Chương 284: Chapter Two Hundred and Eighty-Four – Payment!

His great hand was reaching for me, wrought of the blood and misery of endless conflicts, and all the souls, innocent or enraged, who fought in them. His eyes were battle madness, the desire to fight and win incarnate, His voice the scream of every victor in every battle ever.

He was a gnat before Creation.

I watched His hand come before me, and already felt the resistance as He cut apart the flaming expansion of Creation on His advance. He began to burn, vivus feasting at the raw stolen energy leaking off of Him, cutting away His source of strength, and beginning to burn at the edge of the power He had stolen from the Alignments.

He didn't falter, for this was a fight, and such a fight He could not flinch from. The energies of the other Warp Gods boiled and bubbled about Him, sacrificed to the vivus, keeping Him on His course as He fought upstream, up against the crushing weight of all Creation, directly towards me.

I felt the Rift crunch, starting to pinch itself shut under His implacable will, and I set myself into my Stance. I ignored all thoughts but staying there and keeping my Null out and open, and the Laws of Creation intact so that it could keep flowing in... and sucking out.

At my throat, the Amulet Prince Estemar had given me flared silver, and Mithar Took Note. I saw a dire light flash in the incoming burning eyes of Klaw as the Amulet opened, and He realized He had fought a battle against the General of All Good, and lost...

The back pressure scoured over me, ripped away everything above my skin as my personal Null was forced right back to my skin. Regardless, the Amulet quietly glowed silver and defied it, and my golden hair ruffled in the light of fleeing souls and burning dimensions.

There's a weird perspective when something as big as that closes in on you. His hand grew and grew and grew, like a car arriving from the distance, and then the car is upon you and you realize that it is STILL coming, still getting bigger, and you're a fly to its grill, and still it's coming, more details coming out, and you're a flea, a mote, a bacteria...

The patterns on His hands held secrets of power I carefully didn't examine too closely. The ridges and calluses were the height of planets, and they were all formed from the souls of those who'd died in savagery and bloodlust, howling for my death in mad fury, and chanting the ceaseless praise of Klaw the Unending, Klaw the Inevitable, Klaw the Conqueror, Klaw the Reaver, Klaw the All-Rage...

Klaw, Slaughter Eternal.

The impossibly huge mountains and hills and valleys swept in and up into my face as Reality compressed fantastically against the force of His charge, piling up like a solid thing that threatened to break my Null asunder. I saw a berserk face there on that burning palm closing on me, far past and at the center of all those souls and faces, staring into my eyes as they came upon me-

And Mithar lit a spark off.

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From the Outside, the impact was immediately obvious, for fracture lines appeared on the Veil itself, spreading all the way up beyond sight, pulsing with unimaginable amounts of vivus that reached up into the shining starlight heavens and far, far beyond. The Rift was expunged and seemingly flattened against the Veil, compressed Vivus of impossible purity shining there, while the fractures seemed to flow and organize themselves into countless Runes and Patterns on a massive wall towering up and beyond sight, their scale incomprehensible to those watching.

What they could see was that those Seals and Patterns were definitely not all Holy. Their souls shuddered at the feeling of Forces so immense they could snuff the planet like a candle passing by, all taking up position on that impossibly tall Wall...

Expectant. Waiting...

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The shockwave propagated in all directions, but especially south. The Aberrant entities screamed in mindless resolve, expending power hoarded over time-lost eons, and reached out to stop the Wave.

It broke around the edges of the Empire, anchored at the Feralbar that warded away the wild tribes of the east, and the edge of the Sidhete that it streamed from, and sealed all the influence the Aberrants were extending out as they trembled to drain away and deflect the power rippling through the Veil, looking on that Wall... and then REALLY looking at the Wall...

The hapless mortals below screamed and swayed as the power of non-finite entities swept by and clashed over them, like ants beneath a thunderstorm.

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Memphistopheles babbled words in languages not meant for men, the second mouth on the vestigial face on his chest contributing imprecations and mutterings in Aklo to accentuate, and lifted his hands as the power flowed, and the ground tore open.

Tentacles rose up on the astonished cultists of Mulguus, the Fungus That Feasts, and shadowy, inhuman forms ascended, tittering and laughing in mad ecstasy as they came forth to dine.

Memphis grimaced as the foul power raged through his system, and burned into the Valences he held. His lifeline rose before him; the sites he had prepared pulsed, ready to accept him, and despite all the dimensional soup this land had been reduced to, he tore himself away from there on wings of magic, as the Mazakam guided him through the murk to their next meal.

The emerging toad-like Elder God Huggastigh, the Eye in the Everdeeps, was going to get a rude surprise... and Memphis was fucking going to kill whatever fool invented these alliterative appellations someday...

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Klaw was hurled back and away by the explosion, but the open connection was indeed severed by the eruption of so much compressed reality. Burned and scarred, the explosion sent Him flying back towards the other Warp gods, who were reeling from the feedback of the power they'd sent Him and were even less braced for the shockwave that followed.

Blasted and broken, their Realms igniting around them, they were thrown back into the depths of the Warp, shouting and shrieking their pain. Around them, areas of the Warp the size of nebulaes flared and burned clean, accumulated corruption, sin, emotion, all of it wiped away into cold serenity, as the Warp once was.

Yet as they were sent tumbling away, they did not fail to notice what had been left behind.

Stars filled a new sky, written on the Edge of the Warp. Runes the size of star systems, emplanted on the barrier they'd long thought sacrosanct. Each Rune was an eye, each power behind it a non-finite deity whose power extended across multiverses and worlds uncounted. They shimmered in the grand pattern of the Alignments United, looking in deep at this world claimed by one small, small branch of Chaos and Evil alone.

Watching, and waiting. For they had gained entry once, and they would again. Because now, they had a hold.

Oh, but that was not the worst...

For at the center, where the Rift had stood, and where supposedly Neutrality should stand, the primal will of Creation... there was nothing, nothing at all... for the central power of Creation had been forced away...

It was a circle and an area that now bordered Outside Creation. Faintly, the divine senses and awarenesses of the wounded Warp gods could hear a demonic piping, and a mad laughter from countless mouths older than their universe beyond it...

A great void separated the Warp's core realms from the Endwall, burned away and absorbed by that last mighty explosion. Even now, thin tendrils were coiling away from the surging clouds, winds, and fires of the mindscape, stretching out, seemingly infinitely thin, across that void, towards the waiting Runes and eyes of the Aberrant Powers beyond, who had seized an instant of chance on a minor world to play with, and suddenly found themselves looking into a whole new universe to play with that they hadn't had access to before.

The Alignments would not be denied what was theirs, and slowly but surely, the power of the Warp was going to be drained off, the souls released, the psychic energies, trauma, passions, emotions, and memories trapped here drained off and returned to Creation and the Great Cycle of Creation.

The Warp had held, but now, they were being watched... and the things Outside Creation might be coming in at any time, to see what interesting things they could find in this Warped Realm... and what they might take away...

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Briggs watched as the whiteness faded from the sky. The awareness of the great Kaiju tracked the pulse of the sealed Rift across the Land, feeling the wrongness from the south, at the same time as alerts, alarms, and reports were flooding in from across the Empire.

It was truly the Day of Reckoning there. The horrors being unleashed were truly reminiscent of the End of Days, barring the fact the Lower Planes weren't the ones unleashing all this.

And there was no presence of Sama. No presence at all, except the echo of her laughter, and a view of a god of the Warp, mighty Klaw, sent spinning and howling away, burning and writhing as He was Smote by Reality. An image delivered not by Sama, but a great Silver Presence of the Divine.

The Markspace was totally stable. It was anchored on the Nine Marks worn by each of her three Hagchild sisters, and the Marks spread around on thousands of Forsaken Nulls, holding everything together.

He didn't give them time to be lost and wonder what to do.

-She's not dead,- he /said in open Marktell, his deep /voice rumbling through everyone's thoughts. -They came into our house, slapped our face, and we gave them a mighty wallop back in return.

-But they're the Gods of the Warp. That just makes them want to come back bigger, stronger, prove they are mightier than you.

-No, the only way to really make them pay... is to do the same thing to them, and walk away leaving them able to do nothing.

-She's there, in Warped Space, somewhere, doing something. And when it comes to fruition, the gods of the Warp are going to rue the day they ever thought they were something important!-

There were roars and shouts, both audible and in the Markspace, as the Ironblood and all the Marked acknowledged that fact.

She was Sama, the Sage of Swords. Damn right they were going to pay!

-She left us behind a great gift... this city of Yle Tyorm, and the worlds worth of wealth that lie trapped inside it. Wealth we are going to loot clean as we slowly erase the last remnants of this stain upon the Land away.

-We will take these plains that are returning to life, for our own. The survivors of the Empire have already come here, and will need new lands, new fields, new pastures for the people, as we re-establish a realm that was long-lost here.

-And do not think that we have forgotten about what is happening in the south. Oh, no, what the Hags have wrought cannot be allowed to pass, either.

-Our great friends know that they cannot let the forgotten gods pass to the North, and will soon be leaving to see that such a thing does not happen. There will be horrors coming out of Rosencrux, trying to spread to the many lands beyond.

-But unlike the Warped, there are no unlimited reinforcements here. The stars will not stay aligned long, and the Aberrant will not hold their great power long. They need to be contained until they lose the ability to draw on the realms Beyond for power... and then, they too will know what it means to pay for their arrogance.-

A low rumble murmured through the crowd. If Sage Sama could do it, why couldn't they?

-That fight is not mine. My place is here, in the North, building something new and great. The fight against the Aberrant is yours to undertake, yours to build your names and legends from, and your Road to Ten and beyond.

-We will be here behind you, giving you the safe place to rest, the secure shelter, the rock and the foundation you will use.

-Clean up this place. Quicken what of the dead that we can. Regain your health, rest, and ponder over your choices.

-We are warriors, and in the city will be battle enough for all of our days, and more. To the South is a chance to contest against Fallen Gods and all their minions, and gain the favor of the Divine, and save innocent lives.

-There will be honor wherever you serve, and you know that We Shall Have Your Backs!- Again, that call of honor and loyalty erupted forth, because damn right they would!