It is the word of Shoul that if you cant hold onto sothing, then it is not yours.
The voice rang through the Shrine of the True End. It was not loud, but it was pervasive, interrupting everything, and making the quiet sohow fuller, brighter, and deadlier.
There was very little light in the Shrine, as those living there didnt need it, gifted with darkvision or devilsight and able to function perfectly well in darkness. It was a wonderful defense against intruders, too, and helped subdue both prisoners and the normal people working there, who knew that venturing out of the lighted areas ant they would not be coming back.
You have taken sothing I call mine... my son, my child. Whatever claim you make on him can never change that fact... but you were going to try.
Alas, you dont have enough ti. The equinox is not going to be here in ti. You are going to die, and I am going to take back what is mine.
When you are screaming in the throes of your Pacts, when you are wailing in the tornt of the Shroud, slaves to the undead forever, you will know a simple and final truth: There are so lines that you should not cross, so things that you should not desire, and so treasures you should not touch.
You crossed a line when you stole my son. You should not have desired his Bloodline, and you touched the child of soone willing and able to kill you all to get him back.
Co, with your tad shadows. Co, with your vampire slaves. Co, with the ghouls youve locked in darkness. Co, with the mummified guards of the ancients. Co, with your whining Warlocks and their wheedling Pacts for power. Co, with your false-tongued Clerics and their empty lies and promises. Co, with your skulkers and assassins and cutthroats.
I am Traveler, and I Bring your Last Day!
I was sure that they sneered in the dark for a mont.
TRUTH!
And there were screams throughout the Shrine.
It wasnt close enough to actually do damage, but adherents of Shoul being confronted with the purest truth, instead of the lies and delusions they dealt in, was one of those things that are very distracting.
It gets worse when the strike team mbers co out of your maze of secret passageways and start shooting you.
Their Ward collapsed when I Dispelled it, and if they gawked at the fact soone was able to bring down sothing Cast at Fifteen by a Greater Daemon, it didnt stop it from happening. They lost their ability to track their foes, to sense enemy Faith and Pacts... and so, the masters of darkness were blind.
I was tracking everyone through Status and Fellowship links, plotting out the courses, rapidly defining the Shrine even more closely, indexing traps and magic and ambush points as Topaz called them out, and directing people here, there, and everywhere.
The Eyes of Heaven were no longer blinded within here, and not too many of these people had any way to avoid them, especially Master Freds at /4.
The undead ran into buzzsaws. The living ran into Topaz and Master Fred.
There werent many of the daemons. They glowed like dark suns in the Eyes, even against the undead. Those bastards ran into .
Perhaps they were supposed to be frightening, fast-moving skulkers in shadows, trying to hit and run, in and out of view.
Ah, before I left Detroit, I had the Angelos make up a bunch of Eternal Lights, Raised to IV.
All their Endless Darkness effects were at III. The Eternal Lights snuffed them out in passing, and Devilsight didnt make these people immune to sudden very bright lights in their faces.
Master Fred was flitting between shadows into these people, Topaz was coming out of the stone with a nasty smile, and Sir Pellier was quietly IDing shooters they werent handling.
SeekingDarts and Shards were hunting down my targets behind cover and shadows, homing in on them ruthlessly. Lurking assassins, skulking daemons, waiting undead... it didnt matter. Them being around corners just ant they had no chance to get a final shot off at as they died.
They did get a lot of shots off at , but that didnt help them much, either. We were moving fast, layer on layer, triggering traps ahead of us or jamming them, the biggest ambushes broken up by the two very senior Warlocks with great spikes of stone exploding up, or roaring flas spitting out screaming, burning disciples who were shot down rcilessly.
The Locate Blood Relative I had up was working very cleanly now that their Wards were down, and we were already inside any residual spell defenses that might interfere.
I hoped they would run. That would just make things easier at this point.
Bodies burning white littered the halls and tunnels, staining the dark rock white.
The primary fane was ahead, and it seed my inherited son was being brought there ahead of . Guns roared, arrows thundered, Walls of fla exploded with Wrath, and n scread and died as they were impaled on living spikes of stone from below.
Both Master Fred and Sir Pellier were pretty clear that the main Evil of this place was waiting for us ahead there. How nice.
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Topaz had a gift for impressive display. She Shaped away the stone from the hinges of the grandiose main doors to the place, and then pounded on the bloody things with a Wrath-enhanced fist. The massive set of artistically malevolent portals went sailing into the room beyond, crushing a few chairs as they did, and setting off so wild purple-black gunfire that whined down the corridor behind us.
A whole bunch of shadowy tentacles dripping so nasty stuff exploded out of the floor... and then promptly exploded wetly as very rigid stone spikes ca up underneath them, stretched them out, and burst them apart like wet water balloons from within. The tentacles that werent impaled wrapped themselves mindlessly around the stone, pulsing and squeezing, sizzling faintly against the uncaring rock.
The Wall of Fla went right down the middle of the doors and into the room beyond, specifically eating through the thick and cloying darkness, and the poisonous vapors in the room beyond.
There was laughter from beyond, unnatural and inhuman, echoing hollowly and without direction off the stone, coming from nowhere. The people outside the room waited calmly and knowingly.
Truly you have a redoubtable team with you, Traveler! Or perhaps we should call you Elrii? mocked a voice from within. Did you decide on a na for your son, little girl? We have been calling it the sacrifice!
He has a na worthy of his mother, I answered back, with a sniff that echoed throughout the chamber beyond. It isnt like theres anyone worthy on the other side of his bloodline, rats. Before they could respond, I said, One second, please.
There was a crackling crash and sizzling wild lights creating dancing shadows in the room beyond. My apologies, your ambush squad needed to get a bit urgently dead. Did you have so irrelevant rhetoric you wanted to keep parroting? Were patient, well wait.
The Wall of Wrath in the room blazed brightly, blocking vision even as it devoured the poison mist and threw back the darkness. Beams of enhanced Light swept through each side of it, and washed away the layers and layers of Endless Darkness that covered the room via Valence superiority, so the light from the Wall spread further and further away.
There was a crackle of black and purple, and the Wall was snuffed out, the integral magic pulled apart and Dispelled.
Which was cute, because two seconds later it roared back to life, this ti advancing another twenty feet towards the dais visible at the far side of the room... and thirty feet to the left, down the rows of simple pews.
Yeah, Dispelling infinitely repeatable Warlock stuff wasnt exactly profitable.
One fellow didnt get out of the way fast enough, and leapt aside, screaming as he burned. There was a clap and boom of a snapshot, and his head puffed white and went away.
Youre not making any turgid and prosaic lip-flappings. Do the serpents have your tongue? I asked archly, my voice echoing about the place, also with no clear source.
We have the child, ca back the sepulchral voice. What do you think you can do about it? If you advance, he will die!
If I dont advance, he will die, AND you will get what you want. Guess which option makes more sense? I replied firmly, and then there was a distant rumble and crash. Ah, my apologies, that was your remaining two escape tunnels collapsing, dont mind it. Perhaps you might try a little shadow-jumping, or flying about, to pass the ti? Theres so important lessons about not annoying Sorceresses with really strong Bloodlines to be learned whilst doing so.
Perhaps I couldnt hear the whispers of consternation and horror, but I could at least imagine them.
Clever, if you think we have but two ways out! the voice said. Regardless, you are not going to regain the child alive!
Yes, yes, I know, I know, youre trying to buy ti so your Warlocks there can power up a Formation to yank in sothing big enough to actually give you a hand. I also know youre not going to kill my son until its clearly his life or yours... and I will tell you right now, that only one of you can possibly bargain for his life with theirs.
Everyone else is going into the Shroud.
Also, and here my voice got a bit whimsical, Ive been told theres at least another five Sinbound surviving in there. Hello, there. This is an excellent ti for a little TRUTH. There were definitely screams and curses from inside the Shrine at hearing that, but at the sa ti, they couldnt help listening further. Youve been told and youve seen that if you die, your Pacts take you.
Well, thats not entirely true, thanks to the greed of your Patron there. Its been so successful about churning over Pacts that its totally forgotten that it is sitting under a planet-wide soul-devouring Divine-defying Curse effect. In actuality, NONE of the souls that have been dragged away by their Pacts have gone Down. They are, in effect, being held by their Pacts until the mont the Shroud cos down, and then, off you go!
However, youve had a very successful run there, you Shabnodaemon, you. The spike of its sudden alarm was evident, even if it wasnt audible. Nope, wasnt a Matrixoth. Youve been turning over Pacts. You DO rember that theres only five hundred of the things, right? I let that dangle out there. Every ti you grant a new Pact, its gotta co from sowhere... and that sowhere is riding herd on the souls youve dood before. The old Pact has to release them to beco so new schmucks Pact.
In other words, only the LAST five hundred Warlocks to have Pacts are totally dood. Those before? Theyve been swept up by the Shroud... and if the Shroud dies, and they had a decent life, they arent going Down at all.
There was a blistering, stomach-churning curse in Daemonic at that news, and I just laughed softly. TRUTH!
The new curses were of a completely different tenor. Thats right, youve spent the last few decades dooming thousands of souls, of which youll only be able to collect the last five hundred. Your turnover sche was pretty stupid, all things considered...
The empty hiss that arose ant the thing was not my fan. That was fine, I wasnt its fan, either.
The rest of you, you still have mortal will. You might be going Down, but you have never been obligated to Sin in the slightest. You have ALWAYS had a choice.
In the interests of that, Heavenbound Hall is sponsoring a new Penitent Initiative, designed to completely pester the Lower Planes. Im sure youd like to hear of it!
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