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

The Olthoi Sentinel on the right drove itself right onto Quaver’s poised point, locked statue-hard and unmoving in the Archer Stand Thrust. It squealed and kicked at Princess Kristie, the blows ringing off her Shield Stand, and then it took both my Shardrays in its abdomen, right where torso and bug-body met and some rather important organs were located.

Vivus blew out as its insides ruptured, the braced Sword doing enough monstrous damage to weaken it to the magic. Kris promptly juked sideways, hacking at the lead leg of the other Sentinel and chopping it off, even as the Chains from the Shardray went into it first, and then split off to ravage through another four dozen olthoi beyond it.

Kris drove two plunging stabs into the tauroid Sentinel through gaps in its chitin, then bounced back to her original position before its rearing not-retreats could pull her out of place. It came down, and she was out of reach and in place as the next wave of olthoi crowded it, staggering from the flaming holes in them but still trying to get to me.

Stone sprayed and tumbled as the raging Sentinel cleared the wall out of its path, plowing through the foundation trying to get around Kris and maybe at me. Kris just backed up, letting the olthoi tear apart the Mansion’s walls without batting an eye. I turned both Shardrays on the Sentinel as it lunged for me, and it was unceremoniously bashed against the wall by Kris moving with way too much force for her size.

Wedges carried on coruscant force-rays punched through its abdomen and out, raising shrieks of pain as they glowed and Burned on its insides. Flaming acidic ichor sprayed from the two holes in it, but it kept right on trying to reach me.

Unfortunately, such single-mindedness let Quaver plumb the depths of it and send Lost Light ripping through its underbody, tearing apart important stuff there with every jackhammer strike up into it.

Something key ruptured, internal pressure was lost, and its legs kicked and folded up underneath it. Kris spun, the insectile skull of the thing leapt from its neck, and then she was back in front of me as more Burning wounded olthoi clambered over the dozens killed by a double set of Chained Shardrays punching through them, all trying to get to me.

Olthoi carapaces cracked and shattered as acid and vivus combined to break them down quickly, a supplement to the clacking progress of insectile limbs carrying their heavy bodies into this fight.

Kris just grinned as her Waveskating Step handled the ‘broken ground’ effortlessly, sometimes crushing rounded shells flat as she stepped on them with far too much heavyfoot force for her weight, sometimes dancing over corpses as she slid and juked into position with weightless speed and flowing precision. She was treating the olthoi like bumper cars and beer cans, to be punctured, punched, kicked over, and stomped as she deemed fit.

Olthoi were heaped up in front of us and then broken down by the tromping of their own kind or Kris collapsing their shells as she held her circle of death around us, not bothering with another Cleave Train as we were pushed back into the Mansion… not that such meant anything to her, either.

I Shaped off a support from the stone walls, and she coolly stepped off the broken wooden flooring onto a platform in midair, while I calmly floated in open space behind her, keeping up with my salvos of Shards.

The swarm outside was actually falling in numbers faster than it was growing now, and I matched the vector to the way the wind was blowing. They’d been dragging in more olthoi from the east, doubtless stirred up by all the burning Elemental gunk popping and steaming all over the landscape. It was now coming out of the west, where, well, the olthoi were pretty much cooked.

Still, it was thinning, and my being able to hit fifty of them at a time, every time, was certainly helping. Kris was one-shotting all but the toughest stuff, and the tough stuff still wasn’t strong enough to get past her, especially when she expeditiously began batting them off the stone walkway for a sixty-foot fall to a very uncompromising floor… a floor I quickly had hundreds of yard-long spikes jutting from just to give them an even merrier time of things as they plummeted down from above and impaled themselves.

Then I had to grow the things bigger as the falling olthoi kept stacking up on themselves faster than vivus ate them away, but that was fine. Mira was happy to handle that matter while I did the Darts-targeting off my Detect Vermin, and Kris was smart enough to bat them around to different locations and give them time to crumple and Burn down without stacking up too high.

The tipping point was reached when the last of the powerful Swarm variants, which seemed to draw strength from the presence of their kin around them, was chopped down, and all that were left were standard olthoi of fanatic mindset, but not the same level of durability.

Kris began to advance on them, anything wounded and Burning not able to sustain a hit, and everything close to us was wounded by now. Her Cleave Train went off, and olthoi shrieked and died by the dozens as she just didn’t stop moving. I ripped more flaming holes in more and more of them around her killpath, and she veered to include them in a relentless butchery of the bugs.

The last five hundred of the bugs lasted less then two minutes as I holed them and she put them down, at the end there building up so much killing momentum that the olthoi seemed to be exploding to pieces around her as she tore through the mass of them, unstoppable and undeniable.

The last thirty of them died in less then six seconds, ripped through and apart and tumbling out of her path as they ruptured in Flames and dropped with their shrieking cries, acrid death scent, and spurting acidic blood going vivic.

I stood up by the fallen and shattered ruin of the doorway and nave, looking out over a field of misting olthoi carcasses all breaking down and covering the ground in heavy mist. There was only their death scent in the air now, no fighting scent, and the incoming olthoi I could see in the distance were slowing now, the smell of their living kin alarmingly absent before them.

I flicked a Mending at Kris’ leathers, and she grunted as they began to put themselves back together. She had a lot of light injuries, and had taken a couple nasty impaling stabs at some point or another, but everything was being Fast-Healed away. Her Vajra and Necklace had dealt with pretty much all of the acidic damage, and at least kept it from coagulating on her.

“That was a lot of Shards,” she noted, eyeing my Aurora Stance and the subtle glitter of mana draw as I was standing there surrounded by Disks of salvage, two heaped up with olthoi heads of the more powerful bugs. “I thought you were having problems with Perpetual not working properly now?”

I lowered Crown, popped off its noquar cap, and the Wand of Shards within it was ejected. It fell into my hand, and the rowan-wood and quartz length promptly collapsed into flinders that fell to dust before they hit the ground.

“Oh, well, that explains it,” she said easily. A Wand held up to a hundred charges of a minor spell, and Wand as Staff meant I could use them at the same level as my own Casting ability. “How’s your Reserves?”

“Pool down to one-fifth,” I admitted. “Sorcerer Slots down to half. Wizard is fine, but that’s emergency-only, danger-level.”

“And now you’ve got to make a back-up Wand.” I inclined my head at that. “Really, you should have a few of those, right? Can’t your apprentices make them?”

“Yes. I generally have them make them, and then I charge them up. They don’t do offensive spells much, as without Wand as Staff their offensive power is very limited, so they enjoy the change of pace.” The single biggest use of Wands was for Healing magic, naturally.

“Like every Caster who can use a Wand Chamber doesn’t grab that Feat,” Kris snorted, turning around to look at her handiwork while her Fast Healing did its thing. “Only two-thirds Summons,” she judged, looking at the way most of the bodies had already disappeared, the living taking longer to break down, and that still happening fast with so much vivus in so small an area. “That’s a lot of olthoi.”

“And more coming, trying to work up their nerve to investigate further,” I pointed out, and she huffed, a cruel smile flitting across her lips before she looked away, pale violet eyes flashing a promise to come back and finish the job.

“Right, so we’re out of here. Straight south and over the mountains, let them whine when they can’t chase us readily?”

“If at all possible, I want to investigate the top of the mount and one of the Dungeons near the Paradox Olthoi Hive.” She gave me an inquiring glance. “The Mick said there was an NPC there who sold an Olthoibane Infusion for the Swords of Lost Light. Their tent was right above the Paradox zone, yet was never attacked by the olthoi. Also, down in that Dungeon were the bunch of NPC’s who made more Olthoi-Slaying Weapons out of olthoi parts.” We only had four of the things to use as references right now.

“Ho, that is indeed worth investigating,” Kris admitted with a nod and glance at Quaver, her Sword pulsing with satisfaction at a job of extermination well-done. “Do you think they might still be alive?”

“The ones above-ground, no. I am hoping the olthoi would leave alone by instinct any materials that are baneful to them. The ones below-ground… the way Lord Mick described it, the Dungeon was designed to defend against olthoi, and they had excellent Weapons for doing so. I don’t know where they’d get their food and drink, but they seemed to have no problems doing so before, so who knows?”

“And if not, if there’s even one of their Weapons left around, that’s good enough for us,” Kris nodded understanding. “Okay, that’s pretty reasonable.” She flipped Quaver over and resheathed the Sword as it fell to dagger-size, stretching out and popping her shoulders as she did so. “I’m guessing we should also take a different path there? Or how do you want to play this?”

“Well, we can’t do much investigating if we’re trailing a horde of them again,” I noted.

“That leaves Cloudstepping or Invisibility,” she murmured. “The latter won’t last overlong, while the former does leave us attracting fliers, but the bugs on the ground shouldn’t chase us…”

“I’d suggest waiting until nightfall and doing a Cloudstepping Run along a new course, seeing what we can see with our Masks and noting it down for the future. This IS a scouting trip, after all. Gotta get some work done.”

We both turned to look at the ruin of Citadel Valley. A lambent glow in two spectrums painted the sky there, while unleashed Elemental energies were riding out on the multi-colored lava spilling out the former canyon entryway to the place.

The great hive up the mountain nearby was peppered with all sorts of unusual Elemental fires, while olthoi swarmed the place and tried to pry them out, causing Elementals to erupt out of nowhere when they did so.

“I imagine they really don’t like us by now, but lo and behold, they aren’t running about the landscape where all the happy burning lights are,” Kris noticed with a practiced eye.

“Might sound funny, but I can probably get mana back faster around stuff spewing out lots of it. Hey, you might even amuse yourself with popping some Elementals up and putting them down for practice.”

“Kill counts are eternal!” she agreed. “Mom gets so envious about the fast spawn of stuff here. She wants you to hurry up and make Thirteen so her and dad can take a high-karma vacation here!”

I didn’t know what Levels they were, but the idea of a pair of senior Ranthas vacationing here with karmic accumulation on their minds was all sorts of bad news for someone!