The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

I listened to the umpteenth report of undead troops hidden underwater in a bypassed lake, no doubt meant to ambush us from behind. Necrotech guns didn’t worry about jamming, since they didn’t really fire bullets, anyways.

The strategy backfired when the Deadzone moved too far, too fast, and the undead were forced out of hiding and compelled to follow after it, thereby exposing them to the patient squads nearby set up to mow them down. If they exited early, well, that just meant even more squads were close enough to do something.

No, we didn’t swim across the bloody waters under the Shroud. If it wasn’t under the Shroud, we simply stayed on Disks and someone flew or darted across the top, towing the rest. The mechanized artillery and cavalry lagged behind anyways, there to contribute firepower more than anything, and whole fleets of trucks were racing back and forth, lugging fuel and ammo for those fighting.

It was a lot of ammunition. The enemy was right in front of us, and we weren’t sitting around, after all.

I was in my downtime during the day, when matters were safest. Fifteen days in, and we were coming up on the edge of the original Shroud, meaning that we’d churned through the hundreds of millions of slain Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, and their once-buried dead, and were about to engage the Pentaran undead. I could see them in the distance, with their monstrous fliers, none of which dared to move out from under their Shroud lest the Sun get them.

There were reports from around the whole world that the Haze was getting thinner and thinner. There were no Shroudzones left anywhere save here, and that obviously meant something. All the native negative energy had been taken, converted by vivus, and eaten by the Land. Even sleeping, the world was fighting back against this smothering invasion.

Now this Shroud stood truly alone. No Shroudbound Undead, and Fiends didn’t count for keeping it here. As Soulborn, they’d just get sucked along with it to wherever it was withdrawn to.

Use it all, spend it all. It was all going boom anyways...

The ley lines trembled.

I was always subconsciously humming to the Sublime Chord. Perhaps someone else wouldn’t have noticed it, but my Meditation and Concentration were in the realm of Dat’s-Unbelievable-Wot, and I noticed the quaver as they shook instantly.

ALL of them shook. As if something had just started to pull on all of them at the same time.

-I AM OPENING THE SKY!- It wouldn’t have the power of a Ritual, but I didn’t care. It didn’t need to last that long or extend that far.

Silver Magic blew for the sky, bearing a Dispel Magic at way up the scale, blazing through the Haze’s resistance here, and the Control Weather followed right on its heels, shoving the weakening Haze out of the way.

The Shroud didn’t budge under its Greyfield, but I didn’t care about that. The view we were getting was enough.

The Shroudlord was filling the Pattern with power even under the Greyfield. Given it was powerful enough to attract Guiogg the Devouring Moon right through the Shroud, I wasn’t surprised in the least.

The night sky opened suddenly and violently, ripping open for ten miles around me, raging silver flames eating it back to the horizon. It would only last until the morning, but that was fine. It wasn’t the night sky I was looking at.

Even the undead turned their heads to look as the Haze opened up above me, and the edge of the slowly retreating clouds formed a black wall above them and us.

That churning wall of silver-chewing-at-ink didn’t block the image of the murderous moon hanging out there, twenty times the size of the other not-Luna moon that had been accompanying our world since whenever we got here in the distance.

It was black. It was veined with lines of burning yellow-green and diseased purple, forming a huge parody of an inhuman face radiating gluttony and endless hunger, all centered around a terrifying round maw glowing with a terrifying furnace light, as if it was going to inhale and devour everything before it.

Fear hammered down on everyone at the sight. Men clenched up, barely up to think, let alone act, at the horrible sight. An entire world was coming down on them!

-FINALLY GODDAMMIT.-

And just like that, the fear popped on the edge of a Silver Magic knife, burning away the fear with something even more deadly.

Expectation. Lethal, waiting expectation.

-Briggs, sell it!-

-Fuck, yes,- he /muttered back, looking at that thing through my eyes, juxtaposing it to his position, his view playing over the distances and ground before him of old maps and new. -Coordinates being assigned! One! Two! Three!...-

Sama /broke in on the Overtell smoothly, -All forces forwards! Unload everything, spare nothing! Converge on the central push! Healers right on the edge of the Shroud! Give me a countdown!-

I calculated size, vector, speed, and flicked up a clock in the Overtell and the Heavens-Up Display.

Three hours.

-WORLDWIDE ALERT! SHROUD COLLAPSE WITHIN FOUR HOURS! FOLLOW THE SHROUDFALL PROTOCOLS!-

The news echoed across the world in seconds, was picked up by news stations, and relayed out fast to those not Marked or in Allegiance.

Tactics were spinning out as squads grouped up, and sniping became a very fearsome push, indeed. Casters set aside their spells, picked up their own Weapons, be they Bows or Staves, and moved forward to join the fighting with the Melees.

They might not be able to one-hit these undead, but they could still contribute and weaken them, at least!

-------

Well behind the lines, coordinates were received, and input into launchers. Portable silos rose fractionally here and there, Runes glowed with Axiom, Divination magic, and vivus.

Missile One took off, coordinates locked in. Scant seconds and a hundred miles clockwise, Missile Two launched in a roar of fire.

Smoothly, from all directions, the last two dozen nuclear payloads on the planet went into the sky on some of the last Shrike cruise missiles in existence.

---

I tracked the missiles by ground and air spotters using Eagle Eyes, subtly pulling our air cover out of their flight paths. Those flyboys were all receiving new orders to dump their loads, and if meant they were flying too low for comfort, well, that was why they were here.

None of them did anything but obey. Hundreds of air-to-ground missiles and thousands of tons of bombs were unleashed in the next three minutes, and our air cover engaged in murderous strafing of targets until they were completely out of ammunition.

Maybe they’d get reloaded and refueled in time to make another run, maybe not. The key was unloading and getting out of range of what was about to happen, as terrain-following cruise missiles moving faster than sound below the Shroud converged on their targets with eerie synchronicity, not something the now-shattered air defenses, and definitely not the ground forces, could deal with.

-One minute to detonations! Avert your damn eyes!- Briggs /ordered into the Overtell, and across the hundreds of miles of fighting, the sudden push became an abrupt retreat to create distance as the second clock ticked down, and those multiple lines of flight converged together.

The atomic bombs were plenty strong, and the Shroudlord’s main forces were drawn up in the advance path before us as we were converging on him. There was no doubt that this was going to be a big hit, but even if it wasn’t, it was definitely going to sell the fact that we were desperate to stop him.

In a long line of atomic blasts whose flames didn’t overlap, but whose shockwaves certainly did, the missiles detonated.

A blast zone a hundred miles long, aiming right at the heart of the Shroudzone, lit up as the sun came down to this Shrouded Earth, and even the Shroud couldn’t tolerate that level of blasting, scattering away from the power of atoms splitting.

I had Devasight, so I could watch them all go off without any fear. I was mostly looking at the moon.

Did I detect a moment of surprise in the molten seas which seemed to be eyes? Who knew? The thing was three hundred miles across, and that maw was fifty miles wide all by itself. The bombs were a nice display, but all such things would have done to the Devouring Moon is rearrange some stones, like trying to beat a human by throwing lit matches at them.

Even as the Shroud reeled back from the blast zones and the startlingly white mushroom clouds rising over them, seething with vivic energy that was eating the radiation damage and all the negative energy in the area, Guiogg continued to descend, unperturbed. It didn’t eat negative energy, so the vivic fire was like cleaning up a messy meal.

But those blasts tore open a line of access towards the center of the Shroudcloud, where the Formation still glowed, and collapsed the Shroud back by dozens of miles instantly as tens of millions of undead were vaporized.

It was a clear WHITE road, too.

-UP! UP! PUSH ALONG THE BLAST LANE!-

Everyone who could Translocated with all speed towards the center. We were all way outside the newly receded Dead Zone now, and the undead were all turning from being shaken off their feet, or maybe blasted off them by the winds, and heading back towards the Shroud, compelled to return to the control of their master.

Those of us who couldn’t Translocate or come along busied themselves butchering these things as fast as they could, which would in turn shrink the Shroud even more and force the rest to run even farther.

I Teleported to the Seal Focus Briggs had tossed onto the ground, along with thirty Traveling Knights who could not do so, and blew into the sky instantly, dragging them behind me. Other Teleporters came zipping in, Disks unfolding or materializing almost as they did, bringing their allies with them.

Disks linked up into Formation with all speed, men and women hunkered down as Legion blew up from out of the ground with their Wings out, ready to lead the way, Shvaughn Pactjumping through a heartbeat later and zipping onto a seat behind me on my Disk shamelessly.

Thousands of people joined the wedge of Disks above the ground in under two minutes. Disks anchored to Disks, Stormbound started bending the wind as Ward Walls went up all around us. I simply reached out, and nine long tails grabbed onto me and my arms more firmly than steel.

They might have interwoven with Shvaughn as Windwise, too, but I didn’t look back to check, promise.

Runes pulsed on Wings, and we started moving forward.