The Power of Ten

Chapter 12-339: Mother of Curses

The cry didn’t come through my Mark, it came through my Allegiance /tell, and I shifted into high gear the instant I heard it.

-Location!- and it came as I was gesturing, VERY high-speed, high-end thoughts from Sama...

Her Marklink wasn’t working!

THERE... a hundred miles from my nearest Lived-Line, all the way around the world in India.

Something was attacking her with terrific speed and force, coming out of nowhere. Her Soak was already gone, and it was shredding her flesh...

Pop, gone.

Something was interfering with communication on an /tellepathic level. I felt her Allegiance link abruptly go silent.

It was eavesdropping on her Allegiance link!

All the Concentration focused as I rematerialized, forcibly overcoming the readjustment of light, gravity, pressure, position, and inertia as I turned and aimed at the horizon, and Fastcast a Linejump.

Thunder boomed as I shot across the miles, skimming the horizon and ending up 4500 feet in the air, just below the moaning chorus of the Haze.

Orient, turn, cycle the power, precisely there...

I was almost a mile in the air, and had no problem reaching my destination as the next Linejump went off.

I slammed to a stop at the edge of an Interdiction, and looked down, Fastcasting...

And changed my spell abruptly as I saw the little Stones zipping around the malformed thing with the space-cutting tentacles and impossible physiology whipping at Sama with terrible speed and focus.

And... it had a Ring on one of those bone-razor extensions on former arms. You couldn’t fool a Ringlord about that...

Sama would already be dead, or at least down and regenerating, if she weren’t so damn hard to kill. She looked like an undead thing right now with the sheer amount of slicing damage she’d taken and parts of herself leaking around, and if Stand and Tremble weren’t Indestructible, they would’ve also been shattered and torn apart.

A winding Orb of wild magic, sizzling and popping with internal energies, went hurtling down at the creature attacking... a creature that had Ioun Stones around it.

I distinctly saw two eyes in odd places looking at me disdainfully as the spell came streaking in to hit the creature, and one of the Stones zipped over to intercept it, while the Ring on its finger gleamed, ready to throw the spell back at me first.

A lavender and green Ellipsoid, thank you, Eagle Eyes...

It took only an instant of will to shut that Ring down. Its magic didn’t come from this world, it was made elsewhere... and I was the Ringlord HERE.

Mmm, I watched emotionlessly as the Orb was sucked in, already starting on my next two spells, Singing and the entire manascape humming in chorus along with me, making no gestures or words to give away what I was doing, or why the Ring hadn’t worked. It might have been able to decipher a Resonance...

Space tore, and the Old Steed came up next to me. I mounted as I moved, flitting a mental command to stay out of the Interdiction and the Stillflight Field that was centered on Sama, eyes on that Stone that had just absorbed The Rending of the Pole.

My spell selection had started taking a different tack in recent days, as I moved from general do-everything-myself to Support Caster. The key event had been taking out that Summoned Cultivator in China. In short, I had to be ready to spell-duel now, and that meant some very specific spell choices to get around Casters who thought they were being clever.

Absorbing and Turning spells were always favorites among that set. Spell Turning was fought with Resonance. Absorbing was fought by turning it against them, or Spiking it, and the spell used to do so was The Rending of the Pole.

There was a flare of light, and three of the thing’s nine eyes flashed to the Ioun Stone, now pulsing with light, and on pure reflex it flicked out a tentacle to smack the Stone away.

Contact was enough to set off the explosion. The absorbed spell sucked in the entire waiting power of the storage matrix of the Stone, and promptly detonated it. It came complete with Toppling, which instituted a strength check at +Caster Level to knock the target off their feet, too.

In short, that thing went flying as the Ioun Stone blew apart, hitting the ground and rolling wildly, tentacles flailing at the shock before it could get back to its feet. This created a gap between it and Sama, who slid to a halt sixty feet away from it.

My next two spells were on the way as fast as I could Weave them.

The first was a Reach Delimited Heal on Sama, spearing down on her blood-splattered self with 300 points of healing.

Pro tip: Those who can Regenerate take temporary Health damage. Temp damage is healed 1:1 with normal damage.

She had to be sitting at -50 or less Health, but all that went away, and she healed right up to at least 200 Health, blood sucking back inside her, wounds closing, organs getting stuffed back in place and bones mending, although it didn’t do much for her attire.

A bunch of her Soak came roaring back with it, and suddenly she was ready to fight again. Divine Healing magic is quite OP.

I noticed one of her Bracers had been Sundered, as she was missing it. More importantly, while that creature certainly had some Buff spells up, they weren’t directly combat-related, and it had been attacking from the edges of reach... outside her Null.

It was attacking her as if it knew how to do so, using magical Items instead of spells to Buff itself!

Which is why my Chain Item Dispel IV hit it as it bounced to its feet, powering right through the Dispel it tried to Counter the spell with and the Spell Turning that simply wasn’t working. My spell promptly disrupted the workings of every single magic item upon it, including the six other different Ioun Stones, which promptly fell to the ground around it.

I kept the Sublime Chord humming as I Said in Navajo, “<That’s a Pseudonatural Creature, but I can’t tell the base. Use a Brilliant configuration on it. Assume it can hear telepathic communication.>” Good luck knowing this language, thank you, Polyglot... which I knew Sama also possessed.

“It’s a Hag,” Sama spat in Human, letting the remnants of her shirt and vest fall away, revealing her absolutely Nothing to See Here, save for a lot of scar patterns both long and freshly healed. “I think it’s our Cursemother.” There was a flicker as adamantine flared into a humming, shining bar of pure natural-armor-cleaving golden Light... along with Greater Ki-Bound, Enmity/Evil, Bane/Aberrant, Blooding, Bane of Legends, and Blessed. I think she called it the Great Old Ones Configuration or something.

Tremble’s somewhat flustered notes fell into a slow, steady rhythm that I was much more familiar with, Stand began to beat, and Sama’s entire demeanor changed as she entered a battledance.

She had copious amounts of natural healing that hadn’t been able to keep up with the assault on her... but now I was here. I had her back.

Stand was thrumming Courageous, and had her front.

Importantly, I had suppressed the, huh, Boots boosting the Hag’s speed...

“Hag who thinks it all a game, darkly ever denies her blame;

Play the witch, be the bitch, scratch the itch... but mind that twitch;josei

What goes around, comes around... and now, you Hag, she’s coming around.

Tremble, she comes!”

Hello! That Song had a reverb to it that came from something with weight and power from it... a Song, not an Inspiration.

I watched all nine of those eyes widen in disbelief. “YOU DARE SING THAT SONG TO ME?!” ripped out of both of her mouths, with that screeching granny-edge tossed up with some Akloish madness for effect.

Damn, that barely humanoid thing was actually a Pseudonatural Hag... Didn’t she look like she’d gone through the mad science blender machine and got put back together for something’s benefit...

But Sama was coming in with Sword and Shield now, and my eyebrows rose as something unfolded out of Tats along her sides, and grabbed the flat grips of the two hand-autobows hanging from her hips. Tines snapped out, Ten Slots and Main-Gauche lit up, actions pumped, and bolts of pure force materialized as Fall and Down spread wide of her and her Sword on Arakne Arms, each as long as she was tall, able to shoot from any crazy angle she wanted to as she came in.

So cool! I wanted me a pair...

Of course, this time the Div Ward the Hag had on herself to defeat my topical Divinations wasn’t active, part of that Amulet about the... whatever it was that used to be a neck, said Warding Amulet currently non-functional.

“<At least ten k of Health Qi, this thing is loaded,>” I noted as the Hag moved into Sama’s charge, gritting her many mis-matched styles of teeth and taking the impact as she lashed away with crazy tentacles, that extrusion of a bite, and pseudopods of bone and razors that might have been arms once.

There was an absolute explosion of violence as hideously powerful primary melee combatants started clashing. Dust and ragged vegetation started flying, air vortexes from magic and spatial tearing were exploding out and around... and I was looking right through at the two eyes that were watching me sharply and the Old God’s Skull sitting on the end of Clavus.

Flick, and I sent out Shards II, the Seeking variety that ignored cover and concealment, and was a touch attack that ignored the abominably tough Natural Armor she had.

One of her tentacles broke off to flash off a Counterspell at II, earning her/it an immediate Attack of Opportunity from Sama as her pattern broke, and Sun Strikes flared with light and dumped a little bit extra punishment into her. Health Qi vented, and when the Fastcast Shards from me followed up, that was Countered too, for a cost in ephemeral bloody light.

Clever. I was pretty damn sure I could out-Slot her, but why bother?

She was definitely not happy when the Repeat Spell meant that the next salvo was a triple, not double, and she couldn’t keep up with it.

“Wail, oh wail, you cursed thing, there is no mercy where we Sing.

Lies and delusions to which you cling, let clear and pure the truth now ring...”

The Hag was blown off her pseudo-feet by eighteen full Holy-laden Shards with a ton of Kickers, and was still in midair when Sama was shredding her, non-stop Brilliant Bolts also sparking into her crazily from the sides.

Meh, 300+ damage from me, a poke on all that Health Qi. But interrupting her attack cycle and giving Sama some more AoO’s as the Hag flew haplessly off her feet was only contributing more.

I left off the Fastcast follow-up as she Countered my first spell, bouncing to her feet in time for Sama to Charge into her again, and more bloody Health Qi to vent in bright explosions of Focus, reFocus, reFocus...

A Crown of Stars rose around my head. Her extra misplaced eyes squinted/widened on seeing it... especially when she counted the number of Stars...

The Hag wasn’t even really trying to dodge at this point, she was... looking for a way to escape. She was trying to maintain reach and stay out of Sama’s Null, putting in her own aggressive strikes, winding around Sama’s shield with whiplash speed, splitting Sama’s skin through all that DR... and taking the Karmic Strikes in return without flinching, as blessed Legend-worthy damage punched her own Damage Reduction without hesitation.

She was waiting for me to break my Casting cycle to Heal Sama...

“From the deadly light you’ll crawl,

Down, down, to that cold grim hall,

Where judgement waits, your time has come,

Your soul of filth, of rot and scum...”

Someone definitely did NOT like this bitch. Thing. Whatever. The Hag also didn’t like it when my Spellflare went off, exploding her Counterspell with feedback, burning up them Spell Slots as my Repeat Spell slammed into her, coming around and above Sama to add to the Hag’s woes and send her sprawling again, eating up more Health Qi.

Was she going to try and get off some uber spell? I was just waiting for it.

She was trying to keep more Dispels off herself... now why was that?

My damage contribution was mild, although I could basically send off unCounterable Stars to harass her for like 50 points a pop...

Well, layer it all on her and see what she was trying to hide... my guess was something on Contingency she thought she could get past me. Hmm, some non-dimensional Ride the Lightning or similar effect? Did she think she could outrange me with such things?

No, get out of the Interdiction, and Teleport away, dropping something to shred the dimensions and foil a Trace. She didn’t need to get far, just far enough.

I think that was a mouth that twisted as she Countered my Dispels with Dispels, ate the attacks for doing so, and knew what was coming next.