The Power of Ten

Chapter 5-135 - Damn Bugs...

“That is the Golden Pestilence of Imprus, a Divinely-powered Apocalypse Swarm of insect-constructs! It’s used to wipe whole cities, even whole nations, that displease Him!

“It is totally beyond the ability of any people on this planet to Summon!” I pointed at it. “Where are the people who brought this down? They can’t be far! We’re going to kill them all.”

All heads turned to Shvaughn. She made a face. “Land Pacts can be so annoying, but this one might be short and sweet.” Lights lit up beneath her skin, Hellish Red, then pulsing green, crawling over her skin and replacing the red lights. The golden fires in her eyes were half-replaced by emerald green, glowing equally bright.

She blanched, looked around and beyond, pointing. “They’re in a copse of trees a half klik outside the Swarm, on the other side from the highway.”

I snapped my fingers, and two Disks snapped up. “Get on!” I swung onboard Sleipner as Master Fred mounted from the other side, and She and The Mick barely jumped on the Disks before the unicorn bike hit the gas.

Okay, perfect friction and gripping strength was a thing. I was slammed back against the backrest, and the Blooded and Warlock Grandmaster found themselves clutching onto the Disks with superhuman strength as the wind tore at them, and the outraged unicorn MOVED.

Master Fred spread his arms, and a bubble wind-shield of his Ward formed just in front of the motorcycle as it howled along just above the landscape. I could just see that we hit a hundred kph in about three seconds, and we were covering ground at the kind of speed magic just doesn’t provide easily. The wind was a howling hurricane just outside the bullet that Fred was maintaining, and both The Mick and Shvaughn were crouching to stay away from the edge of the effect.

It was a couple kliks to the edge of the Apocalypse Swarm, the golden flashing of light and color ever more obvious even as the light was fading from the sky. We could only see shadows of whatever was within the swarm, but those shadows were shrinking fast...

“I just saw a flash of white light!” Shvaughn reported.

Someone was alive in there! “Three guesses who!” I called out, as a glimmering array of a dozen Stars rose around my head. Dusk Renewal had come, and with it a Level in Arcane Theurge. The Feat I’d chosen was the last of the Holy Metas, Consecrated Spell, also very important for future use... but useless here against these things, as it was for killing Evil things, not Lawful idiots. A Crown of Stars with twenty-three Shards hummed with deadly purpose around my head, and Shvaughn didn’t give me a very careful look, unh-unh.

Detect I, Detect Law, which I fed into my own low-Mastery Eyes of Heaven. Shards swirled up around my arm, a full dozen of them, gleaming and ready.

Law. I didn’t have anything specific I could use against an opponent of Law. The Holy Metas were there to destroy Evil, after all. It was one reason why Heaven could crush Evil, but had problems with Neutrality, after all.

It was the Grey that killed the Light best, in the end.

The copse of trees was within sight. Sleipner’s alicorn flared, and everyone tensed, knowing what was coming, as the power of the unicorn Blinked us forwards the remaining distance... and as it did so, dumped all of our velocity and left it behind.

We were in the middle of a big circle of people; some were in robes, some in suits, and a few were standing guard. There was a fellow with a harshly pure, very severe Aura and some very formal robes in the middle of a complex magical formation that was the heart of what they were doing here, and which we had just appeared outside of.

“Kill it!” I pointed, and my Shards flowed down around my hand, merging into one poly-colored Ray of prismatic jetsilver light that hit a triangle of force in front of it, went in, and came out as two Rays. It drove in a coruscant dual line of scintillating force at the thing masquerading as a human there, Lawbane shimmering fractured azure all around it.

Shvaughn was suddenly right next to it as its eyes snapped open, hard crystalline orbs that were definitely not human, and which seemed to make every perfect line on its human facade more rigid and perfect.

An Anotxgin, I thought, swearing to myself.

It was about to raise a hand to stop the Shardrays when Shvaughn’s burning Sword, drawn from a dagger’s sheath at her side, roared with the wild anarchic fury of black and yellow-green demonfire, and sheared into that limb, knocking it aside.

Delimited Piercing Lawbane SplitShardrays smashed into its chest, shattered the thing’s 28 or so Spell Resistance, and dumped 12d6, Sudden Topped, Sudden Energized to 72+6d6, plus 14 or so, +5 per die, +2d6 Lawbane for niceties, x 2, damage into the heartless Axiomatic bastard.

Yes, the thing was fantastically tough, but eating 300 points of energy-resistance-ignoring Force damage to the core was pretty damn bad.

Explosions of blood and fire erupted in all directions. Master Fred had raised a Wall of holy fire around the entire circle, swallowing every single person participating in this circle inside, none of whom looked to be touting fire resistance at the moment. It wasn’t a huge amount of damage, but there was no way they were going to be able to maintain this Summoning Circle while a raging inferno was eating away at them.

The Mick had dropped some miniature fireballs, thoughtfully Topped off with Blood Magic, on the guards who were swinging their weapons around, adding to their woes and sending them flying, before leaping at one who looked to have his head about him as he stumbled out of Fred’s Firewall.

I picked three guards, and half my mind let three Shards from the Crown go. They didn’t much like the terminal results.

The Anotxgin, its human Seeming quite gone and looking more like an earth-colored, half-robotic creature now, tottered uncertainly to its feet, trying to raise its arms to guard against Shvaugn’s attack, which definitely wasn’t going to work.

Her One Strike seemed to twist and dance around its block, but really just used incredible speed and utterly inhuman force to shear right through it, carve into the double hole in its chest, and spray upwards in a blast of howling malevolent +11d6 + Con eldritch demonfire, backed by the strength of a full-out Amazon warrior woman.

The thing’s upper body blew apart.

Fred’s Grit boomed silently, and a gaping guard went flying with part of his head missing.

Surprise round over, finisher time. Fred’s Wall of Fire faded as abruptly as it had erupted.

I blew the Pyroclasm off, choosing Cold this time.

Pyroclasm is an army-killing spell. It has fixed damage, a piddly 2d6 from the II Valence it is cast from, but an area of effect that grows with CL and Valence, giving it a potentially huge area of coverage. I wasn’t going to get everyone with a fireball at the center point, and didn’t want to really nuke my own people, although I was sure they could take it, so I opted for low damage, broad area... and Humanbane, which they weren’t going to like, because I wouldn’t suffer the feedback for using it, as I wasn’t human.

All these bastards hurriedly murmuring prayers and spells and clawing for healing potions or guns or whatnot, not so much. Three of them still moving shrieked and stopped that moving as Shards from my Crown slammed into them.

2d6+2d6+13 damage or so exploded out in a wave of heartchilling cold, swallowing everything in rime and ice... except the people I had deliberately excluded from the AoE. That included Sleipner, who had kicked out razor blades from his tires and was now in the process of riding down a guard in a bloody spray of meat and gore as the fellow screamed and died by outraged motorcycle.

Those people who were already wounded basically had their blood freeze solid and died almost instantly, greatly thinning their numbers.

The Mick flowed between three men, Smior trailing an arc of wet crimson as it went through them and their combat armor remorselessly.

Six men were left standing, gaping at us and the frozen corpses collapsing to the ground. Three had guns, and started shooting, the other three were praying madly, flinging out their hands, their voices ringing with condemnation and orders that rang in our skulls... to absolutely no effect.

Save or dies are something you fight with everything, and in this case, we Saved, so they died.

A bullet slammed into my shoulder, rammed into the False Life shield of temporary Soak that I’d Cast as I'd gotten out of Bone Marrow earlier, and I didn’t go down. Two bullets puffed into The Mick, putting holes in his suit, but there was no blood as he charged the man, a veritable wall of crimson following Smiore as it arced through the air like a bloody killing wind.

The final shots whined past Master Fred as he sort of bowed aside, deflected by his Storm Pact.

A Wall of demonflame howled past and over four of them, devouring them alive with 11d6+Con of fun stuff. The shadows of demons raged over them and devoured flesh and bone whole, leaving only seared, smoking earth behind six seconds later.

“Take her,” I said, without any mercy.

“No!” screamed the last survivor, breaking out of the coating of ice she’d been hiding in with a flash of Wrath, trying to get away.

Whoops, ran right into the Interdiction I flicked up to stop her.

There was a crack as a fist caught her on the side of the head like a steel beam, and she dropped on the spot. I didn’t bother to look at her as Shvaugn reached down to grab her, turning to regard the Swarm a half mile away, which had devoured that small town.

Just like I thought, it wasn’t going away...

Twelve seconds later, Shvaughn stepped up next to me. “They found out Sama Rantha was going to stop there, and laid a trap. They were waiting for her to arrive. There’s no Imprusar in the place, so no loss on their end.” She paused. “She doesn’t know why the Swarm isn’t going away, however.”

“Because Summoned creatures are trapped under the goddamn Shroud if they can get in through it!” I snapped in irritation. “Fucktards! Those goddamn bugs will eat anything that’s not Lawful on the entire planet once they realign their priorities!”

Even Shvaughn’s eyes widened. “Oh. She did not know that...” Freaking Apocalypse Swarms weren’t called that for giggles!

“We have to kill them all here before the Swarm splits up and starts spreading out to devour everything! Sleipner, pop the sidecar!” I strode towards it, and Sleipner whickered as the shell of the sidecar popped open. “Fred, stand it up. Shvaughn, you got any problems playing hero?”

“No. These assholes deserve everything that’s coming to them,” she said agreeably, stepping forwards and watching as I murmured the words to a Circle of Protection from Law spell, and cast it into the short Obelisk Master Fred had heaved upright. It lit up with an array of wild, jagged symbols, radiating a defensive field against things of Law.

“You know where the center point of the effect is?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she nodded, eying the Circle. “Will that hold off the Swarm?”

“Indefinitely if you pump it full of Chaotic energy, but it’s just there to get you to the center point. Then you need to radiate as much Chaotic power as you can, draw them in, and let them trash themselves on your flames of Wrath.

“I’ll help pump up Master Fred’s Wrath to double-team them.” I plucked off one of the Scarabs tied to my sash, and tossed it to him. He caught it and hooked it on a button of his jacket without comment. I hopped on a Disk, turning to the Mick. “Lord Mick, we’re both pretty useless, but I need to be closer to feed Master Fred. If you could start on the looting and making sure they are all dead? Save some heads. The Harsites will have questions.”

He just nodded, flicking Smior clean and waving us off. I shoved the other Disk in his direction, and he started waving his hand and collecting things, starting with firearms. Smior gleamed as he flicked it through a frozen neck, and despite it being frozen solid, sheared it through without stopping.josei

Shvaughn swung up behind Master Fred smoothly, and Sleipner took off the instant the two of them were settled. This time I was riding the Disk, and the unicorn didn’t go quite so fast...