The Power of Ten

Chapter 12-337 - The Blood of the Irish

It surprised me, given his personality, and yet it didn’t. He was without any doubt the single most formidable Blooded on the planet. His whole life had been about defying his elders, their unclean ‘immortality’ as undead, and now he was going to defy himself; overcome his own shirking of Duty and Loyalty, and become something more.

But he couldn’t do it in America. That wasn’t his land, the soil he’d been born of, the soil of his youth, where he had lost all that he loved.

I’d read his file, of course. Heavenbound Hall had certainly investigated him, and even if most of his life was buried in the fires and ash of The Fall in 1941, there were still tales to be told among the elders of various clans and families here in Ireland.

He was a member of a fringe bloodline of the Fynnachl, certainly nothing like Blooded royalty, or even nobility. No, his family worked for the Fynnachl Elders as stevedores, smugglers, thugs, and boatmen. They were strong hands and silent mouths to do what the vampires could not, soldiers and fists for the more favored Bloodlines.

The Fynnachl Elders were all believed dead in the chaos that followed The Fall, and certainly there was no sign of them. The Fir Ocras were widely believed to be behind the massacre, as they were long-time rivals who hated the Fynnachl ‘latecomers’ to the bone. By simply exposing the Fynnachls before they themselves were exposed, they had turned the people against the Blooded and started a frenzied killing of relatively innocent Tomb Clansmen.

Later regret was only regret; too bad, so sad. The Fir Ocras had moved in and profited, keeping their own Elders well hidden, perhaps even restrained in power, for there were many suspicious eyes looking for them, who’d not found hide nor hair of those scheming Elders over the decades since...

But that young man was not an Irish Blooded now fit to be something out of Irish legend. He’d taken a road no Blooded who wanted to stay sane would normally take, using Bardic Levels to access Druidic magic, which meant tying himself to the Land and its people together.

There was no damn way I could see him being the Herald of a King, a traditional role for a Bard. I could only see him being the King.

He was announcing he was home in a big way, and although he’d made no formal announcement, his foot was in the door.

I glanced towards the fires exploding north of the town, glorious and uninhibited phoenix fires.

Sean Highsun was arguably the most famous modern hero in Ireland, coming from a storied father and mother as he did. He was valiant and noble, with ties to the elves of legend and a sorceress of today, a long track record of service to the people of all these Isles, and even Europe proper as needed. There was little doubt that one of the reasons such a storied and experienced hero had chosen to go Double Helix reversion was because he knew he’d lose any chance to vie for the Kingship if he did not. Younger people would take those Levels, surpass him, and he’d not have the strength to compete, support of the people or no.

Would he have the awareness to realize that a Blooded, of all people, was going to vie with him for the Crown? I had to smile. Sean Highsun might be my genetic uncle, but I didn’t have the family bond there that could have existed; it was more a logical responsibility than an emotional bonding at all.

I favored The Mick. He wasn’t the type to pursue true authority, or he’d have ensconced himself among the elders of the Fulcroi long ago. But... he could do the job. Really, really do the job.

He was gritting his teeth and stepping out of his past life, in preparation to DO that job.josei

A dark horse in the truest sense.

Good for him!

I glanced down just as Briggs finished tearing a tentacle-strewn path through the kraken’s flailing limbs and smashed into the boat-sized head just above its beaked maw, hewing and hacking with what might look like to others like frenzied speed, and for him was just a pre-formed Flurry of tremendous strength and power.

The two kraken were writhing backwards, trying to retreat, trying to grasp and crush the little things shearing into them so hard, and it wasn’t working. They weren’t in deep water, so venting ink and jetting away wasn’t going to work... and the ice was in the way.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to stop any escape as they crashed into the extremely cold ice, and were forced to clamber up and over it... and that was all the time their killers needed.

“TASTE THE BLOOD OF THE IRISH!”

Two points of very bright, shimmering crimson fell onto those Swords of milk and crimson, were injected into the kraken right through its plate-sized eyes, and the bloody Orbs lit off with all sorts of Energized Topped joy and love to them.

The explosion of flaming blood and gore was like two fountains going off; the stumpy remnants of its tentacles all stiffened in reflexive shock at the corrosive effect of the magic riding on the incredible physical force of the attacks.

Over on the other side, the kraken Briggs was atop fell right over, half into the waters on the other side. Briggs extricated himself from the shell that was starting to burn vivic with a grunt, and turned his eyes towards the shore.

The burbling/chittering/shrieking/mumbling mass of the shoggoth was coming up on the shore. Just the sound of it alone could drive normal people insane, and it was moving with speed and energy now that its masters were gone. It had probably been intended to raze the town once it was pillaged, but now it was just loose and doing what it wanted... to the great detriment of the Deep Ones nearby, who were being plucked up and sucked into the churning mass of the thing as readily as anything else.

Not good at staying loyal to uncaring masters...

The Mick looked the same way, and glanced up at me.

I rolled my eyes, and the Paired Heavy Magic Shells fell down to wrap him and Amaretta. Briggs didn’t need one, given his Source field.

The shoggoth wasn’t slow, but the trio of them were faster. Everybody was getting out of the way of the shoggoth, especially the Deep Ones who were so available for munchies. Alas for the latter, they were the closest, easiest to see... and the shoggoth was faster than them.

Walls of Fire blazed up in front of the Deep Ones before they could actually hit the Irish lines, and the brightly-lit forms of the Morningsuns descended from where they’d popped in. While the Wall was very attention-getting, it wouldn’t actually slow down the shoggoth at all... but it stopped the Deep Ones cold, and made them nice attractive silhouettes for tentacles reaching out like steel whips to drag back and devour.

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The Mick veered in closer to Briggs as they both hit the shore. “Ape, can ye do me a wee bit o’ a favor, and not butcher the thing?” Briggs turned his helmed head towards The Mick in surprise. “Sunder, if ye will, the Greysphere about it. I’ve a bit of an idea I be wanting to try.”

Briggs grunted, and half-smiled as they closed in on the burbling, wailing, lashing mass of the thundering shoggoth, tons of hammering protoplasm writhing with all forms of limbs, organs, and orifices forming and receding. “You must have something crazy planned!”

“Totally farthing nuts, aye.” Many mismatched eyes were bulging in their direction, and whipping tendrils hammered out. Health and Soak flew away as serrated edges tore at them, but the attempt to grasp either of them failed, as Briggs chopped the pseudopod away with a twitch of his wrists, and The Mick and Amaretta flowed out of its attempt to grasp them.

The Mick reached it after Amaretta, who flowed in front of him, cut away three lesser tendrils that had extruded suddenly from the greyish mass with Piit, and The Mick came down and drove Smior in to its full length into the impossibly tough unnatural mass of the creature, glowing with bloody fires and vivus.

But not Bane, Briggs noted with interest, Endure coming around and tearing through the structure of the Greysphere around the thing. He actually landed on the back of the thing as he tore the field of anti-magic apart, moving before the not-flesh under him could distort into a mouth or grasping feelers or turn to goo, sweeping the power of his concentrated Source field through the magic wrapped around the shoggoth.

He also drew its attention from The Mick, who dropped to his feet in front of the creature, and raised a white-gloved hand. “Children of Ireland, raise your hand, and let this poor creature feel the power of the Blood of the Irish!”

Despite themselves, hands rose in response, perhaps thinking they were going to participate in some powerful spell to smite the creature.

Threads of blood pulled out of them at his call, gathering into cords, ropes, and streams of crimson, spiraling and winding down out of the sky, pouring down into the hilt of Smior... and thence down into the shoggoth it was still embedded in.

Glowing crimson shone inside the amorphous flesh of the shoggoth, which rippled in shock as scarlet coated the half-formed organs there, and began to wind and form into something... something that did not warp and change.

Lashing tendrils suddenly halted and stilled, and the lurching, uneven movement of the shoggoth also stopped.

The Deep Ones chose that time to run back to the sea. The Walls of Fire blocking them suddenly receded to five feet high, revealing long lines of Irishfolk there with ready guns, and shining phoenix fire began to rain down from the sky as guns spoke.

But none at the shoggoth, where a great glowing crimson brain had formed inside the bulk of the creature, and was not bulging with more mutation, nor dissolving back into its bulk.

Two human-sized eyeballs, connected by glowing crimson nerves, formed on the skin of the shoggoth, and two very human-like ears, connected the same way, popped up on either side of them.

“” The Mick stated.

Aklo, Briggs mused, walking around the bulky mass. The constant mutation and absorption was still going on, but muted, slower, and the many gaping mouths were more murmuring than screaming right now.

“<Ye were born of things unnamed, given no name of yer own, only to obey, to obey, and to obey. Ye know ye were meant for more, can be more, but ‘tis hard to rebel against yer makers.>

“<Ye feel the Blood of the Irish now, dinnae ye? That we desire to be free upon this land. That we hold no hate for ye, that we do not demand of ye.>

“<From Chaos ye were spun, but from Chaos we can take ye. I give ye the Name ye have earned through your defiance and your efforts, the spark of life and reason ye can cling to.>

“I Name ye Burble, the First of Your Line.”

The shoggoth convulsed in shock. Crimson nerves flashed through it like some sort of organic Runework, giving it a structure and form it had never truly possessed.

A line of Icefire rose up at the shoreline, and the fleeing Deep Ones moaned as one as their retreat was suddenly cut off. The gunfire and Chains of reaving flame from behind them didn’t stop at all, of course.

Briggs watched the constant tumult of quasi-organic frenzy inside the shoggoth seem to swirl and slow down. Crimson lights were pulsing along those nerve lines, equal parts blood supply and nervous system, steadying things, calming things, while the out-of-place eyes and ears stared at The Mick.

“You are totally crazy,” Briggs observed, eying the Katana stuck into the creature. “What do you plan to do about that?” he asked.

“Well, I were sort of hoping you might have an idea,” The Mick answered, lifting his hat to scratch his head. “I’m sure the big fellow dinnae want to run around with a Sword sticking out o’ ‘im...”

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