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

The end of the severed stump hit Princess Kristie’s head so hard she was clothes-lined down and over on her backside before she could think about it. She stretched the process of not thinking as she continued the roll over and back, tons of crushing steel ice smashing down on top of where she’d been, and leapt backwards to plant herself, shake her head, and grin savagely.

Extending limbs that could shoot out to near fifteen feet long wriggled angrily on its torso, cut back to less than five feet long now. With that went much of its reach, and the rotational kinetic energy of its wild-angled spin-cuts.

It took her another few seconds to remember how to speak as her Fast Healing tended to restore combat effectiveness before witty quipping, but her smile was unfeigned as she growled, “You’re mine now!”

It had lost reach as well as size of its attacks, the stumps much less spread out than the branches had been.

Tremble, oh, oh, ohhhhh, Tremble, I come...

Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.

Dead thing of ice and coal, snow and iron,

Meet Light and steel, skill and fire.

All my Ways, all my Dragons rise to the fight,

My soul is singing, dancing at the sight.

You’ve no soul, I know, I know,

but I’ll give you the honor as I stand over your bones.

Tough bastard, Abominable named truly,

But no little snowman I.

You faced a Rantha Hag, and it was your time to die.

Tremble, ohhh oh oh ohhhh, Tremble, I come!

======

“Fucking Hell,” Lord Mick murmured, unable to stop himself, spellbound as everyone else was as they watched Princess Kristie Rantha blaze through a Bladesong.

Ding… ting… ding… ting…

The notes beat a countdown to doom, and it was simply too gorgeous to look away from.

Her Vajra had extended down Quaver, and the Lost Lights and flames of the Blade had wrapped around her in serpentine coils of multi-hued light, dancing with her and leaving lingering images here, there, and everywhere as she blurred through her attacks with impossible speed and surety.

The Snowman could move fast enough to keep up with her, but it couldn’t track her fast enough to land a blow now. Deprived of reach and area, she had no difficulty moving just enough to prevent it from touching her, and the swirl of savage grace cutting through it from all directions was just as damnably confusing to watch from up here as it was down there.

Conceptually, it was a Blade Dance, a Heartsong technique that internalized your Heartsong and doubled the bonuses derived from it.

Her active Heartsong bonuses could hit +6, Courageous on Quaver’s Greater Soulbound Bane/Constructs Bane of Legends +VIII chassis added another +4, and suddenly she was rocking +20 to hit and damage, much of which she was feeding into Combat Expertise to raise her Armor Class into the stratosphere.

It couldn’t hit her, and that meant she was simply going to Seven Rending Dragons it into oblivion once she hit the +7d6 cap and continued it unceasingly into a blur and wildly savage dance of oblivion.

She was carving it apart and down with blasts of exploding flames propelling chunks and shards of it away from its mass, slicing through it in a carefully-contained superflurry of blows dancing on the edge of disaster, spin moves no one should try in a fight, dares moving in and out on it, and just plain playing it like a dance partner coming to the end of the music.

I listened to all their breaths catch at the same moment as the Blood Rose shimmered into view, this time run through with blazing multicolored flames. Those same flames were burning on the frozen steel-ice of the Abominable Snowman, nobody knowing when they were actually inflicted.

And then they were all lost as everything swirled and became lines of light, became lashes of fire exploding here, there, and everywhere as everything crit, and the Abominable Snowman was covered in exploding sword strokes.

I watched the impaling nose fly away. Iron icicle teeth shattered and fell, glowing red hot as they were severed and blown away by the eruption inside its mouth. The stovepipe hat was shredded as it blew away with what would have been a scalp, the coal eyes exploded and blew out of its skull as its flailing arms became true torches, unable to maintain their cold against the fire splitting through them.

The double eruptions on its torsions of force ripped them apart this time, and something ignited in every single snowy sphere as the eruptions followed the threads of force deep inside the integrity-comprised icy shells. A cold light turned fiery over all those slash lines…

The Abominable Snowman didn’t explode. With sort of a tired sigh and crunch, it collapsed down, falling apart, hissing and steaming as it lost all cohesive and internal resistance. Enchanted ice finally collapsed and melted under the assault, and it was all over.

Well, sort of.

“MOVE, YOU GAPING IDIOTS!” I told them, shoving the Mick and Rogar ahead, because there was something gathering and starting to burn as those split, fiery coals ignited on the ground, forming a Summons pattern.

“Ah, fuck!” the Mick shouted, which turned into a whooping warcry as he drew Bunita, and the somewhat shocked and dazed Roaches went screaming after him as arcane flames ignited on the ground and then leapt up in thick flowing streams of molten earth.

“Foolish meatbags! You believe defeating my creation will save these abominations from their proper fate! I have waited too long-”

The Coldphasing Claymore executing a beautiful arc of pale light reflecting off a thousand particles of Lost Light bisecting the half-molten black and red-hot skull of the towering Magma Golum that had popped into existence there rather interrupted its monologue.

A unique Magma Golum, because the Assay gave it a Name of Scold.

Ostensibly it had made the Abominable Snowman to kill the snowmen, hating the frozen village that existed close to its lair on the nearby Mount Ingot, beneath which it had a lair and forge facility.

That meant that it was supposed to be intelligent, and if so, it should have had some kind of agency in the intervening years where nobody had disturbed it at all.

It was definitely a whole lot tougher than it had been all those years ago, as Lord Mick and the Roaches quickly discovered.

Still, their Wolfpack was supremely coordinated and effective by now. Shafts of frozen energy spiraled into it as the archers unloaded on it, and ice spit and crackled and blew into steam upon the red-hot stone blazing forth between ridges of black obsidian and solid basalt.

My contribution to the fight was Dispels and Counters to its Buffs and War Magic. It quickly noticed that I was canceling out its spells, and stopped trying to use them, making this a pure melee fight… where it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as its Snowman creation.

That was especially true when the Mick Infused a Gold Frost Break armor Debuff into it via Bunita, while Rogar thoughtfully added a Silver Impenetrability Buff to it via his Glaive Accent.

Increased Armor skyrocketed, while already low resistance to cold went negative. The black stone of its body magnified the incoming icy Weapon attacks chewing into it. Strokes leaving cold streaks that would almost instantly evaporate before were now leaving swaths a good hand wide and more, while points of cold from the arrows became small mounds of ice that took that much more Health to melt and evaporate.

Of course the Roaches were knocked around. Those were limbs made of solid stone over a core of molten rock, and weighed hundreds of pounds. If someone was clipped, they didn’t bounce the hit, they went stumbling. If they got hit squarely, bones creaked as they rolled with it and went flying.

Good time to practice some Healing magic on themselves.

Princess Kristie wasn’t going to step in at all, but saw an opportunity for fun and couldn’t resist. As Hundig was knocked away by a sweeping blow, the uppercut from the other hand ran right into her as she cycled in on Scold, her feet anchored just so… and she threw the multi-ton Golum with a smoothness that looked absolutely effortless with The Turning of the Bright Moon.

“WAAAAHHHHH…” the shocked Scold shouted as it went over her head and crashed into the frozen ground.

Everyone was on it instantly, hacking and slashing on it, driving blades in deep, including Politia and Mizaya, who’d been playing archer. Coldphasing Blades and Axes of solid Cold drove in deep…

Multiple internal eruptions signaled the end of its internal force structure, but instead of just crumbling apart and falling, each section of the golum was forced apart, churning and rolling and changing… and bounced to their feet as five-foot tall versions of their original source!

The seven mini-Scolds howled in anger. “Meatbags!” the exclaimed in grating unison. “Do you think this will stop me? I am invincible!”

It definitely didn’t remember how many times it had been slaughtered before the Fall, then…

The little Scolds couldn’t fight nearly as well as their bigger form. Their limbs could actually be parried and withstood, and dodged much more easily. The Mick blew through his in seconds, and then helped out Selena, their combined blurring strikes of cold eliminating hers, and then both spun in opposite directions to help others, wolfpack tactics opening up Opportunities for one another and ensuring each died quickly.

Of course, then the mini-Scolds only three feet high popped up out of the rubble of the fallen ones, shouting about how they couldn’t be killed and were beyond the limits of puny meatbags… although their high-pitched voices didn’t sound very convincing.

They died even faster than the little ones had, naturally, leaving only lambent molten cores behind that still pulsed with faint heat and power.

“Seven Cores to the thing?” Hundig murmured, pausing as I swept a Mass Silver Cure through all of them, taking care of burns, bruises, and cracked bones, and even mending Soak on most of them.

I had really good Healing Magic, silver sparklies with Holy Boosts, and vivus-charged Kickers of positive energy all heaping on top of it to make them far more effective than almost any other Healer could manage, even with potentially higher Valences.

“Probably why it’s intelligent. Highness, any presents or extras inside the big fellow?” the Mick asked, picking up one of the Cores from the rubble. The Roaches hurriedly followed suit.

“Nothing. Sorry, Mick. A custom drop that isn’t working any more, probably.”

“Aye, ‘tis unfortunate. Lass, any use for these?” He hefted the lambent Core in my direction.

“A superior Golum Core? I can’t imagine where that might be useful, Lord Mick.”

“Good. Heap ‘em up.” He dropped them onto my Disk as it scooted over to accept them all. “We should get a nice bonus if we can find the Mayor o’ this place.”

There was indeed motion in the devastated town. Snowdrifts were being pushed aside and things long concealed underneath them were coming out of hiding. Packed balls of snow were rolling and picking up snow, coming from multiple directions, picking up sticks and stones and carrots and buttons and hats from somewhere as they came together, rolling up on one another, sticking and revolving upright.

It took about five minutes for the slow and fascinating process to finish up, and we were facing a dozen or so Snowmen in a variety of cheerful outfits… except looking somewhat worn and tattered, somehow sad as they gathered up to greet their liberators.

The Mick pointed out the Mayor easily, as he was the one in a top hat. Kris let him take the lead as he walked up, taking one of the Cores, called Scold Hearts, in hand.

“Ho, Yer Honor, got something for ye that ye might appreciate.” Lord Mick bowed slightly and presented the lambent Core to the snowman.

Twig arms bent and extended out to accept the warmth of the Core, which dimmed immediately in his grasp. “Oh, thank you, brave adventurer! Our town is usually much more peaceful, but we’ve been having a spot of trouble recently! Thank you so much for helping us!

“I think I can dip into the Slush Fund to reward you…”

How they could have anything made while hiding so thoroughly was obviously a diversion, as the Heart disappeared and a glittering snowflake medallion appeared dangling from the twig-fingers.

“Here you go! I name you an Honorary Snowman of Snowman Village!”