The Power of Ten

And thus a paradigm for collecting succubi from the drow was set up for my next stage. If we wanted to build an army, armies, that could do this job, then they were going to have to be exceptional armies, indeed, as this was going to take a very long time.

Even demons didn’t want to be slaved to the undead, perhaps particularly demons. If that required going against their nature for a time, then so be it.

I received twenty-five Truenames who were willing to fight, and incidentally didn’t want to be burned en vivus as the disposable assets they were. I certainly wasn’t going to keep them Bound for centuries while we all fought the Shroud, just so I could set some demons free at the end. No, no, best just to get rid of them and have them fuel some magic items or something as I did.

Fiendish Baneskulls were an option, too.

Cephalid Baneskulls were becoming popular for the Aberrant version of the things, almost like they were made for the job. Elite Cephalids were even self-Empowering.

Construct Baneskulls from the gearknights and coghounds in the Russian Shroud were also getting the business, and were spreading rapidly as the skulls were salvaged and hurriedly converted into something useful.

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The Blakhamars and the Irish had freed up Kiev, slaughtering all the corpsecrafted undead created by the Ancestor of the Tarantkov. It was a very annoying series of battles, with their elites having to keep the Ancestor and his most powerful servants busy without wasting the effort of killing them overmuch, since they’d just bodyhop to a new corpse as Dark Clergy. All the while, their kinsmen wiped out the baser undead who, although toughened up and stronger than any rote Walker, were in the end still zombies and skeletons of various types, and so were slaughtered with remarkable speed.

The Animated dead of the Tomb Clans were much tougher, of course, but they were put down with no less effort and focus... and the living Clanners were happy to do the job.

They’d already narrowed down the Elder’s spawn point after killing him once near the dawn, and were waiting patiently to track him when he respawned at his occupied corpse’s new ‘grave’, which didn’t have quite all the defenses of his own respawn point. Thus, when he ran and hid, they just camped the spawn point, and when dusk came, lo, the Ancestor was thrust forth from the ground, and his compatriots were all widely scattered, none of them close enough to souljump into.

He died in blood, vivus, and fire, as two crystal Blooded Swords named Smior and Piit cut him apart, and he found two living Blooded were more powerful than a long undead one.

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Minsk was the other major city at the western edge of the Shroudzone with its own Shroud. In the east, the major city was Novgorod.

The European forces ground down the one, using it as practice for the many smaller towns and cities they were likely to have to fight in on the way, and the Chinese teams reduced the other one.

Poltava, Dnipro, Donetsk, Luhansk... these more southern and smaller cities became practice grounds for the African and American forces coming up from below, fresh from closing down Gulagzones forever, and finally shutting down the Istanbul and Ankaran Shroudzones. The African and Middle Eastern forces had come up through Georgia and Armenia, clearing out Shroudzones in Grozny and Rostov, and then joined the efforts against the Russians carefully, actually paying some heed to the advisors there telling them how to fight.

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Down in the Felldeep, in the Strata and off the Hollow World, things and races went quiet in the darkness, without warning or pattern, dying as their locations were run down, and the most elite fighting teams came down to address them and wipe them from the Land.

Yuan-ti empires in sunken jungle caverns died in gunfire and hacking blades. Twice the descendants of Old Gods reared their reptilian heads, drawing Legion in to cover for them and Shvaughn to trample upon mutated blood descendants while their progenitor died.

The drow city of Ulgarazzar had a direct surface extension in the Hollow World, and ruled a proxy empire there that was the center of a sprawling trade in slaves and lives that fed a lot of nation-states in the Felldeep, and inspired slave raiders across the inner world in search of fresh sapient meat to send their way for endless gladiatorial games.

Professor Complearo and his people finished feeding the Headless Wraith King to the Land in but a month, and perhaps the whole savage world might have shuddered if they knew what was being planned when they paused for a week’s rest... and to Burn all the tomb gold from the Shroudlord’s hoard before setting on a new path.

The Mahar that dominated so many lands of the Hollow World were now going to find themselves hunted and their primitive empires in great danger as the Professor began to take his role of driving the worst of the evils from the lands and uplifting the natives into something better much more seriously.

Among other things, war upon the slave trade began with some fervor, and the disruption soon made its way to Ulgarazzar, actually spurring that empire of ape-men and savage brutes out to do more of the raiding themselves, under the leadership of the dark-skinned and becloaked Priests who led them.

In one explosive and brilliant night of magic that made the city as bright as day, all the natives of the city were slain, and only the slaves they’d taken survived to see the dawn.

As for the drow city in the depths nearby below, some slaves escaping from it said a goddess came down and took all the dark elves away, while slaughtering any who dared raise a hand against her. She brought ruin upon the edifices of stone and towers of the dark elves, even as released slaves fled with all the plundered wealth of centuries that they could make off with and bring back to the surface.

Just the libraries that Legion looted were going to keep some experts busy for a long time, although a lot of them had to be checked over for cognition traps, dementia prose, Curses, and other minor interesting items attached to them, as well as subject matter that could threaten the very soul.

Even after what the freed slaves ran off with, there were Tapestry loads of raw materials shuffled off for Burning... mostly donated to Professor Complearo’s growing bands of warriors as they went about their tasks of dismantling an old society and starting up a new one.

The drow vanished from the Felldeep. In the case of the cities that had collaborated with Aberrants, it was almost in silence... and definitely in vivic fire as they saw something their minds could not accept. They died to supernatural, impossible beauty made manifest, and then were burned en vivus.

The other cities didn’t fall quite as quickly as those two, but fall they did, as the same ‘goddess’ came down and took them away, then went into sequester to Atone for them.

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The smell of burning oil and gasoline was thick in the air, along with the tang of lubricants and scorched metal. The acrid fumes of necrombustion engines filled the air and made it hard to see, while hate lightning sparked and crackled here and there over shattered hulks and riven Constructs of brass and bronze and iron.

There were places of purity where white fires devoured the negative energy in the air, Possessed robots and death-machines rent apart by precise use of directed Weapons, while unclean power systems oxidized and fell apart in repentance for what they’d been designed to do.

Nikolai Kroischenko, the Firesword of Asia, tapped his temple as he looked around at the kill team that had just hacked apart hills worth of Gearmen and other forged things waiting to be unleashed upon the living, breathing easily enough through his alchemically-treated mask. -Tell Warlord Briggs that Site 12 is clear of Constructs and Animated.-

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-Site 7 is clear.-

-Site 20 is clear.-

-Site 11 is clear.-

Briggs looked at the virtual map in his head as he placed another intact copper skull from a Gearknight onto the heap on a waiting Disk. Baneskulls were important things to have available in this fight. Site 5 was what he’d assigned himself to. Sama had taken out Sites 2 through 4 with her team, basically testing the waters to see if the Shroudlord had noticed what they were up to, as well as rounding up more Baneskulls and figuring out what they’d be fighting and some tactics to use against them.

There’d been thousands of interested parties watching the fighting out the eyes of those doing it as they went into the storage armories and utterly trashed the hidden forces there.

Since they weren’t under centralized command and would thus only respond to personal attacks, the Constructs were much easier to destroy down there in the dark halls. They didn’t coordinate their actions and couldn’t move around properly, and since they didn’t react at all if the Coghound pack next door was smashed and Sundered apart, it made them much easier to take apart piecemeal.

Once it was plain the Shroudlord didn’t believe they’d actually discovered his hidden reserves, Briggs had made sure the teams were equipped with the needed Baneskulls, and then they’d hit all twenty-four sites they’d been able to nail down during a single day.

It meant they didn’t have to waste nukes on the things, allowing them to save those for wiping out some undead forces in the future. While the Aberrant might have informed the Shroudlord of atomic weapons, it hadn’t seen them with its own eyes, and would have the undead attitude that its troops were unkillable and enough of them could overcome any number of the living through pure attrition.

It was probably starting to rethink that line of thought as the spawnpoints of its outer Shroud were cleared permanently, and its vast and mighty Shroud shrank in and back. Dead city after city was exposed as it did so, cleared away, and Ruin teams smashed roads through the endless lengths of walls it had put up, finally bringing in support vehicles, artillery from the distance, and even tanks to deal with some of the larger Construct threats... although the Possessed Tanks rarely got to deal with our tanks before a rocket grenade took them out.

Such grenades were much easier and faster to make than Possessed Tanks, and cheaper to fire off. No need for magic except to aim, blow apart the turret or drive track as was vulnerable, and then just dispose of it.

There was some friendly competition in clearing the sunken armories, but since the contents could be very different, it was all in good humor. An armory of Gearmen and Coghounds was very different than one filled with War Wagons and Tanks, which was different from mixed forces, which differed from various kinds of necroic Golems that could also easily pop up, such things being largely tougher and more durable than most of the Constructs.

Of course, the really big and powerful Constructs were already out there in use, waiting ahead of those fighting with building-size Walkers lugging around artillery cannons, multi-armed nekmek beasts, and Gargants and Colossi buttressed with steel, short cannons, armor, and servos. There’d been hints of them seen in the distance, as some of them loomed higher than the walls that had been gradually getting higher as his forces closed on the primary border of the Shroudzone.

-Excellent work. Any real surprises, other than those cable constrictors?- he /asked of the raid teams firmly. The mechanical snakes had not been welcome, but smashing Liquid Rusting on them disposed of the things quickly enough.

Sundering Breaking Constructbane Weapons of adamantine were lethally useful against Constructs, and all the Senior Forsaken had Arsenal configurations for such things by now. It gave them great confidence when hacking and chopping down their foes of unliving metal, wood, bone, and stone when they could all be sliced apart like thick tofu.

There was a long list of Constructs they’d run into from this Shroudzone, giving them an idea of what to expect... but of course there would be surprises.

-How’s this one?- An image hove up from Klauz Orveitz’s eyes, the Swiss Guard focusing on a fairly well-made gear-creature that didn’t fit the proper mold.

-Geardrakes? No, that’s a chimera build, it’s got three heads. Thunder roar from the lion, fire or lightning from the dragon, and possibly acid from the bull head, if it doesn’t get you in melee,- Briggs /told them promptly, even spitting out a rough Stat line for them.

-Ranged attacks it is, but there are three of them.-

Briggs /grimaced at that, but nodded. -If they are reacting to you, leave them for last so you have more room.-

-Understood, sir!- the Swiss /replied, and his team pulled back, moving towards where more Coghounds were waiting, gears spinning silently, ready to head out with spinning saw jaws and scissoring claws to fight.

Crack them, harvest Baneskulls, Burn the carcasses for your Gear. It all worked out.