I contributed the Sublime Chord to help it all out, everything audible to everyone in Markspace, Heartsong morale magic effects thrumming in the minds and souls of everyone, and mages and wizards shouted in defiance as +4 to Caster Level took over. +6ish To-Hit, Damage, Dodge AC, and Saves thrummed through everyone, along with basically immunity to fear and the absolute goddamn certainty that we could do this.
Guns roared with Elemental Kickers around me, and Curia mages kicked and died. Should have concentrated on bringing out your Armor and Shields, I mused as I let go my Shards.
A Caster Level check against 20 let my Shards punch through the Force effects that manifested from their magic soul-bound versions of Armor and Shields. My base modifier was +48 or somesuch right now.
Star-spikes of Firefrost Force and a ton of Elemental Kickers punched through the guards, the Dark Beasts and the like, securing our flanks all around as they Chained out.
Painted into the HUD, more targets for the mortars on the other side came up, and the teams re-adjusted with magical speed. Shells screamed and came down on what surviving clusters had managed to get up some kind of defenses. Armor-penetrating shells laden with lots of Fire and Lightning Magic were pretty dope when they went off.
Shades were flooding out, rising up out of inky pools, coalescing out of black smoke in the air, and the vivus-laden ammunition was reaching out to smack them. Unwhite fire painted itself across them, and if the material weapons didn’t hurt them that much, that was all totally fine, because it was the vivic fire that was important.
And someone here had a Baneskull against Shadows she could use, too.
“Shadows rise to wail at uncaring skies
Doom stalks the living, and souls shriek their pain!
The Land turns to watch with Her many eyes
Time now to reap and to harvest the twice-slain!
TREMBLE, SHE COMES!”
The Shades were horrifying damned souls, warped and twisted caricatures of what they had been in life, further twisted by their deeds among the Damned, unholy creatures of the Dark Realm come here to reap and harvest among mortals.
They were food for the Land, and the Land would feast well this day!
I saw one of the Archmage Deacons was streaking my way as fast as his feet could carry him, dodging the rising Shadows, Earth Ripples pushing him forward with every footstep, his face a mask of terror.
Coming after him and closing in with every step, Sama was Singing without effort, and the Shadows he was dodging she was cutting right through and slashing apart explosively!
The Mick waved a hand at the fleeing man, and Counterspelled his ongoing Earth Ripple.
Caster Level didn’t matter to a Counterspell, and the ongoing nature of the Spell made it vulnerable to the Dispelling version of the effect. A truly tied-off spell, or a permanent Ward, would not have been so vulnerable. But since it was concentration-based with a constant feed, it didn’t matter how much power he had to pump into it. He had instinctively gone right back to the fastest, basic spell he knew, and the Mick, or any of our Earth mages, knew that spell themselves.
A Star Trail of Earth reached forth, cancelled another one out, and suddenly the ground under the man wasn’t helping him move along any faster. His speed was promptly cut in half or more.
“No!” the man screamed as he stumbled, the ground that was supposed to brace and reinforce his every step not accommodating him as he tried to swerve. Momentum sent him stumbling off to the side, crazily trying to get his balance as he slammed into a ten-foot Shade and bounced off it, chased by a cuffing claw at his temerity.
“HEEHEEHEEHEEHEE!” Sama’s laughter seemed to zero right in on him. She treated the Shades in her way like bouncing pillars and targets of opportunity, lines of vivus chasing after Tremble’s shining Golden soulfire edge as she tore through them. That big Shade with the scythe in one hand lost its other arm to her as she tore past it, and the Deacon could only scream and try to brace against her... and bring up magic that wasn’t going to happen as her Null closed around him, magic went quiet, and his screams went flying with his head.
Sama stopped in place by lightfoot-dumping all her momentum into his fountaining corpse, and the body went flying as if launched, pumping out arterial blood the whole way. She looked back at the Shade staring at her, her crazy smile wide open, a Blade Singing wildly in her hand that burned with something it could probably see more absolutely than anything it ever had in its existence.
The fixed grin on its face faltered visibly.
“Shades to reap!
Souls to eat!
Hear you meep!
Grab your feet, and Feed the Land!”
It was big and strong and its scythe was some shadow-thing that basically had no weight.
The two unwhite-trailing bullets that hit its head and sprayed its skull all over the air behind it didn’t even let it swing it.
“Your ass!” she offered with another laugh, and was off faster than anybody was supposed to be able to run, totally ignoring the magic flying around, even before the headless corpse could fall burning vivic.
“Tremble, She Comes!”
---
The central Ritual area had been completely annihilated. What Curia members had survived the bombardment now found themselves among uncontrolled Shades all too eager to take out their frustration and anger on the hapless mortals all around them, who were all definitely going Down in the harvest of souls that followed.
Sama’s sing-song command to pull back and away from the rupture was still as hard and ironclad as steel, despite being in melody and couplets. Everyone was instantly backing away and retreating in good order as pulses and puking fountains of Dark energy were vomited out of the shuddering planar breach, which was struggling to remain constant and stay open.
There was definitely something powerful on the other side energetically trying to keep the thing open, but that wasn’t going to happen. Vivic fires were burning all around, fueled by dead mages with Dark Elements, more than a few Shades going up like roman candles as the vivus hit them and dispersed into the air, devouring them as fast as the Dark Mana could deliver more free munchies for the Land.
The Curia members behind us were deciding that running away was a very good thing, but it was much too late for that.
I felt the convulsion of a LOT of Dark Mana, and then the first skeletal hands exploded out of the ground, negative energy repulsing the ground away and allowing them to get free of the grasping earth.
“UNDEAD EMERGING!” I shouted out, overriding the shouts of alarm in Markspace. “Use vivus, and goddammit, harvest some damn skulls for us!”
Panic gave way to people with Wands and Implements coolly saturating the areas in front of them with vivus, the abrupt shift from panic to hey, Karma and profit, occurring with, well, Trembling confidence and speed.
“Bones to loot, time to shoot!
They’re coming from the grave!
Grasping hands, feed the Land,
What time they’ve helped us save!”
I saw even more Shades rising up out of the shadows all about, but my focus was on keeping the area in front of us clear, and I let burning unwhite shots and spells deal with the obvious threats. Detect Evil was up and feeding all of the scouts, so the teams wouldn’t be surprised as they retreated as fast as possible, this time not caring too much about stealth.
-General alert to the Ohio National Guard and all Hunter teams in the area. Folgers, Ohio is undergoing an unstable Netherworld Planar Breach, with Shades and Undead manifesting randomly within the affected area. An immediate advisory to avoid the goddamn area unless you are planning on tussling with the Underworld needs to go out now.- The people waiting for that particular message were already on the phones as Sama spoke, and the radios and TV stations would be broadcasting it within the minute. -Fae, what’s the word on the Rift?-
-It’s unstable and not self-sustaining. The forces on the other end are holding it open, but that will only get harder as more vivus saturates the area. The more vivus we generate, the faster it will close.-
-We retreat in good order, make it to the edge of the manifestation zone, gather up, and then start going back in, killing everything we can without being surrounded,- Sama’s razor of a mental /voice ordered, complete with paths of retreat in the Marks-Up Display. The Earth mages carrying everyone out rapidly made course corrections, while everyone else concentrated on picking off everything in the way and all around them. -The goal is generating vivus and making its life Heaven. Make some Karma and do some Good, people!-
---
Our retreat lanes converged quickly, with me reverting to Darts to quickly administer Healing to everyone who needed it before rejoining the sniping and coolly killing every Dark creature, be they humanoid or bestial Shades, or Undead of whatever variety was pushing itself up out of the ground to make itself a meal for the Land.
A particularly reality-wobbling set of planar ripples turned my head, in time to see a really big obsidian claw of a hand extending up above the trees behind us, the area about it going really black, really fast.
“Anyone wondering if the National Guard will believe the alert going out now?” I asked aloud, all of us riding Driver Sam’s Earthwave away. That pulse of magic would be felt for hundreds of miles around. At least a Baron, maybe a Duke, of the Underworld manifesting right in the heartlands of the United States!
My question raised chortles all around.
Mages and Archmages would be converging here promptly from all directions, they just needed time to get here. Shame we hadn’t been able to spread word ahead of time.
Fires and explosions were rising everywhere, and the Dark Mana was saturating everything. Undead and Shades were ripping through homes, barns, and vehicles, destroying and slaughtering anything that reminded them of life and the living without discrimination.
Folgers, Ohio was going to vanish from the map after today, not that there was much here. The scouts had noticed pretty much nobody was left around on our way in, and that included most of the cattle and pigs. A cursory verification from Sama noted that there had been an access trail leading up to the Ritual site, with lots of hoofprints, and that central pool of the Ritual had involved a LOT of blood.
Where the carcasses had been hauled was another matter, but I assumed the massive numbers of Undead coming up needed some raw material to work with...
There was another wrenching at reality, and a second hand joined the first, facing the opposite direction. They seemed to clutch at the very air itself, and force themselves apart...
“I’d say this is getting somewhat serious,” the Mick noted, wincing at the spiritual pressure slightly.
It should have just clouted everyone and sent them reeling. It was funny how the Phobos Stand emulated said pressure so well, and at the very least the creature was more than a mile behind us now. It was like I had them go through that training for a bloody reason.