine power that backed it up.

It was Aligned, it was true Goodness, and it was talking to them in their hearts!

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Months ago…

“There are many Ways in the Seven Dragons, not just one for each House,” Princess Kristie told the Mick and a circle of eager paramounts, most of them undead. “Some are very specialized, and rare to take, so the main ones for each House are the most well-known.

“There are three for the House of the Storm Dragon.”

Abu bint Nadir, a dead Gharu’n tulwar wielder, raised a skeletal hand. “You called the Storm Dragon the greatest House of the Sword, although the Ocean Dragon is the most widespread, Highness?” the bony master swordsman asked in his cultured, hollow voice.

“Yes. The Ocean Dragon is the most practical, forgiving, and versatile. But the Storm Dragon has the greatest lethality and power of the styles, and much of that stems from its Ways.

“The Storm Dragon has three lesser Houses. They are Wind, Thunder, and Lightning.”

Quaver cut deftly, and the Lost Light became cloud-like swirls, twitches of golden-electricity, and a quiet, telling tone of power that prickled the Mick’s skin.

“The Way of Wind is to avoid combat. Of all the Ways, it is the most elusive and hardest to pin down, although Fire is excellent at doing so. In numeric terms, each advance in the Way of the Wind makes you more and more elusive and harder to hit, as long as you wear no armor and move quickly. The faster you move, the greater the benefit.

“The Way of Thunder is to defeat the immaterial. You cleave through intuitive dodges, you encompass all chances to the time-sighter, you are omnipresent to deflective forces, you ignore luck, and you rip through magical blessings. To those with unseen and invisible defenses, you offer unseen and invisible force to shear right through them, riding the Thunder in your soul to do so.”

“How,” Master Ben Ten slowly broke into her pause, “do you feel Thunder in the Soul?” he asked calmly.

Her pale violet eyes had turned on the undead swordmaster, shining with admiration. “You stood up from your own grave and walked back to join the fight to save the living! Do you remember that moment, all of you? When you embraced a desire so pure and transcendent that not even death was going to stop you? And if death could not stop you, do you think some vague mystical defenses or ability to feel the flow of combat is going to stop that Thunder?”

Quaver toned louder. Diiiiiiing… Tiiiiiiing...

It was the tone of a great bell, drawing them to battle, breaking across the skin, hitting everything, all at once. It rang inside them all with purpose above and beyond. What tiny forces seeking to turn them aside was it going to bow and scrape to?

Death itself had been pushed away by the Thunder in their souls, by the knowledge that they were needed for something greater than themselves.

Thunder, this was something they already had, or they would not even be here!

Master Ben Ten was the first to rise, his Katana Giri whispering forth.

The steel of the Blade whispered and echoed as the swordmaster stood there, and the sound upon the metal grew.

Like distant, rolling thunder, calling a great and honorable man back to battle.

His students heard that, bowed their heads, and rose as well, the Mick included. Blades and Axes and Glaives came forth at the call, the call to battle, to something more than themselves, to a will and purpose beyond themselves, and what was going to stop them from answering that Call?

Nothing. Not even death!

“Thunder rolls in the soul,” Princess Kristie whispered, whatever lesson she had been going to teach adjusting on the fly as whispers of sound grew on all those Named Weapons, each different, each the same, somehow blending into a whole that was not a cacophony, but a greater harmony, an orchestra, growing as each note and tone was added to it. “And we call it forth, and drive before us the frail powers that would stop us, be they arcane or other. Thunder weighs heavy upon them, and they cannot stand afore it!”

The rolling peals ringing from Quaver rose, and the Thunder upon those unleashed Weapons rose with it, ringing upon the field with a sound beyond sounds, and it rolled in their souls…

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The Present...

The clouds were bright, the Silver Lightning was brighter… but it was Holy Light, not light, and what it illuminated below was Darkness, not darkness. Wholly unnatural, yes, the forest and plains beneath as dark as any night, even the Force Magic of the Disks not catching or reflecting The Light from above.

Also, it were a right awesome bloody distraction, as the lugians below, unable to sleep and leery of lightning as a race, could only watch it coming as some dire portent, gripping their weapons and staring up at the sky that was looking down at them.

Not looking BACK at them. No, DOWN on them! With a Light and voice that was making their hearts tremble at what they were seeing and hearing, like all the Land was judging them and finding them wanting!

The first Called Thunderbolts came crashing down just as the wedge of fighters smashed into the side of the Gotrok camp.

Lugians screamed at the harsh judgment in the blinding brilliance of the Silver lashes descending from on high, whispered stories given form as each crashing blow sounded like a great bell going off, not some mere deadly rumble and crackle of true lightning striking.

This… was the Wrath of Heaven!

Blinded, half-deafened, watching Summoned lugians go flying in twisting, arc-lit bundles of painful voltage tearing them apart, the Gotrok were completely unready for an attack to come racing through their camp, and their calls of alarm were mixed up and lost in the screams from the descending lightning, the tolling of dire bells, and the pounding Light and Thunder of Heaven beating on their hearts and souls.

Half of the camp didn’t even realize they’d been attacked, too busy trying to find cover or blinded by the score or so of Thunderbolts that had descended to even notice the attackers streaming past in the night, ignored in the confusion and tumult as the Heavenly storm swept over and past them, and they could only watch it go.

Behind the rain of Thunderbolts were left scores of dead Summoned lugians, already breaking apart and, to the fear and dismay of their commanders, Burning en vivus, the unnatural misting white fires that consumed the ectoplasm of their bodies completely, before they could even dissolve back into the spiritual realm they came from.

The wise said those souls were freed from the system, never to be Summoned again. Others claimed they were consumed utterly, or damned to a terrible fate, or simply claimed by another power, but they all could see the white patches splashed across the ground that was left behind where the white mists sank into the soil, and whispers said that where they were, flowers would bloom at the dawn.

That many of the fallen also bore marks of combat, of arrows sticking into them, or slashes across throat and eyes and arms, was also soon worked out, and then the confused tales of Isparians moving through and among them emerged and began to form some sort of coherent story of just what had gone on.

The commanders naturally tried to explain everything away as merely another foul magic and trickery of the runty little alien pests, more treachery heaped upon the valiant lugians and followers of the martial traditions of their people.

It was a good tale and set of lies, save for one small problem. They could all see the clouds on the horizon there, they could all feel the judgment looking back at them from those clouds… and they could all see the way those clouds stopped right above Mayoi, echoing and ringing across the distance, daring, challenging, scorning them to come!

Heaven was there, ready to do more than just pass them over quickly…