Chương 519: BECMI Chapter 518 – Hunting Across the World

Dame Adama's Silver Sentinel took the five steps as fast as a skilled duelist with lightfoot, on top of that Entropic Immortal and cutting before his instincts screaming at him to get away could manifest, and Smote once with great precision. The Immortal Avatar exploded in a roiling mass of blackened energy, ravaging and eating away at the very space and time about it… and then vivus ignited, shot through the devouring mass and set it aflame.

Solid whorls of mist formed small cyclones as the writhing mass of black energy was drawn back towards Heaven behind the great Silver Sentinel, devoured by vivus and the harm it was inflicting undone even as it was formed. The beams and shells from Her point defenses had never really stopped.

The space around Her cleared of Immortals for miles as they fled, and the ones who hesitated, be it out of arrogance or glory-seeking, began to explode in Immortal power that forecast a death that was not going to be easy to recover from. The Siege of Heaven was lifted. Whether the Sentinel would chase after the fleeing Immortals was another question...

The World of Nown... There were no other nations or states left intact, aside from the shrunken borders of the Bright Empire and the Island of Heaven's Reach. Whole societies had been slaughtered, enslaved, corrupted, mutated, and dominated to servitude to their masters, be they undead, Fiends, creatures of Mythos, or the Carnifex themselves.

The Carnifex labored to break the Spell of Preservation, and so far had only temporarily managed to do so by harnessing the power of a few Artifacts they'd gotten their hands on, things cherished by their most powerful as allowing them to flee the raids that came seeking them with relentless regularity… and the humanoids bearing the Baneskulls of their own dead, hunting for them with hungering flames the color of Carnifex blood.

Elite spellcasters and warriors crashed together, magic warring, blades flashing, all the hungry strength and pride of the Carnifex on display as they clashed. Clashed and lost, time after time. It was not hard to see why, with the technology supporting the attackers. War Machines that magic could not replicate easily thundered forth in support of the elite attackers, while artillery fire launched from miles away pounded away at fortifications and formations of troops.

Starfire shells rained down flaming death and incinerated acres of minions at a time, railguns punched through the hardest of walls and broke them with projectiles moving ten times the speed of sound. Worst of all were the Forsaken. At the very least magic-resistant, at the highest levels magic-immune, the Forsaken were the finest martial combatants of the native peoples and completely impervious to the magic the Carnifex and so many other forces wielded.

The most dreaded undead, the most twisted alien creatures, the vilest fiends, the most powerful of the Carnifex themselves… the Forsaken faced them and cut into them without pity or remorse, showcasing a level of martial ability none of their opponents could imitate readily, carving their way through undead, mutates, demonspawn, and more with relentless lethality that made even the most arrogant of Carnifex uneasy to behold.

If they got within reach of a Caster, well, that Caster died with a speed that left them in utter disbelief that they could be slain so quickly. And the worst thing was, the mortal defenders were only getting stronger! Oh, the numbers of them were falling. The least of the soldiers and the civilians were still perishing to attacks, faster than they could grow up and be replaced, pushing back the borders of the Bright Empire as they fell and couldn't hold the land. But the ones that remained?

They were only getting stronger and more dangerous! The natives recovered and quickened their slain heroes at least as energetically as the Carnifex did, which was incredibly frustrating. Their Healing magic was far superior and more powerful, ladled out unceasingly, and so their staying power and ability to resist and recover from all manner of attacks, from being reduced to ash to temporal imprisonment, was impossible to match. The only way to stop them from returning to the fight was to trap their soul…

and those souls seemed to be beacons across the planes, leading rescuers right to them to recover them, and incidentally cost the trappers even more of their own trying to kill them. They didn't have the numbers of minions the Carnifex did. But they had the quality and more, the Forsaken alone were worth any two Carnifex, and all they did was get better and better. Two hundred years passed. Three hundred.

Four hundred, as the wars raged across the world and in the Astral Plane, Immortals and Carnifex clawing at their opponents with myriad schemes, trying to find a weakness. The continent of Oslo was charred to the stone, nothing left alive to sustain anything save in the core lands of the Bright Empire, shielded under Pyramid Domains and so difficult to attack.

The undead were Burned away, the Fiends were fed to the Land, the creatures of Mythos went up in cerulean fire, and all natural creatures warped to serve them, Fey twisted to madness, and normal life above and below ground was gone. Whole sections of the landscape had been collapsed to fill in the great tunnels and caverns of the Underdark, and nothing lived inside them, either. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Dark Pyramids overgrown by blood-red roses with steel-hard black vines rose here and there on the landscape, charred and scarred, but marking where the reach of the Lady Edge existed, and where the natives of the world would be aware of any movements of coming attacks, and so could race to the defense.

Those Pyramids were going up overseas, one by one, and had even been found in the Hollow World, where the war chewed up ancient species and only the Spell of Preservation allowed a fraction of its prior life to live as the great preservation experiment of the Immortals became the food repository of the Carnifex, and was itself slowly being Burned clear of life as its inhabitants fed the gluttonous appetites of the marauding reptoids. No Immortal intervention.

The Green Lands of the surviving aliens under the Eternal Engineer was the only place defying the Carnifex's forces down there, with actually a score of different surviving races existing under their umbrella, abandoning the Spell of Preservation to pick up new ways to fight back and evolve, becoming something more than they were.

It was a March of Pyramids and their Domains, rising up across the world, giving the Carnifex no place to hide as territories were cleared, claimed, and the Pyramids kept rising, nigh-impossible to destroy, instantly sensing enemy forces in their Domains, suppressing their ability to fly, exposing them, and serving as bases to operate from for the forces that followed them.

Buttressed with technology, the advancing forces weren't numerous, but their firepower and skill was not small, and even Artifact-powered Portals bringing in help from other Realms didn't have the power to overwhelm the defenses and forces being brought in. The lack of mobility of the enemy didn't help matters, as even incorporeal swarms of undead spirits were forced to materialize by the Pyramid Domains, and couldn't infiltrate as they wanted to.

The ghost, specter, and shadow hordes sent out were vaporized with Ghost Touch Weapons en masse, and Ethercutting Weapons could target them right through the ground if they stayed Ethereal and tried to be sneaky.

The gods had had quite enough. The Immortals had abandoned direct conflicts with Heaven, but in response were trying to interfere with the immigration of Good souls to there, said souls coming from all over the Astral plane. This naturally baited out Celestial servants to succor the good souls, which were much easier to combat than the gods.

They were also allowing the Artifacts in the possession of the enemy forces to keep recruiting forces from off the planet, and there was no Immortal intercession of this blatant aid at all. Indeed, large numbers of Constructs that the enemy had absolutely no ability to create in such numbers were appearing, meaning they'd either gained access to a clockwork plane, or Immortal crafters were now helping them! There was a great trembling in the planes again, as the second of the Gods Ascended to Greater God status.

This time, it was Haki, She Who Is Justice… and also the Judge and Guardian of the Dead. Immortals making end runs around their own rules concerning the mortal plane fell right into Her purview, as did the protection of souls going to their proper places. Calmly and precisely, the Lady of Justice began to act across the planes, reaching out with Her authority and punishing both the bending of the laws and those preying upon the streams of souls!

Klangyr was among a dozen Immortals laboring away upon an Immortal forge upon the ore-rich matter world of Roglos, crafting the shells of Constructs of steel and iron, brass and copper, stone and obsidian. Many were humanoid, but others were of more specialized manufacture, some forming golems of great size and power, others beast-like hunters, rolling chariots of war, fire-spitting war machines, and the like.

They were set up and arranged in formations for whenever the Carnifex or their subordinates could open up Gates for them to march through, often straight into battle, frequently led by Clockwork beings who would happily take direct command of them and throw them into conflict with flawed living organic beings who needed to be tidied away to allow the influence of machines to grow. There was a Ringing across the entire plane at once.

Startled Immortals looked up in shock as a classic scales of justice larger than the sun of this world in a plane dominated by Matter appeared. Equally grandly, the scales of the sword slowly and damningly moved down against the feather. The Immortals were already trying to flee, but instead rammed right into the planar barrier, which had inexplicably solidified from without. It was not that Roglos was not letting them out, but the Astral Plane was not letting them in!

A very stern matriarchal voice rang out with searing clarity, no chance for it to be misunderstood whatsoever." In enforcement of the laws concerning post-mortal Entities interacting upon the mortal plane, I am sealing all Portals, Gates, and other passageways from this Plane to that of the Mortal World." The method chosen to do so is Planar Destruction." The Immortals gaped, some shouting in instant protest that this was completely overreaching, She had no Right, no Authority…

The Scales began to grow, and the Sword upon it slowly rose from horizontal to vertical. It was already larger than a planet as the scales came fully down, and it descended. Immortals, their minions, and entire worlds screamed, and an Immortal Realm died.

"Sixteen Immortal Realms collapsed under the so-called 'Justice', of the one we believe calls herself Haki, and is so worshiped under that auspice now." The words of Nyx were a hiss in the meeting of Immortals. The moon-city of Nexial still existed, was still intact… but every Immortal there could feel the prickling influence from the world of Nown visible above them, weighing down on them and letting them know they were no longer welcome there, even if they had once been born there.

Left unsaid were that four of those Realms were hers, although not her Home Plane of Unsullivask, where the mightiest undead beings in the multiverse existed in homage to their Mother and Creator. Still, the souls lost in the collapse of those underworld Realms had been uncountable, the very dimensional walls collapsed in fire and dimensional ruin, burned to nothing and souls launched into the cycle of reincarnation beyond her grasp, their immortality nothing but a lie.

She had been sending undead forces to buttress the armies of the Carnifex on Nown for centuries, as had several other Entropic Immortals who had also lost those Realms entirely. Two of those had been Home Planes, and Crzateitanl and Parzikkul had been destroyed with them! They were the creators of the Druj and Odics respectively, and their losses grieved Nyx tremendously!