The Arm’s many, many eyes opened and focused on the mass of Tim charging it, the shadow flitting through its servants and leaving a trail of wrathfire behind it as she did so was mostly ignored as more magic going off.

  But this wasn’t a Summon, this was a Call, just like the damn thing on Freebooter. It might have recognized her, and it certainly did when Quaver’s two tones echoed out, but this time warbling the name of The Deep to further impress T’Thuun.

  Quaver inserted into the rind-like hide of the Arm right through one of those staring eyes, and she took off right up the side of it, dragging Quaver behind her and splitting open a layer of its hide behind her as she did so.

  The whipping it was going to level at Tim writhed and pounded down next to the monuga, who completely ignored it as he brought Smasher’s slashing spikes across and crashed his Club into the base of the Arm with a thunderous blow.

  Mowen slammed into the other side, double claws hooking and ripping across from Tim’s crushing impact, and suddenly the Arm was already chopped halfway through!

  “A glutton for punishment, come thirsting for banishment,

  Writhe as you might, wail to the night,

  A monuga and a tusker are here to slay,

  Now die and come, come show your servants the way!

  TREMBLE, WE COME!”

  Yeah, Kris gave fuck-all about elder Mythos Entities and such-like. Her total F-You carried perfectly in the Voice of her Whispers of the Wild. Every Deep creature in hearing went totally apeshit on hearing the two tones come alive with something they could totally understand, while the T’Thuun servants quavered that a mortal being would so dare to talk to their master, and with the attitude of someone who had done so before!

  “Feel the jaws and might of the tails,

  The rip of the claws and scorn of the scales!

  The cold dark eyes as your petty magic fails!

  The DEEP! THE DEEP IS WATCHING!

  The DEEP COMES FOR YOUR SOULS!

  TREMBLE, WE COME!”

  Tim had dropped Smasher and tackled the slimy Arm, forcing it over and sideways as it writhed and flailed in his mighty arms, while Mowen was howling and ripping monkeyshines through its base in windmills of furious motion. Unnatural flesh and gore was spraying in all directions, blowing into vivus that was now all over the black Armor and fur of the Tusker Champion as he raged all over the stump.

  Kris slammed to the ground next to him and blurred through seven strikes of motion, tearing away at the widening wound in a specific pattern, tracing curves and whorls in the air that formed into a deadly Burning rose made of the misting blood of the Arm of T’Thuun.

  Mowen’s monstrous blows all turned into crits, shredding the unnatural meat of the Arm despite all the Health Qi trying to flow through it, vivus flaring as Kris opened up the other side of it further, ripping and tearing with frenzied precision.

  “A tribute to The Land, an offering by The Deep!

  Hunger, thirst! Wail and let your Blighted eyes weep,

  Wells where The Deep Dwells

  Hells where darkness tells

  THE DEEP IS COMING FOR YOU!

  TREMBLE! TREMBLE, THE DEEP COMES!”

  With an awful ripping that felt a lot like your own flesh was tearing, the Arm was torn off its foundation, hacked clean through. Tim raised the flailing corpse of it above his head as it writhed and died, and the Deep’s minions went totally berserk.

  In the distance, another Arm collapsed under the concentrated magic of the Elder Nautiloids, and the fighting entered a new level of savage killing.

  ---

  Our progress towards the temples slowed, but didn’t stop. The defenders weren’t fighting at full strength in our area and The Deep’s chosen Hag of a Warlord was ladling out the awesome to everything fighting around her, but there was just a lot of meat and scales to be tearing through, coming from all over the island and from the temples specifically.

  Exactly as it was supposed to.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  I eyed the Heavens-Up Display, checking the spread of troopers.

  They had penetrated far into the backfield of the island’s defenders, and sleeches were leading them from one abandoned spawn point to another, stopping the reinforcements from cycling endlessly, a force that even The Deep’s numbers would simply be unable to equal in the long run.

  But this wasn’t going to take a long run. Sweeping the spawn points rapidly cut down the immediate reinforcements, destroying the scattered shrines in the area helped destroy morale, trashing the spawn pools sent a clear message as to their fates, and the instant closing to combat of the remorans and Deep moarsmen kept the combat pitched, while the nautiloids in all their varieties were constantly Casting to supplement the efforts of their minions.

  Five Arms of T’Thuun had been encountered, all of them eventually hacked down, most by gathered spell power. Eating those things wasn’t allowed, so the remorans were less useful up close, but considering their own incredible Casting ability, even if mono-themed, the Arm fell after enough magic to fell an army was heaped upon it.

  The stepped pyramids of the temples were now in front of us.

  They were of Empyrean design, and even looked almost exactly like the ruins on Freebooter Island. That didn’t surprise me in the slightest, even if it was disappointing to see. Dark Falatacot factions did worship the bastard, so this could be expected… it was just that it was likely the biggest temple complex in all of Dereth, and it was devoted to an eye-tentacle thing from the Outer Dark.

  Righto. Good peoples, them Falatacot.

  Four smaller corner temples around the central one. Mana-reinforced construction, sure enough, defying tens of thousands of years and still here.

  However, that reinforcement was being incredibly strained right now by the volume of the respawns, the Portals bringing in servants, and naturally enough T’Thuun manifesting Arms here at the invitation of its priests.

  Yeah, the ley lines here had a lot of stress on them, which meant the channels of mana-reinforcement to the building structures weren’t quite so solid.

  Normally this wouldn’t be an issue. The structures could actually restore themselves with full mana flow, so as long as the damage was kept to a minimum, which the hardened structure was surely capable of withstanding.

  Well, no, not with me here.

  There was an Arm of T’Thuun right before the steps leading down towards us, writhing and hurling explosive balls of spores, dispensing Inflicts and Curses as it wished.

  The Deepchord began to build in the manasphere as I truly began to use the Sublime Chord in earnest.

  In basically seconds I had sleeches, niffis, nefanes, and even wings of remorans hovering in the air all around me.

  “Cut him down,” I Whispered, but they all heard me.

  Triadspell, Lower Magic Resistance and Slashing Vuln going off in tandem. +4 to the Caster Levels around me, -4 to those of the enemy.

  It was like seeing a magical firing line going off, so many wheeling blades of force punched out for the base of the Arm in front of us.

  No hesitation, no pausing, even as sporeblasts cut through the Casting creatures around me, instantly replaced by more fanatical servants eager to join this effort and fight the unfightable.

  Tim was standing directly above me, idly batting away any Void Magic or spores coming my way with Smasher, his triple eyes flat and unimpressed by the thing before him, the third one he’d faced already tonight.

  There were something like two hundred Casters hurling constant War Magic at the thing, the target a shining blue-white area blazing with Silver Fire and vivus where I was pumping triple Darts into it constantly, giving everything a common target.

  Under so much concentrated firepower, the Arm couldn’t last long, even with some of its incoming minions racing into the fusillade to take the shots themselves, which only inspired more nautiloids to float in from the sides and take that sweet +4 bonus for themselves as they laid into the incoming reinforcements without mercy.

  Two minutes of wild concentrated Whirling Blades and the base of the Arm was torn apart, blazing and on fire. The defenders all around all wailed out in horror and despair, and none of them moved, even when the bulk of it came crashing down on top of a bunch of them and pancaked them rather explosively.

  Their fate was to come here and die, so no sympathies from me.

  Vivus shooting down to sever its extradimensional connection with its death here also led me right to the ley line it was tapping, which led me to the mana-reinforcement connection feeding off the gravely weakened line.

  Having sympathy for their power-balancing needs, I calmly snipped off the connection to the ley line entirely, and removed it from their need for consideration.

  “Bring up your water for me,” I whispered, and slowly leveled Crown at the temple as I started forward.

  The psychic trembling of bloodlust around me was almost overwhelming. Flanking Deep Casters were still volleying down the constant flow of reinforcements coming down the stairs and over the walls from the top of the temple. If the newcomers were a bit shocked on seeing an Arm of T’Thuun Burning right on the doorstep of the temple, it still didn’t stop them at all.

  Green magic swirled up about me. Nominally released as acidic magic, here it just built and held as I wove it all together in Ritual format, expanding the area and power of what I was about to do, which was a basic spell that combined Water and Earth.

  Its resistance to magic gone, the stone of the Temple was extremely vulnerable to Rock to Mud.

  Crown’s Token wailed the Name of The Deep, and all that green magic turned deep indigo as I swept my hand forward.

  A wave of liquefying magic swept out in front of me, hit the stairs right in front of us, and melted it down… then kept right on going as I pushed it Straight Thataway.

  Why go up to the top of the Pyramid, fight your way inside through the corridors and defenses in tight quarters, when you could just crack the thing open and go right for the main Summoning Chambers within?

  “Remorans, hunt everything,” I Whispered, and with eerie flicks of their tails and flaps of manta-wings that matched the ululations of The Deep’s Name, a flood of them soared down the newly enslimed twenty-by-twenty foot square tunnel in a river of death.

  Sighing inside, I glided forward, and sleeches jostled one another to keep pace with me as remorans flowed past us overhead. Vivic Darts waited in readiness, and I brought up a Crown of Stars just so I would have some formidable punch ready if something did indeed happen.

  The sleeches drew back from what looked like massive motes of the Lost Light circling my head, all them Holy Kickers going at it and making them very uncomfortable, letting them know I was as alien to them as they were to me. Celestial powers and energies were something antithetical to much of their existence.

  I saw more explosions and the bright lights of War Magic going off ahead of us, croaking calls of alarms and echoing hisses of surprise assuring me that the remorans had met major resistance and excitement was forthcoming.

  The lesser sleeches around me sped up and ahead, racing to join the fighting. Unhurried, I skimmed along after them into the base of the temple.

  ============================

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