Chương 409: BECMI Chapter 408 – The High Priest of Gulguz

"Six of the things, with thirty-two carvings apiece on them!" Briggs guffawed, slapping his thigh, a big wide smile on his face.

"Could we have been any luckier?" he crowed.

"Bugs! The bastard sent BUGS, of all things!" he chuckled, still enjoying the memory. The underground caves were spread across nearly two hundred miles, dimensionally-linked tunnels connecting them. Once zeroed in, the Dispatch teams had gathered on them, cutting down any more Beetles before they could wander off.

Those that had already trundled away were tracked down and killed by simple seismic tracking, as they could not seem to help but release an Earthquake every so often and announce themselves to all and sundry. From there, it had been a well-coordinated and disciplined cycle of teams converging to take down each monster after it had grown to full power, maximizing both the risk and the reward! The shells of the creature were already being studied for imitation purposes.

They were stronger than steel, lighter, and a mix of crystalline organic layers that promised to revolutionize light armor. The elves were particularly interested in the research, and some cautious druids as well, after seeing the source of what the material came from. There'd been a lot of injuries and magical Healing, along with six deaths to the unlucky and the overconfident, but nobody thought it was a waste of time, and the Karmic rewards were pretty steep.

Wiping away nearly two hundred Immortal Tools simply because it was the fun thing to do! Briggs and Sama had been the only two who had dared to solo a Bug, while I had contented myself with staying backup in case something really bad happened and a team got wiped or had to be pulled out. I would have no problems obliterating a creature that couldn't reach me in very short order, after all, and in tight quarters, the things were just victims who couldn't avoid me. Impressively, I'd not had to participate at all!

"Delphax, before you ask me to confirm who it was. He's being very aggressive, and making another play." Sama and Briggs broke off their preliminary snuggling, mostly because she was getting pretty far along. That she still went into combat was a tribute to the power of Warrior's Womb and her absolute confidence in her ability to kill the thing, which she had carried through on with little problem.

"The fucker doesn't know when to give up!" Sama half-snarled, half-laughed, her heavens-blue eyes dancing.

"What's going on now?"

"You heard of the fire giant incursions around Woderidge, right?" It was hundreds of miles south of the former Archlands, a hardy community built around some decent iron and copper mines scouted out in the area between the Iceteeth and the Final Range. On the other side of the mountains to the west were the lands of Buraval: ancient, violent, with large numbers of nifloids and ruled by what might have been a shadow-lich or something with an Artifact Staff…

one I had destroyed in the past on the Other Shore, because it precipitated just the kind of shit that was happening there now.

"I thought the Rangers were taking care of that," Briggs frowned, sensing something more important going on.

"Fugitor Bohme made a stop in the barony there, fleeing from a warband of fire giants, ogres, and hell hounds."

"Bohme?" repeated Sama narrowly, placing the name instantly.

"He's of the Church of Paras, a Priest Ascendant, one of that religion's top three Clerics. What was he doing up here, and why would he need mundane shelter?"

"When Baron Wode called me up to adjudicate the matter, I was wondering the same thing." The Baron was a good man, but he would have been massively overshadowed by an Ascendant Priest at Thirty, one of the most powerful Clerics alive!

"It turns out Bohme was questing for an Artifact, the Pectoral of Sha'Aumra, and had managed to attain it. However, he was closely pursued by the agent of another power, and for some reason had been Cursed to be unable to use any form of travel magic. He was literally on foot having to run from the creatures that were pursuing him!" Both of them were seated, paying attention now. Individuals at Master tiers of power were involved directly in Immortal schemes all too often.

"The name of that person is Beregos de Corac, and he is the Hierophant of the Church of Uzgurful, who is known among the Fire Giants as Surt, the Frost Giants as Tyrm, and to us as Gulguz.

"His temple lies on the other side of the Iceteeth on the border with Buraval, where he reigns as probably the most powerful Cleric of Gulguz still alive on the planet, especially after said Immortal losing the High Priest of Surt in the Archlands, as well as being the most powerful Cleric in Buraval and a potential rival to the Shadow King there.

His Grace Bohme was happy to inform me that the man is an obsessive collector and hider of Artifacts, sending agents out into the world to locate, recover, bring back, and then conceal the Artifacts of other powers." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"I also gather he wanted you to head right out and do his fighting for him, letting him complete his Immortal task in safety?" Sama deduced with a snicker.

"True as clockwork," I replied dryly, drawing a snigger from both of them, as Paras was an Immortal dedicated to Time and its long march of history, the faith full of punctuality-obsessed historians and archaeologists alike, seeking to uncover the ruins of the past and spread history!... Right up until their own Immortal Patron decided things needed to stay buried from mortals and removed them from their libraries and memories, that is. Hypocrites of the highest order, that's what Hierarchs of Time were, it seemed.

"I wasn't happy with him involving us in his little games, and especially not with Artifacts in play. I browbeat him into bringing out the Pectoral just to validate the importance of all of this… only to find out that somehow it had been removed from his Holding Purse, and it had been moved into the neighboring settlement instead…"

"Just as a force of these fire giants dared to attack," Sama nodded, getting updates from elsewhere.

"Did they learn nothing?" she had to ask.

"Even if they succeeded, there is no way they were making it home…"

"They'd been Suggested by Delphax, and were actually doing so in defiance of the orders of the Hierophant. Delphax was dragging Gulguz into this whether He liked it or not." Sama nodded again.

"The failure of the Wolf Winter to do anything like it was supposed to is abject failure on His part. The consequences of a successful one, where Brucall had to ask his mother for help, would have started another war. He's basically kicking Gulguz while He's down. Gulguz should have remembered that working with Entropy doesn't mean they won't turn on you if the opportunity is there."

"The attacking force was largely butchered, and the Rangers are tracking the survivors as they flee west into Buraval, probably leading us right back to a certain Hierophant's mountain hold-fast. It would seem to be built atop a nearly-extinct volcano and with a rather large personal monstrous army, as well as a great number of human under-priests to keep them all fed and healthy."

"He's learned that His worshipers should be working together, not trying to kill one another and prove who is the best," Briggs nodded thoughtfully at that information.

"This would constitute an invasion, and we should be very leery about use of technology as a result. It will probably open up hostilities with Buraval and the powers that sponsor it, as well." Large fingers drummed on his disk-chair.

"You mentioned the shadow-lich probably has the Proud Staff of Monarchs Mourning?" he queried me.

"It's one of Thanatos' favorite toys. Tempts and takes down mage-rulers with great ease, has killed at least a dozen of them as far as my Sims could track. Ah, and I received word from the Crones about the Spear of the Bone Hunter. A gnoll warlord is using it to raise an undead host in the far north of Buramal, with the intention of sweeping down and laying waste to all lands and trampling them under his elite undead horde, with every foe slain by him bound to the Spear."

"I imagine a lich-king is incredibly unworried about facing an undead host, even one controlled by an Artifact he can't contest… unless the Staff can counter the Spear, and then undead dominance takes control," Sama finished as my lip curled just so.

"Regardless, this does not seem to be all that dangerous…?" she trailed off, thinking.

"Does Delphax actually think getting Buramal involved is going to do anything to us?"

"He has no direct experience facing the power of technology," I pointed out to her.

"He was not an Immortal at the time of either Darkmoor or the Crimson Cataclysm. You've been very, very good about not giving Him a show here, so the only 'high tech' He's seen are nothing more advanced than our airships, which He can lie to Himself that Delpha had just the same or better. He might be a little leery of the Pyramids, because He's likely seen what Sythia could do with them, but I doubt He has any real idea of what I am doing with them.

"He's an extremely aggressive, brilliant, impatient, spoiled narcissist who wants to see things blow up for His amusement, and punish all Delphans for making Him look like an idiot. This… unless He didn't think we could deal with the Earthquake Beetles, which is quite the stretch, has only markings of a distraction."

"We just sacked His greatest center of worship on the planet, proved His impotency to His own followers, and even ruined His attempt to make the island blow up. How dare mere barbarians show up an exalted figure like Himself?" Briggs mused aloud, hands clasped together as he worked through various scenarios.

"We have to be high on His shit list if just for foiling His plans repeatedly."

"And permanent loss of an Avatar," Sama grinned nastily.

"Then you had to go and sail on through the Delphan Remnants, revealing all His dirty laundry, airing it to the rest of the world, and killing off some of His favored creations while foiling all the schemes meant to get rid of you, then returning home to make Him the butt of more jokes, especially in the face of His Immortal peers and rivals."

"He definitely has a special place in His heart reserved to hate us," agreed Briggs, nodding slowly, still calculating.

"But this scheme is not like Him. It's more like war for the sake of war, but He wants big, showy war, not undead crawling across the world. Even that work with the Deathstone and the Realm of the Dead was more about showing off power than mustering undead armies, always meant to bring in bigger players. He's just efficient about using undead as expendable soldiers and making a decent resource of dead non-mages."

"So He wants us distracted with another war, not really understanding just how good our Dispatch Teams are. Every time we get involved in something He's doing, it goes not only wrong, but monumentally and embarrassingly wrong… and that's without a visible Immortal agent acting against them, merely interference from third parties. Reasonably, that means He wants to direct His attention back at the two Empires and get them to fighting again…" I thought aloud, considering the implications.

"Then we should nip that idea in the bud. Magni still wants his short, victorious war, and That Bitch is pushing him to start something with Delpha, war for glory and the advancement of Siricil, win or lose. Only the Emperor has wisely been trying to get it in the south instead of coming up here to the North and facing an unknown foe with dangerously advanced magical power."

"And probably the only two warriors in the whole world he might actually fear," I pointed out neutrally.