WilburWoods
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Chapter 37 - The Vision
🕑 Added 2023-09-20 17:15:02 +0000 UTCLogan found himself somewhere else entirely. He was no longer in the grove of the Faelves. He wasn’t even in a jungle anymore. He was on a desert dune. A large one. To his left and to his right he saw hundreds of soldiers, all equipped with various weapons of unseen quality. But all of their armor was the same. A sleek, shining black metal, that shifted in the orange evening sun. They were studded with glowing blue crystals that pulsed softly.
Everyone was looking in the same direction from behind their sharp helmets. To the seashore two hundred yards away. On the beach there were thousands of soldiers and siege towers made of black metal and catapults loaded with pulsing blue Numa bombs.
In the air above them were ships of various sizes. They were all made of the same black metal. Some were propelled by rotor blades, like a helicopter, some were made to fly with gas. Tiny specks of blue fire could be seen above. There were various cannons, guns, and soldiers armed with insanely large spears and harpoons at the helms of the ships. All of those weapons were pointed in a single direction.
Above the shoreline, tens of yards in the air, but closer than Logan had ever wished to see it, was Levemoth.
The bulging eyes of the giant whale-head swirled this way and that as the great beast silently watched the First Folk gather their forces. A dark cloud rumbled about its body. Idle black drops fell to the sea from it. The drops hissed when they struck, but whatever fiend spawned in the water, Logan would never see.
Tumor? What’s happening?
But there was no answer.
A flying man soared down from one of the ships to float in front of the rows of soldiers Logan was part of.
“Everyone over level 40 who can fly with me,” The floating man said. He was wielding a giant scythe in one hand. The shining blue blade of the weapon was almost blinding. “We will lead the Strike-force from the left flank.”
With that the man took off, and dozens of soldiers from their rows followed the man. Some flew seemingly without explanation, like the commander wielding the scythe. Some of them sprouted wings, and some of them had jetpacks that spewed blue, glowing fire. Some of them flew on disks of black metal.
Another commander came up to them. She was flying on one of those disks, wearing the same shining black armor as everyone else, and wielding, what Logan thought to be a flame-thrower.
“Everyone above level 30 who cannot fly with me. We will defend the shoreline from the Levespawn! The rest of you man the siege weapons. Report to any siege weapon above which a flare is still active. NOW GO!”
They started running row from row down the dune in a disciplined march. Logan had no choice but to fall in line or be trampled. He had no idea where he was supposed to go, so he just decided to follow the person directly in front of him.
Levemoth stirred. A rain of black droplets fell into the shoreline. Hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand. Logan was so stunned by the sight, that he stopped. People just ran through him.
Apparently I’m not real… Logan thought idly as he watched the Great Thief rain its pestilence down on the shore.
Great fiends burst from the bubbles. These were not the little pests that Logan had faced. Oh there were trolls and scythe-fiends too. But there was so much more here. There were dragons, great towering krakens, with tentacles of thirty feet tall. Giant snakes with three heads snapped their jaws at the approaching forces with their lashing tails causing waves.
The force of flying soldiers approached the head and attacked it with all their weapons. They flew around Levemoth’s head like a swarm of flies. And just as easily were they flatted.
Blue whipping tendrils sprouted from Levemoth’s neck. They extended in every direction, giving the great monster a coronation of death. These tendrils whipped and slapped down the flying soldiers. They had shields to tank the whips, but eventually they ran out and fell into the sea.
The catapults threw their blue boulders, which exploded in a blue light upon Levemoth’s head. It barely budged. The siege towers, great black obelisks rose up and a bright white beam of energy shout from them. This toppled the Great Thief and it fell in altitude. The ships on the sky swarmed upon it and fired off anything ranging from giant harpoons to fireballs. On the ground the infantry fought with the spawns of Levemoth and died by the score.
Logan looked upon it all in horror. No matter how many shots of the catapults, no matter how many beams of light, no matter how many of its bulging eyes were burst, it kept raining the black rain and swatting at the flying attack force.
Eventually it grew tired. It opened its maw and let out a great bellow. The sand of the beach flew up and the waves covered the shore, fiends and infantry alike. A ball of swirling black energy formed at its mouth. Shouts of commanders shot up urgently everywhere. All fire was focused on the mouth of Levemoth. It did not care.
A loud pop was heard before absolute desolation hit the forces of First Folk. The black swirling energy shout out as a continues beam and it swiped through everything, cutting siege towers in half and incinerating the infantry. Another black beam cut the sky. Dozens of warships fell a chorus of men falling in terror filled the air.
The army of First Folk was already in chaos. Those left alive either cowered in fear or ran. Levemoth would not have any of it. Another black mass of energy swirled at its mouth. This one built up slower and the orb of energy grew large, very large.
Once it was released, it floated to the middle of the battlefield. From there thousands of tiny little homing shots of laser flew down and pierced every straggler that was still alive. Every man, flying or on ground. Every man fighting, every man fleeing. Within a single moment, the whole clamoring battlefield fell as silent as a graveyard.
Logan could only look at the carnage in stunned silence. Burning remains of airships crashed on the beach. Mounds of ashes left behind by the incinerated soldiers. Amongst the remains, blue shimmering crystals remained.
The fiends of Levemoth came upon them and feasted. Levemoth let out a clarion call of victory. Then it drew in a massive breath, and lines of blue energy were drawn from every machine, every corpse, everything that was left on the beach.
The Levemoth sucked in all of the Numa. Thousands of little trickles of blue energy were drawn into its mouth as the Great Thief inhaled. Where its scaly skin was scathed, the tissue healed. The black bulbous eyes that had been popped, regenerated. And the dark cloud swirling about its body grew darker and larger.
Once there was no more Numa to siphon, Levemoth turned, and a portal appeared whereinto it vanished.
