Hlaeth Chapter 58 – Off to Orgenton

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The world had changed a great deal, but Tribulation’s imagery was as much based on planetary coordinates as greatly altered landmarks that had changed much during the past millennium. I could match up areas without too much effort, so picking the Scholarium out of the million square miles of Yellow territory occupied by so many Apertures wasn’t too difficult once I knew where to look.

Unsurprisingly, the area was still generally mountainous, although the peaks had been worn down a great deal by Yellow energies transmuting them and tearing them apart in bits and pieces. However, the protected area stood out, because the Wards on the area were not allowing Apertures to manifest, which meant the nodes of Earth and Fire here had somehow remained intact enough to sustain its original appearance.

Not Yellow, as it were.

Orgenton was built onto the slopes of a volcano, naturally enough. The power of Earth and Fire came from far enough below to avoid the Yellow’s contamination, and could Burn most of it clear, especially when it entered the Wards.

There were other volcanoes in the Yellow lands, but the things they were vomiting up were definitely not normal lava, and changed intermittently as new Apertures opened and old ones closed.

So, the area below me stood out, black smoke from the caldera still leaking into the sky, but rapidly dispersing or changing color as it moved out from beyond the Wards here.

Orgenton was alive and intact, and its Wards had been continually adjusted, reinforced, and kept functional over the years. The amount of Fire and Earth energies here were extreme, and beings of Elemental Fire and Earth had fled here in droves to escape the power of the Yellow.

The problem was that the whole area was Tainted by the Hellstorm unleashed on it by the headmistress of Hyrush, assaulting it with diabolic energies that rode the harmonic power of flame and were imbued into everything here.

The buildings were ancient in design, whatever their original construction was now replaced by black slabs of magma or cooled lava to help channel the powers of Fire and Earth, wrought with awful Runes in Mabrahoring to add Evil and Law to the forces that were defying the Yellow here.

It was also Taint, but it was in one direction, and so stable and could be reinforced against the Yellow, adding to the Wards and giving them more depth to withstand other forces trying to infiltrate here.

I could see the signs of combat around the place, expanses of jagged stone and molten black glass, ruptured and torn apart in irregular masses, eroded here and thrusting out defiantly there, avenues blasted through the exterior defenses by corroding power and reduced to carbon ash elsewhere.

Even now there were creatures of Yellow working on the super-heated fields of magma and obsidian below, cracking them, shattering them, breaking them down, and assaulting them with different varieties of energies that further Tainted them and altered them from their current states.

It appeared the Yellow hated mono-form Taint areas as much as they did untainted ones, like a blister or leaking sore in their sea of blended Taints.

The fact I was likely going to ruin the last holdout against the Yellow in this area wasn’t comfortable, but then I just looked at what was left inside the ruins of the Scholarium of the Arcane Forge and shook my head.

The Elementals that remained all had diabolic biases infecting them now, no longer true and Primal after so many centuries confined to this one area. Embracing the Taint here to resist the many Taints without had still warped them into something that did not belong on this world. It was a triumphant display of the power of Hell, resisting the encroachment of Chaotic influences and powers, darkly defying all the mutation and change seeking to encroach upon it, remaining cruelly unmoved by the fates of all else than its own power… by making them its own and inflicting the same doom upon them.

I was going to have to Burn it from the Land, too.

I eyed the Wards, fine-tuned to reject the mish-mash influences of so many different Elements, but not to expressly defy Celestial energies at all. Celestial powers would have been non-existent among the attackers, as such would rapidly neutralize and be canceled out by non-pure energies of other influences, particularly Evil, losing their Good status and so being filtered away naturally.

As a result, there was really nothing to defy Good in these Wards, so the inhabitants of the place would have no advantages over me, and in fact would be very, very vulnerable to me.

The natives were also all tieflings of diabolic origin, or their equivalents, with former dragon-kin or reptilians among them, as well as other non-human races. I could see them moving around outside occasionally, commanding Elementals and other such beings also Tainted with Hellfire or Doomstone, such as they were, mostly to swoop down or tunnel out to attack encroaching forces of the Yellow and annihilate them, restoring some of the damage done to the outer defenses as they did so.

New spikes and blades of red-hot magma pulsed and thrust themselves up out of the ground, glowing and steaming black as they cooled, only the faintest hint of red indicating the hellfire inside them that would erupt forth in contact with the opposing energies of the Yellow. The very stones grew blades and spikes, making it perilous to walk upon or move through, the slightest contact causing spitting hellfire to spurt forth and damage any thing of the Yellow that dared to touch them.

All this before even reaching the Wards proper, which would either keep the Yellow out entirely, or weaken them so much they could be properly destroyed.

The smart, efficient, and pragmatic thing to do on my end would be to assault the place, clear everything, Burn the Diabolic Taint out of everything, and just reduce the whole place to a white smear whose vivic fires would last a very long time around the edges of the Wards, further stabilizing and empowering them, even if there was no one left here to guide them.

I frowned at the fact my Hellbrand was flaring up in glee at the thought of just going down there and wiping out everything Tainted by Hell. I COULD do it, and it wouldn’t be wrong… but it also wouldn’t be right. It would just be another tired extension of War and the conflict of Alignments, played out uncaringly across worlds, dimensions, and multiverses.

I grit my teeth. It would take more time, but I could do better. With some instructions to my Sims in my Sanctum.

------

“Master Geras and Master Tu Shor, I am Aelryinth of Heaven, Magos. I would have words with you.”

My words echoed across the entirety of the School of the Arcane Forge, sending heads craning about frantically for the source, and then turning skywards as I came down.

The Wards parted to let me through, having no objection to my very mortal and Taint-less existence. The beings looking at me cursed and swore and covered their eyes at the sight of me, as Heavenly Light stabbed at them and let them know I might not be coming as an outright enemy, but I did not recognize them as friends.

I came down right in the center of the plaza in front of the main Scholia. I had to wonder what the graceful domes and columns once looked like, now all done up in polished black basalt and magma, inlaid with obsidian, and set out in slowly glowing Runes etched using Hellfire that beat like a slow, malevolent heart.

The transformed stones of the plaza, basically a rendition of a Summoning Circle that had lost its integrity and was now warped into a Formation of sorts that concentrated Hellfire and diabolic energies into the Wards, writhed and trembled under my feet as I stopped a couple inches above them. They began to hiss and smoke, and then spontaneously fell apart into white powder beneath me, even incidental contact with Footsteps of a Mage enough to Burn through the Hell-taint in them.

There were calls of alarm, blaring bone-rattling horns of bronze, ringing brazen bells, and pounding drums wrought of the skins of Yellow creatures. Beings began to flood the central plaza, including many an Elemental, drawn by a Light that they could not ignore and could not look directly upon, calling and cursing and shouting and all the good stuff as they gathered.

The ones who stepped too close to me in their enthusiasm ignited, screamed, and leapt back even more quickly.

A large area among them reverted to red-hot magma, and a massive form pulled itself out of the stone there as the natives scrambled aside. It was formed of red-hot rock in patterns of crimson and black, which the astute could notice formed crude Runes on its body of diabolic nature. It had rather too many spikes upon it, was almost painfully symmetrical in build despite its rather crude form, and red-black Hellfire spurted over it as it heaved itself free of the ground.

A Tainted Magma Elemental. Never the most stable of creatures at the best of time, I imagined the Hellfire had actually been a very stabilizing influence upon it. The paraelementals tended to be somewhat unstable by nature, given them being frozen in transitional states, so Hell’s power was actually probably a ‘good’ thing for it, inadvertently.

Still not natural, however.

The mighty paraelemental towered over twenty feet high, the largest of those gathered here, and it didn’t so much stride forward as roll in my direction, coming up against the edge of my Aura and triggering an eruption of celestial energies, which its own Hellfire blazed against and canceled. Undeterred, it kept forward, raising one spiked arm threateningly at me as it did so.

I turned and focused my attention on it, having pulled back the Protection from Evil Aura that would have stopped it and all of them cold.

It ground to a halt instantly, freezing there as Primal Elemental Command boiled around me, and very suddenly, its view of me as a mortal creature was replaced by a really Good look at me and what I represented through the power of Primus.

It might be under the command of the mages here, but it was not compelled to obey. Now it could see that I was a very, very powerful being of Fire, of Cold, and of Good, standing in harmony with Nature as a Druid, and this close to me it could feel the gentle subsonics of the Sublime Chord making its deepest essence reverberate in a manner that, if fed enough power, would shatter it right down to its soul!

“Kneel,” I ordered it in Pyric.

There was no hesitation whatsover. The infection of Law made it obedient to those more powerful than it, it being Evil made it fear me like nothing it had ever met before, and it went straight down as close to prostrate as it could manage in those circumstances.

I reached out with Shape Stone and pulsed my power through the plaza beneath me, a trembling that made no sound.

The Elementals of Fire that heard my Voice, namely all of them, also went prostrate when they saw the great Magma Elemental go down. When the Elementals of Earth felt that pulse in the geoic magic, they immediately prostrated their spiked and darkly armored selves before me as well.

I might not have had the Bloodline ties or Wrath that I did with Fire, Ice, and Good, but there was no doubt whatsoever that Earth was my favorite Element to work with.

The tieflings of various mortal origins had very wide eyes as they looked all around at the Elementals bowing to me, and their raised weapons and ready spells failed and faltered at the sight.

“Master Geras, Master Tu For, I am waiting,” I uttered again, absolutely certain both could hear me.

There was a pulsing Note in the Sublime Chord, and the elementals flattened their mutable selves further against the tiles at it, while the tieflings cried out as their knees went weak and they also collapsed to the ground, their Tainted bodies reacting harshly and fearfully to the power of Heaven they’d never felt before.

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