BECMI Chapter 100 – Beckoned by Fire

Hey everyone, the Author here. It's been a hundred chapters of the new storyline, and I hope you're enjoying Edge and her very different way of taking care of problems than the other Shards. As always, at a hundred chapters I make my normal request. BECMI has been doing better than any of my stories except #3, getting all the way to 40 (page Two) before being kicked back. With a rating of 4.89, new Ratings that are not 5-Stars are a downvote to the story. So, if you can find the time to put in a Rating now, as a way to help an author out, or really help out with a Review saying why you like the story, that would be great for the equivalent of three new paperbacks coming your way, at 2000 words a day. One of these days I'd like to see another story in the top Ten, and really get some support, but that's a ways off, I think, unless I get a lot of help... Back to our story and time for some divine wrath in skulls and roses... ============= Behind my trail of death and corpses turned to ash, the slaves were naturally quick to rise in rebellion after seeing me reap their guards. If I had killed a few Black-hearted trusties or spies among them, well, ‘accidents happened’ in their minds. I had no doubts they would indeed be hurrying, although it was a lot of chains that needed to be unlocked. Still, the energetic were already looting and making their way out of there. There was one patrol encountered on the way, twenty horsemen riding to check on the upgrading of the road, and they all died without knowing who attacked them, the blowing through all of them in one fell swoop and pitching them from their horses. I whipped up a to put their belongings on, anchored it to the lead horse, and told them to continue on down the road until they found some humans to take care of them. ------ There was a problem when I reached the crossroads. The Khirifi, happy to work their new labor to the bone, had started new roads running north and south, probably to use against the insurrection rising in their own conquered lands. I couldn’t take the time right now to purge the length of the roads to the north and the south… but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take the time to block the shit out of them. One and two later, and the crossroads and everything around it were completely impassable, broken up and impossible to get past from any direction. The gleeful Elemental happily tore the crap out of the place, turning the area around what was now a vast mudpit into cracked, broken, and rocky ground no horse could cross without breaking its legs. If they wanted to go east, they’d have to pull back for miles, then go cross-country over rough ground before looping back to the road, at which point they’d be miles behind schedule. They were more likely just to turn around and go back, waiting for new orders, as critical thinking was a trait much frowned upon versus obedience in a tyranny. ------ as before thanks to , I swooped in around the sacrificial site of Mon Burromos, surveying the area before I hit it. The slave camp outside the semi-dormant volcano was very, very obvious, as was the wretched state of the scores of malnourished largely-Elber men and women inside it. One whole section of the camp lay jarringly empty, and the great doors to enter the deeper keep looked more like the hungry jaws of death than a fortification. Unlike all the other locations, the slaves were indeed outnumbered by the garrison here, which was patrolling around the mountain constantly on both foot and a-horse from two camps that flanked the dormant volcano proper. Hundreds of troops augmented with crimson-cowled priestesses and braided silk-wearing elite warriors roved the area and manned the walls of the keep and slave pens, keeping the slaves under thorough control, crossbows ready to shoot down any who attempted escape. The air was shuddering with a combination of fire and death mana, never a Good combination. I was definitely ready to kill everything Khirifi that was here, all these troops being fanatic Purple or Red, with the Priestesses and elite soldiers solid Ruby. The world would definitely be a better place without them. Happily, they still kept their patrols to roughly twenty troops or less in size, with a priestess and an elite soldier as the officer riding along with them. My could reach twenty-five targets without an issue, and with the Metamagic, jump sixty feet between those targets. The (that looked like screaming black skulls with roses in the sockets) did a base 1-6 damage, which increased to 3-18 for the first die of a spell to hit something. That wasn’t really enough damage to kill anything. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The Kickers, particularly the +5d6 Holy damage from and , to do maximum damage to non-Good, were totally capable of wiping out the lesser soldiers. Adding on the +2d6 from a Human Baneskull, +1d6 from and +1d6 from from the Tiara that was Morphed to look like a rose in my hair, and +9 damage from , , and adding up, meant that the weaker Priestesses died, too, and even the tough elites were staggering and sent flying by the impacts. Two spells were enough to mow down any of them, maxing out ALL the Kicker damage for a nice +72 damage on top of the 5-30+9, avg 26, 13, of the main that streaked through and killed them all while shrieking with laughter. You want to ignore the Alignments and fuck-all the consequences of your actions? Time to introduce you to Holy magic, thoughtfully dressed up in black skulls and roses to distract the piss out of you, and send you on your way… ALL of you! ------ There were a lot of patrols, leaving on a regular schedule, making their circuits. One by one, I came up behind them, and I cut them down, then tossed all their belongings off the trail so there was no sign of what had happened to them, other than white circles on the stone all mashed together. The fortified camps themselves weren’t very large at all. One dropped into the middle of the soldiers grew into a writhing bundle of vines that blew forearm-long shining wedges of force with wailing Skulls riding them in all directions, mowing down everyone inside their tents and outside them, sparing only the horses. Only the elite soldiers and half the priestesses survived, and the that followed wiped them out before they could find me to try and counter-attack. The same pattern followed, with the three first clearing the guards at the gates, then splitting apart to take out the guards in the watchtowers at its corners, then converging on the last two and taking them down as they were blinking at the whipping Skulls flashing back and forth, their comrades falling to crimson dust, and then the screaming Skulls were coming for them! The slaves at first cowered, wondering what was going on… but then the gates slid Telekinetically open, courtesy of , and they realized something was up when Duum landed on the wall facing out, and I blew another into the middle of the central camp. I only needed one Casting this time, as at least a half-dozen cut through every single one of the elites and priestesses this time, cycling through them and making sure they were the first to die before flashing away to slaughter the shocked and staring soldiers around them. In six seconds, over two hundred Khirifi had perished, and the camp was eerily silent. The watchtowers higher on the hill might have raised the alarm, but for all the flashiness when it was screaming and coming for you, the Skulls were basically black and red, they didn’t glow, and so they looked more like flashes of shadow moving across the stone from a distance. Also, there weren’t that many Khirifi in the watchtowers, and I didn’t want them warning whoever was inside. took out one and I took out the other, both of us approaching , flying, and on top of the guards and cutting them apart before horns could be blown or bells rung. My Bat had to get a bit messy, but that was fine, he cleaned up quickly. With that done, I headed for the top of the mount, and the source of the smoke coming from it. This was a dormant volcano, long ground down and buried, without a caldera left to it, and the lava quite a bit underground. I didn’t feel like being trapped in a pit or elevator or whatever to get down to it, but there was no reason I couldn’t take an easier approach there. I was a bit surprised to find that the smoking chimney up there already had someone guarding it. His Aura was Blue, and the way he was staying in cover, out of sight of the watchtowers, indicated that he probably wasn’t a guard. He was also eight feet tall, a humanoid with crimson skin and metallic golden hair, clad in armor of coppery atargold and scarlet chasing, wielding a zweihander with a blade longer than most humans were tall. He also saw me coming up towards the chimney, and actually stepped out to be seen. “You are a busy sorceress, slaughtering these efreet-loving mortals!” he called out jovially in Pyric, waving at me to indicate he was not there to fight. “I am Tunnex, of the Brotherhood of the Sun! If you have come to put an end to the machinations of the efreet and whatever foul necromancy they are putting up, I am not your enemy!” he pronounced grandly. Interesting. The ancient race of the sollux were a noble species in the Realm of Fire, with a great grudge against the efreet, warring against them for countless ages. This didn’t look like one of the elite knights I’d read about in a tome, but all of the sollux were warriors, and skilled with their great blades, more than a match for any one or two efreet. We came gliding in, still in case there were forces watching from the distance, but Duum pulled up out of threatening range near the chimney and the foul smoke it was putting out. I swirled up a fiery rose over my palm, which blackened and fell away as my skin flared red for a moment, raising his eyebrows in curiosity as he sensed the Ritual of the Burning Heart’s mark on me, and that I was indeed a creature of Fire. “Hail and well met to a warrior of the noble sollux,” I replied in excellent Pyric, fires rasping visible inside my mouth to pronounce the words properly. “I am the Lady Edge. What do you here on the mortal plane?” I asked him politely, swinging off the back of Duum. “Efreet have been called to work a foul magic by the Patron of these foolish mortals here,” the sollux replied cautiously, just the hint of the flames on that rose telling him he was dealing with someone who could likely burn him to death, and it would be very, very wise not to be arrogant around me, even if my default skin tone was white. “I was sent to follow them here and interfere with their work, but the mortals are in great numbers, and they are not weak.” He pointed at the chimney, a circular flue that looked like it had been directly through the long-cooled lava there. “This must lead directly to the heart of whatever they are forging below, using the heat of the lava… I can smell the stench of the efreet upon the vile vapors that wend their way up hence!” he sneered. “And you don’t have a reasonable way down the shaft, because sollux do not fly,” I mused, “and coming out of the flue at the top of a great cavern would be quite awkward if there was no floor beneath you.” I flicked my hand at him, and he politely retreated a step as I glided up to the chimney. Another flick of my hand, and a black Skull with glowing eye sockets, only the size of my fist, materialized before me. With a cackle and swirl of burning rose petals, it promptly dove into the chimney and headed down. I flicked up a of its progress, the sollux pausing, then bending forward in great interest to follow the image it was seeing and the extending line drawn next to it as it plummeted down deeper into the swirling fumes of the mountain. There was only a sullen red light, occluded by the smoke, and then it burst out of the chimney into the room below.