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Chapter 1302 - Anthony On Tour - Rocky Arrival
🕑 Added 2024-02-10 04:54:34 +0000 UTCI’m not sure what I was expecting from the goglari when we showed up their mountain. A friendly reception? Certainly not. However, I really didn’t expect something like this.
Marzban roars something and the whole ship changes.
The boat rattles with brathian feet pounding on the wooden deck.
[There’s going to be a fight, let me down! I can kill them. Kill them all!]
[I said I’m not letting you down until you relax and I meant it.]
[Gaaaah!]
Odin thrashes about uselessly, but there’s nothing he can do.
[See? You need to work out that anger. I’ll float you up some Biomass later, so be quiet for a minute.]
[I’m not a pet!]
[That’s the spirit.]
In the distance, a stone is arcing toward us through the air, fired from… something about halfway up the giant mountain in front of us. Obviously I’m not an expert when it comes to siege weaponry or anything, but I don’t think this is going to hit us.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, as the brathian mages get together and blast it out of the sky, sending a shower of stone shards crashing into their hastily raised shields.
[Need any help?] I ask the brathian warrior.
[What can you do in this situation?] he asks tersely.
He’s not being rude or anything, he just genuinely wants to know.
[I can catch the rocks in the air and float them away from the fleet, but I suspect they aren’t trying to hit us anyway.]
He turns to me with a brow raised, light glittering off the scales on his bare arms.
[You sure about that?]
[Nope, but look at the trajectory of this next one. I think it’s going to miss.]
[What next one? Oh, sand and seashells!]
He roars something else at the crew and I can see people are freaking out all over the fleet. Shifting my head slightly I take a better look at the Legion fleet behind me. Right now, they don’t appear to be doing anything, but if things devolve any further, they might launch an attack.
I might as well take control of the situation.
With a flex of my will, I begin to pull in vast amounts of mana, channelling it through a gravity magic construct in a furious torrent of power. With the resulting energy, I start to weave, utilising dozens of my mind constructs to compress the energy and shape it into the spell is desire.
As the enormous boulder reaches the peak of its arc and begins to descend, I judge the distance carefully and prepare to release my spell.
[I’ll take care of it,] I tell Marzban, and unleash the magic.
Infused with power from my Altar, the sheer raw energy that floods out of my monstrous form is shocking, an invisible shockwave that radiates upwards. Hundreds of metres overhead, a gravity well snaps into being, catching the offending boulder in its irresistible grip.
It doesn’t take much to redirect the boulder once I’ve got it under my influence. I spend a bit of energy to slingshot it around my well and it catapults harmlessly off to the side.
[I’m kind of surprised that they defend themselves by flinging rocks at people,] I remark to Marzban. [it’s not like there aren’t more impressive options available to us than that.]
The martial leader of the brathain expedition hardens his expression as he continues to stare at the mountain before us, watching for any sign of another projectile.
[Don’t underestimate them,] he warns me, [this time it was only simple rocks, but they can throw far more deadly things than that, and much further that you might expect. Greystone is known as an impenetrable fortress for good reason.]
Living up to its name, the mountain in front of us is indeed formed of Greystone, with little green life marking its rocky cliffs as one would expect to see here in the fourth. That’s not the only modification that the golgari went and made to this particular mountain.
Far from it.
More than any other mountain I’ve seen on this stratum, Greystone is massive. Rather than doing the normal thing one would expect a mountain to do, which is get smaller the taller it gets, Greystone is almost a pillar, rising up in a near straight line from the water’s edge, right up to the top where it touches the bottom of the third.
Now, I don’t need to be told this isn’t natural, the mountains on the fourth aren’t formed this way, which means they changed the shape of the mountain manually, conjuring up new stone using mana. Perhaps that doesn’t sound impressive, the Colony could do the same thing, but staring up at the absurd reality of Greystone and it’s sheer, unimaginable weight, really drives home just how much of an effort it would have been.
We are talking about BILLIONS of square metres of stone. BILLIONS. Maybe more than that! These mountains already made everything I’d ever seen back on Earth look tiny, but this is absurd! It’s like they created a second Everest and then moulded it around the original Everest!
The sheer amount of magical energy that was poured into this, the boggling amount of stone shaping work that would have required…. It must have taken them hundreds, perhaps as many as a thousand, years.
Honestly, the Colony would never do something like this, because we would consider it a waste of effort and energy.
For whatever reason, the golgari didn’t feel that way. They wanted to make a statement, and they succeeded. It’s impressive as heck.
As we continue to sail towards this absurd pillar of stone, there are not further incidents, thank Gandalf. That doesn’t mean the tension is gone though. Eran is furious.
It doesn’t bode well for our stay amongst the people of stone.
Comments
alt31415
Ya know. Part of me was hoping the golgari would actually be surprisingly receptive. Like, "Oh, you beat up those nobles on the 2nd? GOOD! We sent them up there to teach them a lesson"
Runaway_Cactuar
I don't even know why they bother to go there. Can't do business if there's no baseline respect between the parties.
Roombot
The golgari really just begging for a war with the Colony AND the Conglomerate, huh?
Codered999
Pride, especially injured pride, makes people do stupid things all throughout history, this will be no exception.
ZaneofBane
I'm betting that the colony shows up with a ton of useful stone for their second skin, but jack up the prices for the insult.
Kiongku
Nice expression, sand and seashells! Suddenly reminds me of Captain Haddock, billions of blue blistering barnacles!
Tsunami
Curious. Why are Stoned People so angry? You'd think the opposite would be true. Live and learn.
Rahsheem Reid
Yeah I definitely think war will be as soon as they leave from the Barithans. Maybe sooner if they attempt an assassination on Anthony. Golgari humies vs Colony and folk
Anthony Romanov
Stoning the Colony? Be careful about what about that as stones are known for returning to sender!
Faolen
Time to deal with literal block-heads.
Daddy Frog
First on a new chap, what a ways we have come
