Sixteen could have been a long level, but I wasn’t planning on it. Seventeen and IX’s were calling me, and I’d take the higher costs of going Wide once I got there, unless I received a truly ridiculous amount of Karma really fast somehow.
Kris and I couldn’t have been responsible for what happened here, of course. She was known to be out at the Withered Beach overseeing a new crew of fresh Knights of the Lost Light testing their Swords out on the Withered lugian and banderling spawns there, which was actually a Simulacrum who was perfectly good at that particular task. The students had been carefully told not to get into a situation where she should have to fight… mostly because the Sim couldn’t draw Quaver.
Likewise, it couldn’t have been me, because I was with the many Clerics putting the new White Staff through its paces in Mayoi.
Staves could be recharged by anyone, you didn’t have to be able to Cast the most powerful spells they could throw out to do so. Furthermore, it could totally be quick if you made the Staff easy to recharge that way.
White Staves of Amana in their basic forms were common Healing items in the Power of Ten Game for Priests, able to dispense a wide variety of Healing spells for emergencies that might exceed the limits of those bearing them. Lesser Staves might only have Valences up to III, which took care of diseases, most combat conditions like stunning or bleeding or dazed, ability damage, and injuries via Cures up to Cure Serious Wounds.
But nothing said a Staff going all the way up to VII’s wasn’t possible. It just took multiple charges to get off a Resurrection, and it cost money.
A LOT of money. Like, 50 times the cost of the Resurrection spell’s onerous 20k goldweight requirement, optimally paid in Life Diamonds, plus a minimum of CL 13 x Valence VII x a goldweight, for another nearly 50k in goldweight.
That also meant it had taken a LONG time to make the bloody thing, but that was fine. I’d started it a long time ago, and the Clerics and Healers had traded daily infusion time, while the Cursed Dead and those who had once been Cursed Dead were constantly out hunting the stronger Elementals and Golums of all kinds for the occasional diamond drops which had to be Energized to Life and used as part of the enchantment process.
Briggs and Kris had helped by making the damn thing out of pure mithral and forging it up to CL 40 with Legendary Crafting, able to do thousands of gold of work on the thing in a day and really cut down the time for all that Infusing.
But The Staff of the Mother had finally come online for use, and the day we went after all those hidey-holes, I’d been seen to do my six Resurrections, and then the Clerics had brought out The Staff of the Mother and proceeded to start doing more… one per hour, around the clock.
It was only possible with my Simulacrum being there, singing the Sublime Chord for a nice +8 to the Caster Level of the Staff raising the Caster Level high enough to reach all the way back to the Fall.
One Resurrection, recharge for the rest of the hour, rinse and repeat. Seven charges for the Resurrection, sacrificed actual Valences of magic to recharge the Staff, do it again.
I was obviously there helping the dozen Priests proud to return the Cursed Dead to life, so I couldn’t be out there devouring the contents of an ancient library and then Burning it all to less than dust, now, could I? Of course not. The use of The Staff of the Mother was a major event that everyone knew of, and who else could Sing the Sublime Chord out like I could?
Letting them know that Simulacra were a possibility was not something that I was going to do anytime soon.
But the Book of Eibhil was gone. There was something I had needed to do.
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Setting up the whole Pyramid was a little annoying, but it didn’t have to be that big. A ten-stepper was 385 blocks, and I wasn’t going for radius of effect, but intensity of effect.
I could totally break Rytheran’s Caster Level, but the Curse he’d made was Legendary-Class, wrought from and with the aid of the Book of Eibhil and the direct touch of N’cthail’s power. Breaking it would require something more.
It would require Feeding it to the Land.
We made no real secret of what we were doing, as every Paramount Classer from before the Fall, as well as every 200+ in the current times, was invited to help out.
The only ones who couldn’t help directly were the Cursed Dead, and even a lot of them stood vigil outside the area as we went to the Graveyard to end it.
We didn’t shut down the Spawn Points. Those were the fuel for what we needed to do. Even copious amounts of vivus weren’t going to stop the Curse from working. At dawn at the very latest, any vivic Seals on the Points would disappear and the Cursed Dead would be drawn back here to be reborn as mindlessly savage slaves to the Curse, their deaths ten thousand years ago at the hands of Rytheran continuing in tormented undeath once again.
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They were lured to the center of the graveyard in their waves, and they were killed with vivus, not that it was going to save any of them directly.
But vivus did the job of purifying the stone I pulled up out of the ground, and the Pyramid I was putting up.
A Pyramid to Hallow this place, and every Cursed Soul within it.
Runners swept the place continually, dragging the Skeletal and Ghostly Summons that were appearing ever more quickly as the Pyramid rose. The Curse, a thing backed by the power of an Old One, was semi-sentient and could feel the threat to itself. It replied with ever more Wisps, then the enslaved souls of the Undead legion of Rytheran that had prosecuted this great Curse on the House of Mhoire.
The endless Rats that inhabited the tunnels beneath this place were products of the foul magicks here as well, and I brought up an Earth Monolith to close every single den and tunnel under the place, crushing the Rats within them as needed. Soon enough swarms of impossibly tough Rats were erupting out of tombs and burrows and making sure that nobody was bored waiting for anything. Bound to the Graveyard, the Rats couldn’t run any more than the Summons and Cursed Dead here could, and as their lairs and tunnels emptied out, the malevolent little buggers died, too.
When the massive boar-sized leaders, the Deathtails, of the various burrows came to the surface one by one, they were double-tapped and Lightningphasing Weapons were there to hack the boss Rats down, despite their rodentine fury and half-phantasmal bodies reeking with necroic energies.
The respawns began to occur ever more quickly as the Pyramid rose, white stone gleaming with Runes of pyreal Burning with Holy purpose and energies, gleaming with The Light and each with its own hymn rising into a gentle choral melody. The air was filled with purpose and a Hope that this place had not held for thousands of years.
As the undead, corporeal and incorporeal alike, approached the Pyramid, they began to Burn, the Curse no longer enough to allow them ignore The Light of life, or the siren call of the hereafter they had earned.
Yet still they came, Burning as they ran to their dooms against the warriors and Casters waiting for them with Vivic Weapons. They were Fed to the Land, and they gave me pure stone to work with I could haul up out of this long-Cursed ground.
Three hundred and eighty-five stones, about six and a half hours of work.
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The ziggurat Pyramid was definitely not Empyrean design, as Empyreans liked their straight angles and merged lines. The stepped version was not found among them, and honestly, Ryin had said, was not as purely good as an actual integrated and perfectly angled Pyramid.
It was a WHOLE lot easier to modify and integrate odd stuff into, however. Pure five-sided Pyramids had to be precisely that to take advantage of perfect geometry, otherwise they weren’t any better than a stepped ziggurat.
The Summons were coming in waves only a minute apart, slamming into the layered shield wall around the Pyramid rising up behind them. Curiously enough, no attempts were made to shoot at the pure white stone of the Pyramid itself, the scattered spells that had done so having been absorbed and seemingly just empowering the stone more.
Kristie Rantha, Princess and Knight-Commander of the Lost Light, was ripping her way through the Cursed Dead, both the afflicted Mhoire Skeletons and Rytheran’s own trapped pawns, also betrayed and abandoned by their master. The fact they were ablaze with vivus and Holy energies helped some, but these were tough undead and it actually took several minutes for the softly glowing Silver Flames to Burn one of them down. The Flames did seem to make them even more vulnerable to Fire attacks, so Firephasing Weapons were reaping basically everything here quickly enough, keeping them from reaching the Pyramid.
She noted that Briggs had the whole defense clearly in hand (as expected), rotating out the members of the shield wall regularly, and even resting the Archers on their Disks in rotations to prevent fatigue. Any mages not in direct Healing and Revitalization mode were in Aurora Stances and group meditations to get their Mana back as fast as possible, a necessity with the sheer number of Curse-driven creatures assaulting the lines.
It was still daylight, but the gathering energies of the Curse trying to fend off the Hallowing were trying to darken the skies, being beaten back by The Light. The Lost Light of a hundred Weapons were blazing in tune to the Sublime Chorus, and Kris had been Singing with it for hours, too, although not always the Trembling Song.
Hey, Rantha endurance applied to vocal chords, too. Her sisters could gab for hours and hours…
But now, the final block was forming.
Everyone could feel it, a pricking on the skin as something awesome and powerful was coming together. An edifice of stone that would have taken muscle and tools days, weeks, even months to assemble was nearly completed, and when it did…
This damn Curse would scream!
“TREMBLE.”
The word hung in the air, the Truth, Hope, and Valor of the Sublime Chord echoing about it. No fear for her fellow warriors, only growing awe and wonder.
“A new day, and a new night.
A final end to a meaningless fight.
Today we crack the Doom, we rend and break the Loom,
Of Fate’s most wretched sights.
Tremble, ye Souls now bound.”
The incoming undead, programmed and forced to fight, compelled by an ageless and uncaring hand, slowed and quivered as they came to a halt, for that stone was rising, and something was building in the air, and in their souls.
“Tremble, for Hope you’ve found.
“Tremble, for Truth be now in sight,
“Peace once denied, the end of your fight.
“Tremble, warriors, for She Comes to welcome you home.”
Serene and radiating a gleaming, soft Silver Light, the ten-foot block of Rune-worked stone slid into place atop the Pyramid.
Something broke in the air. The sensation of some awful, horrid twisting of Fate and Destiny shattering sent everyone wobbling at the feeling of something essential, something central to all of existence being perverted… and now shattered.
The surrounding undead sank to the ground. Burning limbs rose up in supplication to the building softness of that Light that reached out for them with gentle hands, and took them up and beyond that perversion’s reach.
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