The Power of Ten

Chapter 9-264: Hell and Heaven

I reached out and caressed the edge of that Ward. My lip curled at the sensation, and Im sure my eyes were blazing.

Master Fred extended his hand out, passing it through the Ward.

Golden angelfire and black-red hellfire promptly erupted over his hand. He pulled it back, his face grim.

-They said they couldnt get close enough to see what was going on?- he /asked calmly, letting the field ripple in the hostile colors over his hand.

No. I was looking at the interplay of magic harshly. But the Heavenly power is not in resonance, although it is capable of working with anything, even hellfire. It is being forced into this configuration.

He tilted his head back, looking up, forward and back. -What could generate this much Heavenly power?-

Theres not a lot, but they found something... and they are using the power of Hell to control it.

His knuckles cracked. -Multiple Hellbound, continually cycling over...- he /repeated what wed been told. -Theres a Pact Grantor here.-

Probably two.

He considered that a moment. -The Amazons?- he /asked shortly.

He specifically said whip-wielding Amazons. Those are only found among the Despotrix branches, and generally only the Amazons of Rue or Voyd would bother with it. As were dealing with Hellbound...

-Rue.- The Queen of Pain was like all the bad parts of Eryl magnified, throwing in masochism and sadism to complete a very sinister picture. She couldnt actually recruit Amazons, she had to tempt them from their former Patrons... but more than a few Eryllians were susceptible to that sort of thing, and Eryl actually didnt mind all that much, as the Amazons of Rue had more of a hate relationship with the Good Amazon Patrons, and generally didnt mind those of Eryl at all.

Evil Eryllian Amazons almost inevitably got fed up with the fact Eryl didnt go all out in taking over the world from those dastardly men, and Fell to Voyd or Rue... or got bribed by Ruilvei, but that was less common.

-So, our mission is to find out the truth of this Ward, not to contest with the Cultivator factions in Guangzhou. -

And I dont expect to like what were going to find at all. I pointed to the tallest peak of the islands Hong Kongs Ward covered. Its projected up from there. Stealth mode all the way, I want to see what is making this thing.

Sleipner huffed calmly, and began to roll forwards. As we were not Cultivators, and being Shroudborn and Hellbound, there was no reaction from the Ward as we passed through.

That was likely not a good sign, either...

------

The false dawn was coming in, but the spotters were definitely going to have a problem seeing Sleipner with the illusion of the empty sea I was holding in place around us, given they probably had people who could see the invisible. Layer that with seaspray and morning fogs, and there was basically no chance they could see us.

There were alert people watching in multiple locations as we rolled up to a sheer cliff area and Sleipner calmly rode up sideways to the top of it. He didnt stop there, continuing up the mountainside and staying off the roads and just above the trees, while I constantly adjusted the illusion about us to display trees or stone as needed.

He hove to behind an outcropping at the military post at the top of the mountain. There was a great black stonework Projector there, carved in the cruel Runework of the Infernal and gouting up an unending, burning display of hellish power in the thaumaspectrum.

There was also a full company of guards around the Projector, accentuated by a dozen Powered and Warlocks, and commanded by what looked to be two Amazons, having the requisite perfect figures, but rather too much spiked leather for any womans proper taste. The Wards here were multi-layered, and I assumed the firepower showing had enough ammunition even after all this time.

Master Fred looked back at me calmly.

Take us down below their line of sight, I said calmly. The side of the hill was plenty steep, and while it could be seen from below, that didnt much matter with what I was going to do.

Communing with a local Nature Spirit was much easier than The Land itself, after all.

Duskstopped Shaping Stone at VII followed, and the rock of the mountainside flowed smoothly away from my touch. Sleipner rolled silently into the tunnel revealed in front of us, and it mostly sealed away behind us, a thin sheet that was enough to fool anyone looking, and which could, if necessary, simply be rammed right through by the motorcycle without any harm.

I had a very clear picture of the internal structure of the mountain, especially of the conduit from above and the room it led to. The actual entrance to the chamber was located on the far side of the mountain, and even more heavily defended than the top, naturally enough.

I was going to be unpleasantly surprised, or not surprised, depending on how you looked at it, but there wasnt much I could do at this point. The people of Hong Kong had let Queen Rue, the Dark Knight Rath, and the Tyrant Huul into this place, and made of it their own grim little Hell on Earth. I hadnt toured around to see the life of the civilians living here, but I assumed they were little more than slave labor and conscripts doing whatever these Hell-worshippers thought was necessary to hold off the Cultivators.

Stone peeled away from us smoothly. Not even seismic sensors could have felt us coming in, as there was no vibration or anything as we proceeded down and into the mountain at the speed of a human trotting.

-----

Hold up.

Sleipner braked on the level floor. His motor was basically a hum with his own Ring, there was no chance we had been heard... but we were inside a Wardfield that extended into the stone.

Master Freds Hellfire had gotten us through it smoothly. Id also started channeling that Scorn through my magic, such that the stone peeling away from us was covered in the hungry red-black fires of hate, parting before us in the dark, and ushering us towards more dark depths...

Sleipner, disengage, and Ill be using you. Im going to need you.

A bit surprised, the unicorn nevertheless disengaged his Alicorn from the bike, which promptly began to fold in on itself impossibly, shrinking down to a fraction of its size, the sidecar having already been floating behind us and forming the basis of a small two-wheeled Wagon made from the two of them.

Hey, we were rich. Investing in the Bike was just a minor expenditure at this time, only taking more time.

I didnt draw Clavus from behind me at all, taking Sleipners Alicorn in my hand like an odd dagger.

Directly on the other side of that wall is a Grey Magic Zone. To the Commune, its like a black hole, but the conduit from above comes down directly into it. Its a large, dome-shaped chamber a good seventy meters across, with only one hallway access point from the outside, located over there. I pointed to the north side. I have no idea who or what is on guard here... but there will be things on guard, and Im not going to be able to use magic. I looked at Master Fred. Based on that Ward, however, you will.

His expression didnt change. -So, Im the powerhouse this time, and youre on support.-

He knew that I could still take care of myself ridiculously well even without magic, although I was in no way someone able to carve through multitudes. I could, however, take down those numbers slowly and steadily without too much problem, and without taking much harm.

He pulled out both his Grit and Idiot, and nodded. I touched the thin wall of stone in front of us.

There was less than an inch of it. I parted it in a wide, narrow slit, trusting in the tropes of Hell that the chamber beyond wasnt going to be brightly and cheerily lit.

It wasnt, although the sullen red light and sudden susurrus screams of tortured souls that abruptly flowed into our little chamber with that light definitely fed the trope. Id sealed the area behind us with a thin layer of stone to stop any pressure-equalization problems, and we looked out into the room beyond.

My jaw popped despite myself as I took it all in. Master Fred just flared his nose, but the knot of anger radiating in him since hed seen the death toll taken by the Cultivators was pulsing.

It was a Hellsign, a great ceremonial Rune Circle, complete with savagely carved small obelisks here and there, and a nonagram-based star pattern wrought in tainted and blackened silver with other Circles within the arms of it. Inside those Circles, chained to chairs there, hapless Hellbound were strapped as hellfire leaked out of them continuously, forced out of them and their Pacts as they writhed in agony at the continual draw being pulled out from them and their souls, but they could do nothing about it.

Those flows of burning Scorn flowed through the Pattern and up to the central dais, where a great basalt Altar rose, sweating black stone pulled up from untold depths to serve as a sacrificial post. In the center of the Altar, a bloody spike was jutting up, designed to impale any victim shackled to it... and that was the case now.

The being on the Altar was shackled with adamantine and Hells greensteel, his silvery skin smoking and burning at the touch of the defiled metal. The spike of hissing black adamantine had been punched right through his broad and heroically muscled chest, and shining golden blood yet dripped from the injury. Four massive metallic wings lay limply around the figure, bereft of the strength to do anything.

From head to toe, and even about the splayed wings, hellfires burned at the noble spirit of the angel, torturing it, pulling out its power and pain in a great blazing inferno of merciless torture, spiraling silver and gold raging upward in the grip of the screaming hellfire, sucked away into the conduit in the ceiling above.

Unending torment, constantly burned and tortured with hellfire; a planetar, one of the generals of Heavens armies, likely a direct subordinate of this worlds Solar, if it had one, was now being burned alive to constantly power the Ward protecting these people.

Oh, Heavens, I wanted to kill everything else in that room right now.

The air was shimmering with a hellish-grey, oily glimmer: a Greyfield that didnt inhibit Hellish powers. I wouldnt be able to Cast inside the field... at least, not the normal way.

Two human guards by the large portal to the north, currently closed tight, and if I had my nomenclature right, the gun-bearing bastards were both Illriggers, or Blackguards, at the very least. Hell had several Orders of unholy knights.

There was one devil visible in the room, currently not looking at us, or Im sure it would have spotted the viewing slit. It was sort of resting on all fours, overlong arms keeping its chest up, like an ape... but an ape standing ten feet tall in that position, burning in the wash of hellfire a good two feet higher than that. Its crimson skin was hugely muscled, and it had great batlike wings and a long spiked tail. Its head was more reptilian than mammalian, and it clutched a great greensteel Trident, which sparked with occasional arcs of hate lightning between its tines.

Any use of telepathy here was likely to be sensed, which was why I had been talking aloud.

Always look up. I couldnt see directly above us, but the walls I could see were all scrawled with unholy symbols that made my eyes want to weep, and there were recesses and desecrated statues sitting in them...

Those are gargoyles, I warned him when I saw the grotesque carvings, and he nodded in acknowledgement.

There was another hallway going off to the south, but it was within the black hole area of the Ward, and so I had been unable to see inside it. Im guessing thats the devils private quarters. And what might be found there...