The Power of Ten

It had been a long month for me, and March wasn’t looking any shorter. We were up on the Tibetan Plateau now.

Well, it had been the Tibetan Plateau. What it was now was another one of those belly-groaner things.

The winds carrying distant whispers and screams, sibilant promises, and crazed laughter. The air saturated with psychic pain and fear. Mists gathering out of nowhere and dissipating. Even the Haze was thickening and thinning irregularly, as if subject to some outside force testing it, and my Detect Dimensions started getting very active when we arrived up here.

“Brother Shadowknife, Brother Firesword, you take me to the most interesting places,” I told them deadpan. The two Void Brothers didn’t even blink as they looked out over the misting landscape in front of me.

“Can you deal with it?” the Firesword asked, glancing at me, not knowing what to expect.

“The answer is yes, but.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Yes, but it would take me a very long time. This area is freaking immense. Setting up and sealing the spatial tremors going on here will not be a short thing. I’d have to make Obelisks ringing the thing, Interdict massive areas, lock them with more Obelisks in a great Formation...” Their eyes were on the Holo that was displaying my words, rings and rings and rings of it going on.

The two of them turned their eyes back to the ripples writhing through the Haze, while I studied it with Detect Magic and Detect Dimensions at VII. I probably wasn’t any more accurate than them at the task... except I was doing it over a massive area, and they were doing it over just their immediate area.

“This is a job for the Forsaken,” I nodded, crossing my arms. That seemed to startle them.

“What do you mean?” the diminutive Shadowknife asked. “This entire effect is far beyond what our Voids can deal with, let alone a Sun or Null.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t say Voids, I said Forsaken. Sources, Nulls, and Voids. You see those ripples in the Haze?” They both looked and nodded. “The Haze is actually not responding at all. That’s dimensional movement, writhing fluctuations in the Veil, and the Haze is just ignoring it.”

They both digested that. “Something very powerful, used to messing with dimensions, is trapped under the Haze,” the hyn said softly.

“Take it to the next step,” I agreed, forming a line in the Holo and moving to the next point on it.

“It can’t leave. Leave HERE,” the Firesword spoke up narrowly. “With this level of dimensional power, it could literally go anywhere on the planet, at any time. Instead, it’s just staying here.” He tapped his foot, frowning.

“Very good. For instance, either of the Poles, but especially the South Pole, would be much better places to pull this kind of shit off at, and they would have a much better chance of doing something, especially if it worked with the other Old Gods trapped in Hyperborea.”

“But it can’t get to them to do that. So, it is feeling out its prison, trying to get free of it... using the means and methods it knows. But the Shroud is... hampering it?” the Shadowknife asked, focused now, his small hands moving up and down as if feeling the Veil.

“The power here is on a Thirty to Thirty-Two. This is something very experienced at mass dimensional movement on a truly massive scale. Furthermore, if it is bound in place, it must mean there is a Shroudzone, and it is a master of undeath and/or negative energy. You don’t have the experience of Brothers in other worlds testing dimensions, or you would instantly identify the signature of the energy here.”

The Firesword grimaced fiercely. “Do we wish to hear this?” he had to ask.

“Probably not.” I pointed ahead. “At the center of this effect is an Avatar of the King in Yellow, perhaps Summoned in by some distraught monks. Fortunately, he is Bound to the Shroud, or he would have swallowed the entire world into his realm in Leng, and the entire planet would have become offerings to the Elder Gods.”

Both of them sucked in their breaths. Naturally they had perused all the resources The Jet and Silver could gather for levels of information, but putting the two together wasn’t the same as reading about the things.

“The Void guides the way, tearing apart this warping of the Veil and making a Path. The Null wedges it open, and the Source burns it into place. Assemble an army of the Forsaken, guide it to the heart of this place, and slay the Avatar of the King in Yellow!”

Both of them sucked in breaths. “Why not Powered?” Brother Firesword asked, just testing things out.

“The constant pressure will drive them mad before they get there. The King in Yellow is not a physical combatant; he assaults sanity and the dimensions. His Avatar is meant to open the way and eat a world, not exchange blows with those seeking to kill him. The constant pressure means that Powered will, eventually, break.

“But Forsaken,” I had to smile, “constant pressure just makes their anti-magical nature attune to it, get used to it, and ward it away. The longer they are in there, the less and less effect it will have on them, to the point where they’ll stop hearing all this psychic garbage entirely.” I glanced at the two of them. “Your Voids will just start automatically filtering it out. You’ll be aware of it, but unless you pay attention to it for some reason, it’ll be like ignoring a passing breeze.

“I suggest getting a bunch of Forsaken to Ten, camping here at the edge of the effect for at least ten days, and then guiding them in and taking the fight to the bastards.”

“Would a simple assassination work better?” the hyn asked quietly.

“Sure, but I don’t think you’re good enough yet,” I said directly. “He’s a Thirty with semi-Divine awareness. Your Void is good, but not that good. Do what you need to reinforce your Void, acclimate yourselves to the magic, punch a hole through the muck, and start butchering everything.

“The Avatar can likely draw stuff from Leng, and people did used to live here in Tibet, didn’t they?”

Their mouths opened, then closed at what I was intimating. “And many, many people were buried here...” the Firesword murmured.

“I would not be surprised if those who died were transformed into Leng Ghouls or Ghasts, and all those honored bones are now moving about. You will need an army, and one really good at fighting the undead... and possibly other denizens of Leng. The only other place you might be able to find this kind of experience is going down into the Felldeep.”

Both of them made faces. The simple fact that there WAS a Felldeep now was bad enough. Physics said it was impossible. Magic didn’t care. The shit that lived down there was not something to stir up easily... but in the end, it was going to have to die.

“Or, you know, driving a road in there, striking and fading, collecting Aberrant Banes and knowledge and Karma...”

Shadowknife blinked, and looked at me slyly. “This... is going to be THE Karmic Playground for Forsaken Tens, isn’t it?” he asked me, thinking about that.

“Why don’t you send the particulars of what we just talked about to Sama and Briggs?”

They both blinked, got curiously apprehensive looks on their faces, and proceeded to do just that.

Both of them jumped at the same time. I heard some spillover of glee, elation, and excitement from them both.

Heavy Karmic-gain territories were ALWAYS welcome! Every gamer knew that, and especially the ones for higher-Level people!

“They are already contacting our Brothers on other continents. The undead are something anyone can solve, especially the Powered. But this one is for us, and for us alone, it seems...” the Firesword said softly.

“One second.” Briggs and Sama plugged into me and my Visuals, studied it all, we bandied stuff back and forth, and came to a consensus. “Okay, I’m going to go get both of them. If you two lead them in, you can blaze a trail to where you all need to go. When the Cultivator threat is finally dealt with, you can leave the Shroudzones to Powered and Primos, and the Forsaken are going to be sent here.”

“You do not wish to enter here?” the Firesword smiled archly.

“I would be fine as long as I stayed conscious. But I’ve far too many people linked to me by various ways, and that psychic muck would prey on those connections. There’s no way I would risk it.” I conceded my vulnerability with a flamboyant bow, and they grinned despite themselves. “I shall have to ask others to save the world in my stead. Alas, it seems I cannot do everything. It’s like the world made a whole bunch of people who could take care of themselves, and didn’t need me to do all the work.”

Their eyes flashed with normally-concealed pride. “You do seem to be able to take on a simply incredible workload,” Brother Fireshadow admitted grudgingly, his lean figure finally seeming to lose some hidden tension.

“I’m getting some half-wanted help from the Shroud,” I admitted with a sigh. “The souls in there don’t want to be Damned there forever, either.”

“That would be a big source of information, given all that they’ve seen,” Brother Shadowknife agreed, looking up at the Haze and stroking his thin mustache. “Will they be freed if the Shroud goes down?”

“I don’t know. Neither do they.”

The two Brothers glanced at one another. “I sense a deeper tale,” Brother Firesword encouraged me grimly.

I had to sigh. “There are multiple scenarios. The first is that we break the Shroud here, and all the souls in this section of the Shroud go free. I think that unlikely at best, as there is an element of the Shroud that anchors it from dead world to dead world.

“Second scenario, the Shroud here dies, and souls native to this world go free. I think that is possible... but unlikely.” They blinked at me in unison. “The Shroud is greedy and doesn’t want to give up its souls. That would be like saying if the Earth is destroyed, is that section of Hell that receives souls from the Earth going to give up its souls?”

Both of them considered that. “I am not Brother Bonescythe, but that seems extremely unlikely,” Brother Shadowknife conceded. “And you stated that this Shroud is multi-planetary in power and scope.”

“Granted, if it IS true, then freeing each world, world by world, will free those dead from the Shroud, and so weaken it overall. I simply don’t think such a fundamental weakness exists in the Shroud.” I looked up at the Haze, and all the silent impressions gazing back at me grimly. “What I believe will happen is that destroying the Shroud here simply destroys the Shroud here. Nothing more, nothing less. To free the Souls trapped in the Shroud we will have to break every Dead March coming out from a Tombworld, and clear all those Tombworlds, one by one.

“Until that happens, those souls are Damned and Bound into the Shroud, forever powering it and keeping it invisible to the gods.” I smiled thinly. “I think I even know the effect it is piggybacking on: The Divine Veil that exists between Pantheons. In the same way that gods can’t look into the Pantheonic territory of one another, they can’t look into the Shroud. The Shroud amplifies that, leeching on all strength of all the Pantheons to wipe knowledge of it from all of them, therefore staying permanently outside their vision and ability to respond... just like another Divine Realm.”

“And it is all Powered by the souls in the Shroud?” Brother Firesword hazarded with a nod. “Therefore, to grow stronger, they would want to invade worlds with many, many souls...”

“Or extremely powerful beings of similar weight overall, yes,” I agreed with him.

They were silent for a moment. “What... what would it take to do that?” Brother Firesword asked, his dark eyes intense. “Without Divine help... the scale...”

“We would have to build and spread like the Shroud and the Cancer of Death it represents itself. One crusading army re-takes a world, worlds, recruits more people, grows into two, then four, then eight and more...” I could only shrug. “I do not know how long it will take. We can only trust in the belief that in the end, death stagnates, and life ever grows.

“But, that is a concern for after the Shroud is gone. Senior Void Brothers are usually bound to the world of their birth, but if we find more of your unawakened Junior Brothers, they may be able to go off-world to join such a fight, while you safeguard this world.”

I looked down across the wind-scoured, Leng-skewered, mist-strewn maze leading across the Tibetan Plateau, and just sighed.

So much work to be done...