Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

The scouts let up on their shooting to watch as Princess Kristie enthusiastically butchered the fishmen, at once brutal, artistic, pragmatic, savage, and supremely graceful about it all. Getting introduced to the view of just how something so massively gory and bloody could be transcendentally beautiful at the same time was a new experience for them.

Kind of horrifying and unsettling, too, but that’s a Rantha for you.

The Mick was breathing hard as the Haste ended, a half-dozen Moarsmen cut and bleeding out behind him.

“That magic be something!” he exclaimed to me. I’d contributed little more than a couple hits from Crown accented with Energy Grasps… which had been enough to blow them off their feet with strange croaking gasps and Banefires eating away at them.

A bellow followed a Bolt of Acid being directed at me.

I Dispelled it by reflex, Silver light lancing out and disassembling the structure of the spell in midflight, the powerful green energies dissipating back into the raw mana they’d been formed from. I focused on the shaman or whatever that was Casting them from atop the walls over there.

Three of them, it seemed. Smaller than these more muscular brutes, more mental development, less physical. Probably frailer.

Sparks fizzled over the Mick, who promptly bolted for the trio, Bunita ready as he grinned, and I trailed behind him.

I noted where he was holding his Blade off in his left hand, yet going for the center of the trio. They plainly weren’t expecting much from him given they were atop a wall, so when he left the ground and was suddenly fifteen feet higher before they could get their next spells off, they were a mite surprised.

Also standing a bit too close together, they were.

A touch-variant Shards, free die size increases, went off as Crown smoothly came across and smacked the one on the right square in the throat, its croaking choke of dismay as I cut off its spell terminated by its skull lighting up and shredding within.

Inertia did its thing as Lord Mick’s momentum smashed the central spellcaster right off the wall, while the secondary Caster to the left stiffened at the full length of Bunita jutting out of its throat, severing its spine and adding it to the death toll.

My Disk followed the Mick down as he landed square on the shaman in best anime swashbuckling style, fish bones cracking as his weight came down on it and made sure it couldn’t try anything fun.

Then both his knives were out and into the goggle-eyed creature’s auditory membranes, and it jerked and kind of clawed at him impotently in stunned disbelief.

“Nice,” I complimented him, sparing a glance around. “I think you’re just lucky it didn’t have an honor guard.”

“What do ye think I just killed out there?” he sniffed. “Didn’t see the green around their throats?” He made a gesture towards his collarbones as he yanked out the knives and straightened up, flicking them clean with a snap of his hands which would have broken the wrists of a normal human. He pushed them back into their scabbards just as the corpses of the other two shamans hit the ground next to us, one-two, and he swept his hand out with perfect timing as Bunita hit the ground and was pushed back up, right into his grasp, to be yanked out and flourished deftly.

No, no, highest MAB and superhuman stat line not on display, nopers.

“We’re going in,” he announced, pointing at the crude temple and pyramidal structure in front of us.

I hopped down off the Disk, but didn’t dismiss it, because quick exits are a thing. “Not scanning anything within, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty.”

“Got it.” He scampered off, and I flew after him, paying attention to Detects as he raced up the stairs on the sides, leading up to one main entry to the sealed temple, out of which wafted an eye-watering stench of fish and brine.

“Gods, ‘tis like Celdon’s fishwharf all o’er again. Never liked this stench...”

He’d never spoken of being in Celdon, so that was news, but it didn’t stop him from doing anything. He went right in, Bunita even lighting up suddenly to give him illumination.

There was no altar or anything, just a round opening with a catwalk around it, stairs leading down on the far side, and a round pool visible below.

“A spawning pool?” I asked, as faint things lit up inside it below the surface.

“Aye, seen ‘em before. But never actually on Dereth. They kept them to the islands, especially their own island off the southern shore.”

I glanced at the Visual File of the map. “The Moarsman City?” I asked, as lightning tinkled Silver around my fingers, swirling and hardening into chime-like Shards.

“Aye. If they’re anything like those, a Matron will pop up if we kill the spawn below.”

I blinked. “What? Oh, they sublimated a Summons point?”

He paused a moment, considering that, as little rat to badger-sized fish-folk splashed around in the Pool below. “Well, aye. But… ‘tis strange, the little ones were Summons, too…”

I blinked again. “Summons don’t grow up. Why would there be little ones around?”

He coughed, shadows across his face in the light of Bunita and my Shards. “Well, it were not the first time I’ve seen it. But why waste the effort on doing this here, now?”

Vivus swirled over my Shards, and I let them go.

The spawn in the pool were momentarily illuminated by the Lightning going off and saturating the full extent of the Pool. The corpses bobbed to the surface, and immediately began to Burn unwhite.

Fwzap! The guardian Matron of the pool, a foot taller and thicker-scaled than any of the other moarsman, materialized. She immediately uttered a guttural cry on seeing the dead moars, and raised her head to glare at us on the catwalk above her, kind of hard to miss with a glowing Sword there and another flight of Shards flicking up around my hand.

“She’s a 200, Lord Mick,” I stated calmly, watching as she looked about the room, saw the stairs, and moved for them with great speed.

He lifted Bunita, and I gestured the single-target Haste all over him, Silver lightning dancing over his arms and feet. “Debuffher!” he said in double-speed, and then raced to confront her.

Hmm. Well, he wanted the fight, crashing right into her in a blur of motion, and claws, jaws, and gouts of acidic gunk began to fly against the sparking steel of his defense.

Well, blow Valences and Pool, that was all there was for it. I hit the proper Notes as I invoked what I could, added Piercing Spell on top for the magic defense push, and first dropped the Imperil IV on her.

In Power of Ten terms, her Natural Armor just dropped four points for a few minutes. The steely defense of them became something closer to soft wood, pitted against a really, really sharp enchanted Weapon. Pyreal steel alloy flashed and bit deep, gouging out blue blood and opening up steely muscle made for swimming through the waters all day.

She should have been able to bull him right over, but his strength was considerably above what it should have been, a rival to her own, and all trying to push him around got her was a bone-deep gash on her arms, while he let the acid from her breath spatter and sizzle on his skin and not really do anything.

His grin when the Blade Vulnerability IV went off was unfeigned, and he really began to light into her.

I was watching her carefully, ignoring the pain and damage as her flesh split open under the Vulnerability doubling his cutting damage and chewing through scales and meat with devastating aplomb and speed.

He still wasn’t into the MAB acceleration of attacks yet, but neither was his parrying penalized. The matron’s increasingly frantic blows still failed to reach him, and his natural defenses held up against her acid.

Scales softened up and damage doubled, with Haste doubling his attack speed, the Mick wore her down with great ferocity, her 1000 Health dropping precipitously. I watched and waited calmly as he did so, until finally she couldn’t raise her claws in time and whatever magical reinforcement was preventing him from just chopping her in two failed. A crit went off, the Crushing Blow and Biting Strike Runes on Bunita flashing as they did so, and he hewed her thick neck off her shoulders in one lightning-quick blow, trailing arcs of Silver electricity.

I flicked some Vivic Shards into the corpse as it fell away and off the catwalk, the Mick deftly punting the falling head after the corpse. Already misting, it went over the side and into the spawning pool, which was already covered with white mists from disintegrating moarspawn.

He held up his hand, little Silver sparks still trailing over it, and clenched it once. The sparks popped and ended, and he followed my eyes down to the pool below.

“I love that spell, lass. Now, what’s got ye so interested below?” he asked me.

“Compare the Burn time to that of Summons.”

He watched in silence, knowing the fighting outside was done, everything there being vivified. Kris was already directing the skulls of the shamans be saved for Baneskulls for future use, the normal moarsmen not powerful enough to be of service for the effect.

“The Summons, they Burn away quick, as they dissipate when killed naturally. Ectoplasm, ye called it.” He watched unblinkingly as nothing below was doing that. “But… we saw her be Summoned, like.”

“I seem to remember you saying that the Moarsmen can often be found defending old temple sites?”

He nodded slowly, watching the slow disintegration of the bodies below. They Burned quickly, but not nigh-instantly, like the Summons did, or like the shades, saturated with Essence of Shadow and which almost blazed as the Vivus took them. “Aye. There’s been no organized attempt to speak with them, but they guard places sacred to the gods of this world, be they good or ill. Priests can command them, and they guard the places of Light nigh as easy as those swimming with tentacles and shadows, even if the latter blights and corrupts them.”

“No competition or rivalry between them?” I had to ask.

“Never we’ve seen once grown. They respect each temple and won’t violate it, nothing between tribes, an’ they don’t normally go on the attack, even if their masters might be rivals.” He paused a moment to consider that. “Or perhaps they do, an’ we’ve never seen it.”

“You mentioned how the Deep was very angry at those seduced by the emergence of the northern islands from the depths...” I pointed out.

“Aye, so it was. Rewarding us for killing off its wayward minions, even though they were… just Summons.” He trailed off slowly.

“Except maybe they weren’t? And maybe it was something like the Deathstones, except using the Summons system to get their immortality, so even their spawnlings and guardian matrons might be impossible to kill, and just get reset back to an earlier paradigm?”

“Lass, ye make my head ache with yer paranoid conspiracy talk an’ convoluted omens o’ doom.”

“Imagine MY head,” I rebutted firmly. “Regardless, this Summons area is now Sealed, which means even Spawn returning via the Summons system instead of a Deathstone aren’t coming back, and the same for that Matron.” I finally lifted my eyes and looked around. “This place should still be demolished.”

He flicked out Bunita, her razor-keen edge barely scoring the oddly light-colored coral-stone here. “’tis magically-reinforced?” he confirmed.

“It’s hooked into whatever section of the ley line network powers up the Summons point they either condensed or co-opted. Sever that, and it’s just stone and coral, brittle and vulnerable.”

“Can ye do such a thing?” he asked in interest. “Seems to me something that a circle of boring fellows in dusty robes be doing, bringing things up an’ taking ‘em down with magic.”

“I’ve actually been exposed to a lot of ruptured and quiescent node-tappings recently, and Silver Magic is rather good at this stuff. I don’t have to make it blow up, I just have to block the tapping and unravel it. Then you’ll see what an adamantine blade can do to swiftly-decaying coral and basalt in the hands of someone who knows fortifications.”

“Or a mite few Bludgeon Bolts?” he asked archly.

I looked up at the clearly magically-Shaped stone of the dome above us. “Most definitely. Given the origins of the place, I actually expect it to crumble down in short order.”

“They all were wearing bracelets of gold, too.” We turned around as Kris strolled in, the scouts crowding in behind her. I stepped off into open air to make room. “So, there were fine plunder, arrr, matey, for this raiding and pillaging o’ the temples, arrrr.”

I snorted, the Mick looked aggrieved, and the scouts snickered as they looked about with interest. “It’ll take me a few hours to cut the link to the network, and then we need to demolish this. I expect a lot of it will crumple down to sand once there’s no magic keeping it in shape.”

“A nice trick for getting rid o’ unwanted scenery,” Lord Mick noted. “I wish I had the same trick handy some time ago, given things worth chopping away...”

“Breaking that would have been breaking Asheron’s Ward, so likely not a good idea, but who knows. I’m guessing our run for the night is all done, Highness.”

“That’s absolutely fine. Do what you have to do, and then we’ll break this place down and return it to the sand.”

The moarsmen had been Purple-Brown, as if born to serve, obey, and do whatever was commanded of them without giving a damn about how amoral it was, no conflicts of interest at all. No regrets in offing them, pity the bastard things...