Our preparations were fast, but very complete, planned out in advance, buttressed with many Casters to speed things along, working and digging and building with breathtaking speed given the power of many of the beings exerting themselves here.

Thick walls, killing lanes, trenches and pits, moats and battlements, arrow towers and crude bridges, ramps, stairs, platforms and levels, hills, and open areas. It was a mix of terrain and defenses, designed to break up numbers into manageable pockets, giving defenders an advantage beyond simply mounding up the dead in overwhelming numbers.

In other words, it was meant to cater to the Warp Gods’ expectations of an entertaining fight, showing all the ingenuity and style that we could.

The Anthros’ section was definitely much cruder, but with Jotun muscle and almost boundless amounts of bodies, got itself set up remarkably well. They were learning lessons about defending against wave attacks that we probably didn’t want to teach them, but the situation called for a certain something... and Tremble was even going to be on the border of the fighting zones, ready to heal them if they could get to her, which astounded them.

Hey, we took spoiling the ambitions of Hags pretty hard...

The reserves of arrows, javelins, and sling ammo we needed were stockpiled, knowing it wouldn’t be enough regardless, and if you didn’t have a One More Arrow Quiver or the Force Arrow enchantment or its equivalent, you were going to run out at some point. Even a Hamadryad Queen wasn’t going to cut down a forest for us.

The point was that the armies we were fighting were literally endless, it was only how fast they were going to be sent out, and who was going to fight what and when. Chances for glory were going to be high, and the chance of dying to the horde that was coming, higher.

It didn’t deter anyone. There were a lot of gods watching all of this, and human, elf, dwarf, orc, goblin, jotun, huul, or what have you, they all knew they were fighting with direct Divine approval. Yeah, their gods were enemies... but the gods of the Warp were enemies to the whole Pantheon, to Reality itself, and only the maddest among them would tolerate their existence.

There was going to be oceans of blood, burning with vivic fire.

I was waiting so badly for it I could barely sit still. My killing vibes were chasing people away and at the same time raising the bloodthirst level for the whole Alliance.

Charisma 50 ready to kill is VERY infectious.

The scouts sang out of motion in the Rift, a darkness deep in the unnatural colors swirling into infinity, which they only watched with polarized glasses on. The dark spots grew with impossible speed, every step covering distances in time and space, and the Armies of the Warp began to pour forth.

It was on.

----------

I have to admit, they put on a show.

They’d pulled out all the restrictions for this show, so they were showcasing all their talents and resources. I could feel them messing with reality as they marched out of the Rift, their champions and masters at the head of the great forces behind, just so they could arrive in all their splendor.

There was plenty of unreal, overwrought and needlessly grandiose Warp armor, fused to the wearer, more skin than metal. Yeah, all the horns, towering helms, oversized pauldrons, gauntlets like claws, breastplates worked into snarling beasts, often carrying back-banners from which the skulls of their conquests hung, with more about their waists, and if they had true style the skulls were still gibbering praises and paens to those who’d slain them...

The colors of Klaw were the red of blood, the bronze of war, and the black of iron, hundreds and thousands of men and beast-men marching out, great brazen horns blatting out their arrival as if we couldn’t see them, meant to stir up fear and uncertainty at fighting the massive numbers coming our way. Their commanders clutched oversized weapons in the Dire Pattern, often as tall and probably as heavy as the ones wielding them, with spikes and weird arcs and crescents that should provide all sorts of balance issues and getting stuck problems, but somehow worked because Dire Pattern is magic, yo.

All this improbable shit definitely offended my smith’s eyes, however, and just reaffirmed my desire to get rid of it all.

Klaw’s troops were split between human and beast-men, as Klaw was also the god of mutation and battle-beasts, and so his forces were replete with cavalry riding mutated horses, boars, lizards, birds, dogs, cats, bears, and things which were combinations of the above and more.

A grandiose flight of drake and terrordactyl riders came swooping out of the Rift in their thousands, an awesome and terrifying sight... and then ignominiously nose-dived as we might have smirked while the Interdiction rose up, screaming as they flapped impotently at the air. King Gravity harrumphed on his Throne of Mass and exerted His Will, blessed be 9.8 meters per second per second, amina, amina...

Watching that huge force go screaming down to bone-crunching, organ-splatting landings brought the entire army to a screeching halt. Fanged and horned horses huffed, scaled reptile-hounds growled as their spiked collars glowed, and the rest of the fliers urgently retreated into the shadow of the Rift.

Careful flights of burning arrows arced out, and buried themselves in the skulls of wailing mutant beasts and what few staggering riders had survived the fall, the chinks and choks of banefire punching through Warped metal and bone further impressing the Warped with their accuracy. Because, yo, three hundred yards out is rather impressive kill range for a bow. Distance Enhancement and Far Shot Feat added up to 300% range on missile attacks, and Ranged Attack Bonuses in the +25 to +30 range were some nasty things, after all, One-Striking for that extra +3 TH kicker just to drive the point home, as it were.

The Warped lines were eerily silent as their commanders decided what to do, looking over the fortifications, and of course, being the battle-crazy fanatics of Klaw that they were, they chose the most direct path.

Yay, it’s time to charge, throw ourselves on the guns, and just die!

Well, that was actually okay with us. The army of thousands upon thousands of fanatic berserkers and blood-mad beastmen, and their scattered demons, slave beasts, oversized hulks, taurens, and just plain crazy motherfuckers seemed to let out all their cries at once, and came a-charging.

Was I going to sit there and just shoot? Oh, hell, no. Archery was a supplemental skill to me.

I hopped up out of the Trench, a great and bloody Heavenly March rising in my head, reverberating among thousands of Weapons that could hear it. If the incoming enemy had any sense, the massive coordinated pulsing of all those magic Weapons would have screwed them over badly. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much sense, and couldn’t see so far for all the blood in their eyes.

Now the Helices swirling up they could see, but they didn’t know what it meant, only targets before them, and the mounted leaders pounded towards us, waving unbalanced Swords longer than they were and stuff... and it was time for us to go.

We took off.

Briggs and I didn’t have the showy Helices, but that was okay, our Weapons were the loudest... and I had the most of them.

We swept past about half the commanders in their baroque armor of Klaw worship standards, and there were meaty choks as mounts and the men atop them came apart violently, limbs and heads flying. A second later we were into those charging behind, and the slaughter began.

The Warp Gods were like video game players, manipulating endless amounts of warbands in the Warp for fun and entertainment, pitting them against one another to find the strongest in endless contests of blood and might. Drawing their fanatics from countless worlds, they had infinite numbers of souls tempted to damnation to draw upon, and these servants of Klaw had all been hardened and tempered in those wars. Their armor was strong, their Weapons were inhabited by daemonic spirits or twisted energies of the Warp, they had great beasts and mutants blessed by their master fighting alongside them, as well as those worthy enough to be incarnated as demons of Massacre, Carnage, and Slaughter.

We really didn’t care.

All our Weapons went Umbral, just to ignore that Warped armor sheathing them all, and the shields a fraction of them used, as well as the barding on the beasts and the low armor on the great mutant trolls, Jotuns, and other hulks along for the blood.

Curiously silent, we drove into the mass of the enemy, and they began to die.

Bodies came apart inside their armor, which began to crumple and corrode as their wearers folded abruptly. Blood ignited in vivic fire, dancing madly in the energies of the Warp all around, feasting on the dead quickly and eagerly. There’d be no great heaps of the dead to walk over.

Briggs was the only one to send bodies literally flying, pulped inside their armored shells, skulls exploding while the helms remained unmarked, mass and a Strength north of 40 doing the job as men and mutate beastmen died all around him. The rest of us were more swathes-of-dead behind us sorts.

Still, we were only twenty-foot wide swathes of killing, disrupting formations, angling for commanders and champions and some of the bigger brutes. Klaw didn’t believe in Casters, although he was happy to send out his demons, and those Greater Demons, well, the reason we were chewing through these minions so fast was to get to those.

I doubt the Massacre demons in all their titanic burning glory would have been pleased to know that we were competing on who could be the first to get to these giant bundles of Karma. After all, we couldn’t have them reaching the walls if at all possible. The brutes we couldn’t get to were going to be handled by the Exemplars there... of which now there were a great many more than a few days ago.

Winding trails of vivus sprouted behind us, cutting through bands of demons, demonic hounds, mutant demonic berserkers, and as the Massacre demons bellowed in outrage at our arrogance, swirled up towards them, and Let Them Have it.

Massive Weapons, Warp Demons bound into service to those that had bested them, struck down, tearing at space with their power and speed, as these fellows were strong, fast, deadly, schooled in the endless wars of the Warp –

Not a single one hit us. This wasn’t the Warp, after all.

Helices danced up them, trails of vivus erupted on their black and crimson hides, ignoring their brazen armor. Helices condensed and tore out magic and life, fed it back as killing energy, and the Massacre Demons pretty much had time to try and scream, before their throats were cut, lines of vivus ringing their necks.

Briggs swung right, rebounded left, and tree-trunk legs kicked out, shattered. The Massacre fell under its weight, great wings fanning out uselessly, and as it came down, Endure came up to meet its skull.

Me, I ran a Hew and Finish off a whining Slaughter demon near its feet, and ran that stroke through a Spirited Charge that went from groin to skull in one long crit-lance of a stroke, up between its arms, splitting open its chest and neck in a long evisceration that ended with Quaver impaling its skull and dumping a whole lot of kinetic banefire and vivus inside.

It crashed over backwards, flattening some fanatics who were dumb enough to stand too close, and began to pulse –

Multiple heads of the Land came up to feast as the demons blew. Whole acres of Warped were sucked up with those ghostly worm-jaws coming up to feast, and didn’t come back out. The worms fell back into the ground as the loving, enthusiastic adherents of Klaw wailed at the fall of their mighty demon champions (well, more kind of gaped, but the sudden silence sure felt like a wail), and then the blasts of vivus blew out like tidal waves, surging over them, and eroding the closest and most corrupted of them right away.

Waagh waagh, waagh...