BECMI Chapter 110 – The Collapse of the Khirifi

They knew I was coming now, and they knew what I looked like.

Despite the fact I was moving faster than most of their mortal messengers, and I was basically extinguishing them wherever I found them, turning their own tactics back upon them and reaping them as they had reaped, some people still saw me and lived, magic could convey messages, and hard-riding messengers on chains of horses could cover a lot of ground very quickly Pony Express style.

I knew it was going to happen, and it did not bother me, mostly because the main thing it spread was fear.

They didn’t have the magical power to stop me as a people. Their highest-Level Caster was barely an Archpriest, and didn’t have access to either or , as she wasn’t powerful enough.

That meant any meaningful aid was going to be coming from outside.

That meant their patron Immortal, Gulguz the twat, or someone from the Iberon Empire being roused to come and put the smackdown on me for flexing too much.

There were some powerful Wizards in the Iberon Empire, that was a long-established fact. However, they were also famously aloof and uncaring of the demands and desires of the nobles who ruled it. Becoming a powerful Wizard meant becoming independent of such secular forces, and it was the nobles who would skip to THEIR beat and wills, not the other way around.

Thus, the nobles of the Iberon Empire gladly left the Wizards alone, and the Wizards for their part stayed out of the murderous games between the Great Families… unless the price was right.

I asked the Ketcher if any of the Council’s Wizards could name some positive role models among the senior Wizards of the Empire, or even Casters in general, including Clerics of the Iberon Church outside the North.

The simple fact he couldn’t name any off the top of his head was telling. When his later reply found its way to me with only the most hesitant of names on it, it was rather daunting.

Good and Heaven really did not have a grip on anything here. These uncaring Spheres of influence of the Immortals, and their own undercutting of them with Pantheons that acted as much like guilds and clans as mortals did, just really, really stuck a flaming fork into anything heroic and turned it into glorification of self and desires, and violence among mortals to put on a good show.

So, it wasn’t that they weren’t expecting retribution. They just weren’t expecting someone who would be so committed to it, and powerful enough to deliver on it.

and alone made me basically invulnerable to their ranged attacks, and the way I could their Summoned monsters, or steal control of them and send them back against their Summoners, was deeply upsetting to them.

So was the way one Rune could take down Khirifi walls and fortifications in a rolling sphere of rocky death and wipe them from the land as if they didn’t exist, leaving the people open and exposed, without cover or shelter, which was a very bad place to be with me.

Naturally they tried to strike at Duum, but Duum shared all the spells on me that I had while I was riding him, and I was quite happy to Buff him up to take on the best things they could bring in, which among other things amounted to a few hippogriffs, griffons, and even two dragons, a white and a green, at different times.

Their archers killed themselves in droves frantically shooting at me, impaled on their own returned arrows. Magic hissed and fizzled against my , so unfair, so broken, so effective. of flashed through their numbers, drilled through them, and introduced them to the effect of Holy Banefire doing a lot of vengeful work against them.

I wiped out their entire eastern front, and I followed them west, back, back, and back toward their homelands. I chased them across the plains roved by the Korshwa, who cheered to see me pass by, and very pointedly did not get in my way. I made no efforts to meet or greet them, Brown and Gray as they were, and they were perfectly fine with that as long as I did not exterminate them like I was the Khirifi.

“You look like the face I was shown of one Egranzier the Manifold, a master Conjurer.”

The tall, saturnine man with the long, finely-combed beard and deep-set eyes in an arrogant face stiffened as the long curved form of adamantine Blade silently trimmed off the length of his beard effortlessly as it curved under his throat. Energy hummed very, very dangerously, and the fellow froze in place.

“But you’re just a Simulacrum with some suicide spells woven about him. Clever,” I noted, as the stole over him and wrenched apart some spells which weren’t supposed to be taken apart.

Caster Level 32, I noted professionally, as the stolen energy revitalized a couple of my own Slots which I had expended today.

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“That… is indeed the name of my creator,” the haughty voice of the Sim spoke, his hands raised, moving very carefully indeed. His turn ran into edge, and skin that was actually motile ice sliced open warningly as I didn’t let him turn.

“Oh, through you, most apt, and internal, so hard to Dispel. Not linked to your ears, however, so he’s just wondering why you aren’t moving right now. Let’s leave him a little mystery, shall we?”

This time, the followed the as it went off.

The electrical blast blew the icy Construct apart into superheated steam instantly, and the seized upon the internal Divination magicks and followed them back to their source. I was pretty sure I heard the echo of a scream carried on far-seeing winds as the magical connection blew up in the far, far distance inside the head of a High Archmage, to his immense shock and displeasure, I was certain.

It also gave me the wherewithal to track that connection and learn exactly where on the landscape it came from.

I didn’t receive an image to visualize, Scrywards obviously up to foil such information-gathering, but I did receive both a vector and exact distance, and I had a very good map of the world from hundreds of miles in the sky to apply it against.

One of the things I did with was ask about powerful magic being used on or by it. The Land really liked the vivic meals I was feeding it, and the deaths of the Demons had put it firmly on my side as far as such things went.

That was how I knew that no less than five Immortals had arrived to investigate the deaths of the Demons, although only four of them had gathered together. They’d attempted to read the land, the energy background, look through time, question the souls of the dead, as well as ask the winds about what had gone on here, and naturally had come up quite empty on all vectors. Not having any bodies to question the souls of had been quite annoying to the fifth Immortal, who was cloaked and concealed in enough magic that the Land didn’t rebel at His touch, but was merely disdainful of Him.

A true Entropic Immortal, sniffing around for something to vent His displeasure on. One known by the Land for a very, very long time, although naturally it had no concept of something as mortal as a name to use.

It was a name tied to the death of whole nations, clans, tribes, species, and His Name went back a very, very long ways...

Upcasting the allowed it to sense things that weren’t precisely with the natural world, but involved the magical and spiritual aspects of nature, too, something Druids usually overlooked because they were all tied up with the Green and the Elements and needed to broaden their view of the world.

Someone in with powerful magic and leaving a focus behind near one of the Khirifi forts on my path of advance was something the higher eyes of the Land had seen. I had thus been able to find said Teleport Focus after the maker had departed, and gain a lock and read on his magic.

When said magic was used again after I initiated my assault on the fort, an Rune was able to delay the incoming for thirty-six seconds, which gave me plenty of time to eradicate the defenders under ripples of collapsing earth-waves. A massive swallowed their entire main fort as the blew out past it and wiped out the Khirifi refugees encamped around the place as they were fleeing west.

By the time this Simulacrum had materialized, I had basically been standing right behind it.

Now I had a very good read on the magic, face, and nature of the Caster behind it, and he, in turn, now knew that getting himself messed up in my business was going to be a painful and not-so-simple affair.

He probably hadn’t realized I knew where he was and could go there at any time, and maybe he was smart enough to realize the feedback was the equivalent of me pinching his nose and warning him to stay away from me.

I doubted it, however. Given the nature of his business, he was arrogant enough to be lured into coming after me, and confident in his own power and supremacy over a mere elven spellcaster. He probably thought his booby-trapped Simulacrum was a clever trick, but, really? Upgrading a Sim so that it would take out whatever killed it was, like, one of the first things you did if you made such a valuable and useful Construct. My own Sims had the ability to detonate their spells like the of a Staff of Power or similarly powerful item, fed by their own Valences.

He probably thought he was being original, and really it was just what was expected at this level of ability.

Fort Semsaz was now gone. There were patrols in the vicinity who’d seen the fires of the from some distance and were now riding pell-mell away as far and fast as they could… but as they’d pulled back west, the Korshwa had been jubilantly following them, and would be hunting them across the plains and hills with vengeful enthusiasm.

Most of them weren’t going to make it to the next stop on this long road. The reaping of the Khirifi was coming, blood taken now blood being shed, and the souls of countless thousands of sacrificed slaves were pulling me on, an abominable act the Khirifi were still performing as their flight grew more desperate.

More to the point, word should be spreading to those they’d conquered, and they knew I was coming. If they were going to revolt, now would be the time. If they didn’t revolt, they might well just be massacred to ensure that they couldn’t revolt and seek retribution, so they might well have absolutely no choice but to do so. At least if they fought they might delay the Khirifi enough that some of them might live.

I could only do what I was doing. Driving them forth was causing massive instability, unrest, and panic among them, with the Khirifi thinking more about fleeing and preserving their lives than slaughtering more of those whose lands and lives they’d taken by brutal force.

They weren’t scattering over the map and in every direction, which would have been the smart thing to do and made it not worth my time to track them down by myself. No, they were pulling back west and hoping their god would protect them.

Gulguz very well might, because they sure weren’t defending themselves very well, especially given how confidently and freely they’d been acting. They were damn lucky they had never attacked the Empire of Iberon directly and gotten one of the mages there involved...