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

I wasn’t looking at the sea floor, but the arc of my Detects made it plain the sea bottom was dropping away as more and more things were popping up further and further down, and they were growing rapidly in size.

I didn’t have the hours of time I would need to focus on which creatures were which, and be able to Assay them right through a Detect yet. Learning to identify things at that level of detail required hours of practice and fine-tuning sensitivity to the magic, exactly like learning to sift the details of Evil out a rote Detect required for Casters, Paladins, and Heavenbound alike.

So, that said, I could basically only Detect the location and ‘size’ of what was out there, which could itself be very misleading. The Magical Beasts could well be smaller than many of the creatures there, but were far more dangerous, and the Detect would ping them as ‘bigger’ for that. Aberrants almost certainly were, which was why I had both Detects up at the same time. The dual-feed of the Detects would zero in on exactly what the Aberrant was, and hope to heck we didn’t run into a big pack of them prowling around the place.

Nobody thought that was going to happen. Princess Kristie’s progress was fast and quiet, but still visible, streaks of motion cutting across the surface of the water. Sure, whatever was below might not see more than a distorted blur, but they were still be able to see her.

From there, it was shout-outs underwater, done by clicks and screeches and shrieks and snaps and whatever, traveling through the sea at close to Mach 5, something we couldn’t outrun and which could potentially enable them to circle us and close us down.

Whatever, Kris was moving, and they were going to have a time of it if they wanted to intercept her and outrun her.

The goal was to hit a speed of 60 mph, which was pretty much the fastest any natural creature could achieve in the water. That translated to about 500 feet per six seconds.

Her base racial speed as a Rantha/8 was 50, with +10 from Fast Movement, +15 from Dash upped by Melee Levels, and +10 from a Succubus Mark, bringing her to a sweet 85 base speed, able to run twice as fast as most human sprinters, and all but the very fastest of horses. Using the Run Feat, she could do x5 movement at max speed in a straight line, which was 425 feet in six seconds.

Her Lightfoot gave her three advances, at 1/3 her base speed each time, taking her up to 170 equivalent.

I wanted to slap a Run spell on her, but it wouldn’t stack with her Lightfoot, so I didn’t bother. It was fine.

850 feet in six seconds, 8500 feet a minute. About 95 mph, around 150 kph.

There shouldn’t be anything in the seas that was faster than that. The waters just wouldn’t allow it without truly gargantuan strength and magical power, in which case we were hosed, anyway. Like, if Godzilla wanted to catch us, it was going to happen.

They’d probably have to breach the surface to achieve that speed, however.

Reasonably certain we couldn’t be caught normally, and the scouts were all trying not to laugh and shriek with joy with how fast Kris was going as she pumped for velocity, we moved out over the waves.

Ping!

The Aberrant was sixty feet down and off to our left, the most dangerous thing in its area, avoided by all other life-forms, including those that were nominally at its level.

Wait, no, it was being shadowed by a school of four other forms of similar Challenge Rating, but not Aberrants.

Likely one of the niffis or sleeches, and a guardian pack of servant remorans.

Alternate senses the things could use included lateral lines and echolocation, neither of which were going to tell them squat as Kris shot by overhead, and the Wagon cruised invisibly past above the waves right next to her.

The things definitely responded to the sudden passage, beating towards the surface as we swept by.

“We’ve company coming up behind,” Kris’ Voice informed the scouts, ignoring the howling of the wind streaming past. “Don’t panic or react unless we tell you to, but hold on to those grips if I have to juke.”

With multiple eruptions of sparkling spray, the sleech and four remorans breached behind us and came down on the surface of the sea, still not taking actual flight.

Predator instincts instantly sent them after Kris, going after fleeing prey, and they hurled themselves in our direction. The shelled sleech, looking like a nautilus mollusk on roids, hurtled after us with pure magic, while the remorans had to beat leathery wings, but kept pace with their master without much effort.

Hah, that looked like a base move of 90 out of water, a basic Flight magic speed. Kris was Running at 170, there was no way they could catch her V8 heels. Eat her saltspray, suckers!

90 was also about the maximum speed of a standard Lightfooter not using stacking speed shenanigans to really motor along, which explained how they were able to keep pace with the running high-level humans in the past.

Or, I considered, it is also the triple-speed boost of the Exemplar Template, which so much of what the humans here had gained seemed to duplicate.

I noted the shell and hide patterns were different from those I’d seen previously. The remorans had gray hides lined with purple, while the shell of the sleech was tightly-wound blacks and greens. I fed the view to the Mick, who was watching the Detects like a hawk, and he stared at the feed intently for several seconds before admitting he’d never seen the color patterns before.

Par for the course. The vast majority we’d seen had been raised in either shallow or fresh waters, while the Summons he was aware of were influenced by the magic of the formerly-submerged islands to the north.

The flock of aquatics couldn’t possibly keep the pace, and they quickly realized it.

I didn’t hear the command, but I felt the magic coalescing, and fed Kris my eyes as the five creatures ‘glided’, bringing magic into play with more speed than a human could and not slowing down while they did it. Hissing Pyreal and Platinum-grade magic spat out at us.

The scouts behind me all swore at the size and vivid sheen of the magic, far beyond the levels of what they normally saw. It was at least equal to that employed by the insane Shades of Tou-Tou, or the most powerful of the undead.

If that stuff hit us, or hit Kris, we were indeed hosed.

It wasn’t going to happen, of course.

Kris had speed to spare, and juking sideways slightly was easily done without actually sacrificing any lead. We were still pulling away as she slid right, and we watched those racing blasts of shining green acid, whirling blades of force, and spiraling needles of piercing death shoot on past and by us… and not by us very far, before the gathered magic destabilized and collapsed back into random motes of magic.

Before they could possibly Cast again, Kris was out of their spell range and pulling away with every step, never looking back as she did so.

They tried to maintain pursuit, but it was fruitless. Kris was hurtling along and covering ground nearly twice as fast as they were, something they’d likely never encountered. With her incredible Constitution, she could maintain this sprint for miles and miles.

She hadn’t even pulled out Speedy Soul to buff her running speed, saving that for a true emergency, as the Soul Magic would be kind of showy when it lit her Vajra up and turned her into a Golden-footed blur of motion.

Save that for when she really had to make an impression.

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The aquatics finally dove back into the water in sulky sprays of sea water, not that they were done messing with us.

“They are calling for help, I can hear them clicking through the water,” Kris informed everyone. Both of us promptly had the same thought: if we could get them talking for an hour, we could learn their language! I tilted my head to listen to the feed. Sounded, not unexpectedly, like a bitter and spiteful blend of the Elemental language of Water called Hydrus, and Aklo, the discordant and rules-free mad language of the Aberrants.

Well, that would mean Kris would have to put on a Breathing Mask, go out and sit underwater, and listen to them yakking while I listened in so we could engage Polyglot.

Loved that Feat. The only way to learn languages!… except maybe inheriting them from your spiritual progenitor, but we couldn’t have everything, right?

We probably wouldn’t like what they had to say, but then Kris could assail them with The Trembling Song and see how they dealt with Heartsong and an Intimidation check in the ‘Flee! Flee!’ range.

There were faint cheers from the scouts as our pursuers fell away, and the islands themselves were coming up at a cheerful clip. It was only a shade over five miles, Kris could easily maintain this clip the whole distance, and that didn’t give the aquatics a lot of time to respond to much…

Which didn’t mean no time, so we were still on alert.

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The first alert we had was the number of creatures down low dropped off abruptly. Well, stopped, and then began to rise.

It was the opposite of getting deeper. The sea floor was suddenly getting much, much shallower, the number of creatures hugging the surface and populating the slope increased by an order of magnitude.

“Coral reef?” I guessed aloud, having to focus not to turn around.

Something big moved into the area of the Detect, and Kris instantly swerved aside.

Some of the scouts who’d relaxed a bit cursed reflexively, as they had to clutch at their rungs at the abrupt direction change as Kris veered off. The sea floor was rising on the edges of the coral, and something had been moving along it, waiting for us, and was now rising to our flanks as Kris veered abruptly away from it.

Detect Aberrants said it was not a natural creature, and nine’ll get you ten it could also feel the Divination magic, too. Aberrants were famously sensitive to intrusive stuff like that, so I very, very deliberately did not sweep my nominally passive scan back in its direction.

It was about fifty yards away when it breached the surface.

Pink shell, orange and green patterns to it, and thirty bloody feet tall. It had a full dozen tentacles drooping down from it, magic fluttering about it with a lot of power, and I heard the Mick swear in alarm as it came up.

I also saw a shift in its lightless eyes as it registered the Invisible Wagon at Kris’ side.

She had its location and shifted direction smoothly to directly away from it. When the spell came screaming off, a buzzsaw of a Whirling Blade a full six feet across, she veered aside sharply again, the scouts clamping down on their shouts of alarm as they saw the shell of the looming nefane or sleech or whatever it was (I wasn’t going to Assay it!) looming considerably higher than the Wagon, even its head protruding down and out of its massive shell floating above the water higher than we were.

It had still aimed at Kris.

She slid aside from it without effort, the blades of force spinning past an inch from her arm and heading into the water, tearing up a nice spray as they churned through it like a blender, continuing on just like a Hydrous spell. The spell shredded a half-dozen smaller fish attracted to the motion and riveted by the light just long enough for it to sweep by and process them into chum.

It didn’t seem to like the fact it had missed, and it surged after us, tons of not-mollusk-squid and shell on the move.

Pings ahead of us.

Kris promptly headed right over the coral shelf, the scouts staying absolutely silent at the shift as she resumed course for Kryst, just as a flight of bright yellow remorans twice the dimensions of those we’d seen earlier came shooting out of the ocean ahead of us.

They’d plainly been expecting her to run right into the midst of them and be swarmed, but she’d responded too soon, and she was moving too fast. They tried to swoop around and intercept her, beating hard as they fixated on her, while the whale-sized nefane was zooming after us, pulling on more mana…