It was known that the main temple had its main chamber down at least two levels beneath it, but not so the secondary temples… and we were coming in to basically a ground-level room entered from three floors higher on the outside.
The streams of creatures coming out of the three eye-like portals had been racing for the hallways of both side passages leading up and out of here. They were blindsided a bit when the wall turned into a wave of mud and muck, and a surging wave of remorans coming through it bypassed all the nasty corridor fighting above and dove right down onto them.
One of the Portals was shut down immediately by dint of the priests keeping it open suddenly being munched on by two or three remorans each.
I paused only a moment at the entry, noting the flow of bodies from the remaining Portals was, if anything, only increasing in frantic reaction to the incoming flow of Deep Servants, stacking up the bodies for a really tight scrum.
That is, until my Twinned Spellflare hit both of them.
The explosion as the Portals were disrupted and flared into wild magic filled the place with shooting worms in every color imaginable, the smell of calculus and pressure differentials, the sound of walnuts cracking while shouting the Name of the Deep, and the colors of basket-weaving taking place in the darkness. I was pretty sure those were newspapers floating through the air there, and wheeling crystalline crystals set up a chop suey vortex on the one, while mad butterflies fluttered over the other circle of T’Thuun natives, landed, and promptly dissolved into skin-eating poison.
Well, you never knew with Spellflares. Still, the 15d6 damage cap base meant it wasn’t going to be too awful silly.
Plenty enough to totally destroy their Formation, knock them off their feet, and shut down their reinforcements, however.
The weird ululating cries of The Deep’s minions overwhelmed the gasps of horror and dismay from the moarsmen and sclavi guards, but that was to be expected.
“Sleeches, Imperil for your servants. Niffis, Pierce Vuln them. Remorans, if you can’t reach one of them, Piercing Bolt one that has been Vulned.
“The Deep is watching. Be impressive.”
There was a shudder in the very air, the manasphere bubbling and darkening to indigo, and The Deep’s servants knew I wasn’t exaggerating about that at all.
It was really basic teamwork, but the uncoordinated attacks cleaned up just like that. Aural lights flared as the Debuffs began to go off, and half-berserk remorans tore into their demoralized and weakened opponents.
Kris wasn’t in here. She was leading Tim and the others over to the second side temple, getting started on the Arm of T’Thuun in place there.
I sniped off the center of the defense, a circle of moarsmen priests surrounded by armored Sclavi, Darts and Crownshards flying out with Toppling to slam defenders off their feet, which allowed the remorans to press into the lines, split them open, and really broke up their defensive spellcasting.
Five minutes later, there were only dead defenders here, save for some incidental fighting in the hallways to the sides.
I was floating in the center of the room, so I Said simply, “Vacate the room.”
There was no questioning me. The remorans flitted off like flying fish, and the various nautiloids drove for the muck-hall out, some taking the side halls out to hunt any survivors in the upper temple. In less than a minute, the whole chamber was empty of everything but the blood, gore, and reek I was keeping at bay with my Mask.
I took care of all of them with a Pyroclasm, simultaneously putting to vivus every single corpse in here and feeding them to The Land… and incidentally setting up a nice vivic Burn here in a center of Blighted power, the whole room exploding into misting whiteness at the same time.
Unbinding the ley line connections below the place with Crown’s foot tapping the stone ground, I finished up and headed back outside, the length of the muckhall also Burning vivic.
My assault group was gathered up outside. Off to the right, the three Great Elders had engaged another Arm of T’Thuun before the main temple, while Briggs was on the opposite side of it, chewing into the opposing side of it as the Empyrean-class Whirling Blades pounded into the Arm with screaming rotations, giant saw-blades sweeping in to tear into the plantflesh of the oversized tendril.
No problems with its access point being vivisized, then…
I headed around to the left, where wings of nautiloids to the sides were blasting into the other Arm as Mowen, Kris, and Tim hacked into it as well, while throngs of Deep servants clashed in knots of meat-chewing savage combat all over the place around them.
I helped by discharging the last of my Crownshards to pop all of the main eyes of the Arm, which definitely didn’t earn me any goodwill on its part, but eh.
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We had temples to bring down fast and efficiently. I wasn’t going to be nice to this Deru-Tree-killing abomination.
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The side temples were down. Ninety percent of the island was swept, its spawn points Sealed and only a few scattered ones still coughing up Summons, all such promptly swept down on by watching nautiloids and teams of vivus-wielding land-dwellers.
The three Great Elders were assembled behind and around me. There was a stone circle radiating out from them and us, and hundreds of nautiloids were gathered around us as boiling green neo-acidic energies gathered into thick streams, forming a building maelstrom that was not so much shaking the air as making it chant, and bubble, and writhe with a Name.
The Deep, The Deep, The Deep… in a very non-human manner, of course.
The sky was supposed to be lightening up in the east, but the only lights were the frantic combat going on all over the outside of the central temple in front of us as the Deep’s servants kept T’Thuun’s fanatics away from us, and of course the ground that was basically covered in whiteness and mist from the tens of thousands of corpses Burned away and Fed to The Land.
The Sublime Chord was pulsing like the heart of the deep ocean as I brought down Crown, holding the magic up there with pure focus and Concentration, cutting light in the middle of a building indigo-green hellwater cyclone. I let the spell go, filling all the Widened and Twinning and such to the limits of the ageless monstrosities behind me to handle the mana load, and sent it out ahead of me.
The servants of The Deep moaned in the liquid rhythm of the far depths, and a Rock to Mud of legendary proportions slammed into the temple in front of us.
Ancient stones liquefied, pitching hundreds of snarling, clawing combatants down the stairs and landings as they gave way. Flows of green and indigo swarmed up the middle of the temple as the Name of The Deep beat on the stone, and it gave up under the assault of that endless infinity of emptiness.
The magic went straight through from one side of the massive temple to the other, only the very top level not touched as the magic swam through the stone and turned it to muck and silt. It poured down into the empty spaces below, the many, many halls and corridors beneath, and all of the sunken rooms and chambers in a smooth wall of destruction forty feet wide, including a convenient ramp of slime and mud leading down into that mess right in front of me.
A thousand wings beat as one as the remorans swept forward, each wing of four or so now accompanied by its own nautiloid to Imperil or Vuln for them, sparing the lives of their minions and increasing the speed of the assault at the same time. The area ahead and below erupted in Aural flares and War Magic, and this time the beat of Heartsong rode with them as Briggs and Kristie strode fearlessly into the mess down there with the assault forces, and the Deepsong came with them.
A wordless inquiry from the massive Elders behind me, and I just nodded.
“Continue pouring power into the Circle, and when I break the ley line links down below and vivify the mess of them, I will return and we will sink this entire structure down into the dark,” I replied to the alien intellect in Aklo, popping my Wings once more.
Without hesitation, I joined the streaming hordes heading down into the depths, while behind me the Ritual Circle of Nautiloids doubled in size… and, if you were watching, spread along a low wall of raised stone all the way back to the Breaching Arch, whose stone began to glow and fill an eye-watering assortment of Runes with turquoise energy, one after another as power was drawn from the surrounding ocean towards the center of the island here.
We couldn’t bury the island itself, but we could sure bury this temple!
I kept up the Deepchord, boosting the spellcasting of The Deep’s minions, penalizing the defenders, and unleashing Chained Dartrays into throngs of the T’Thuun fanatics constantly, setting them on fire and knocking them off their feet, breaking their press and opening up opportunities for remorans or moarsmen to exploit.
“The Temple falls and all its bells do shake
Darkness calls, and faithless servants quake.
The Deep Sings a Song to welcome you
Preparing your long-awaited due.
Tremble, ohhhh, you best Tremble, Tremble, Tremble…”
Yeah, if they were creeped out by The Deep’s Name echoing off every stone and surface, ringing through earth and sky and the very mana of the Land, adding in the Trembling Song really added that ole Heartsinger edge of You Are So Fucked to this shitshow.
Creeped all the land-dwellers out something gods-damned fierce, too, as the alien nature of the Entity was ferociously apparent to all of them. Shouldn’t be getting any new cultists forming out of anybody who was actually here… but of course that wouldn’t stop fools who hadn’t heard a Name like that drenched in the screams and meat of tens of thousands of faithful and enemies alike sacrificed to Its glory, and only thought of calling on it for power.
They were out there. Fools charged in where celestials knew gods-damned better than to go…
Sighing, I dismissed the thought, concentrating on starting a whole lot of vivic fires over the butchered carcasses strewn about in many pieces, with helpings of copious stinking blood and gore as proper accents to The Deep’s revenge on its old rival.
Kris was still Singing down there, both Warlords directing traffic and making this fight as brutally one-sided as it could be.
Whether or not we ever called on The Deep again, its creatures would know us, would know who we were, and the remorans in particular would know we didn’t just throw their lives away. They might not have been too smart, but they were pack hunters, and they knew teamwork and packmates in their blood and bones.
They would definitely remember pack leaders like us. If they knew no remorse or real loyalty, it didn’t matter. Cold, clear survival instincts would let them know who to follow if push came to shove, and if their masters couldn’t push their domination down on them over some land-dwellers chosen by The Deep, what did that signify?
It signified that the nautiloids probably wanted us to die, and die rather badly, all things considered.
That was why we were down here, the elders were concentrating on gathering up their magic and hopefully maybe thinking of drowning us with it, and our troops were finishing up the spawn points and starting to withdraw, just in case they got ideas about adding us as tasty extras to this grand sacrificial ceremony.
The Deep wouldn’t care at all. If we couldn’t deal with a little back-stabbing, were we really worth the effort? His favored race wanted to remain His favored race, and that was not something just a little mass war that killed a few tens of thousands of them was going to solve.
Time to present our own solution.
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