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

Rending Cleave: you may take an Attack of Opportunity on another target in your reach if you hit the first target with at least one melee attack. This attack does only base Weapon damage.

Which didn’t sound like much, but it instantly doubled the number of attacks the two of them were getting, and their attacks were up, down, sideways, crisscrossing in blurs of motions as Opportunities given by and to one another and the archers wrapped the whole scene in transcendent synergy. The number of attacks generated was unreal.

I didn’t have to do anything at this point. The golums were largely focused on melee, and the few spells they’d attempted had directly fizzled against the pair of them, I hadn’t had to spend any mana at all.

That compressed air surge had really alarmed me, however. Making a golum out of solidified heavy air… that was a bomb waiting to happen. Either the release could be done all at once, creating a wall of air, or it could be ignited…

And there was a freaking lava pool over there, and golums with pyromancy!

The whispering shrieks of frost cutting heavy air were impossibly fast, Kris and Lord Mick up to at least eight attacks each to each of their two targets, eruptions of cold and Banefire swirling around them in diamonds of Lost Light as the golums were hacked into with crazed speed and fluidity, while hammering limbs smashed into shields and generated more Riposte Opportunities...

Vapor collapse!

The Plasma on Lord Mick instantly broke its attack pattern to adopt the surge-and-point stance of War Magic.

-LEAP AWAY!- I /ordered, as I flung up a Ward Wall between the archer line and the fight.

The two broke their attack sequences instantly, Lightfoot taking the shift in momentum and sending them away as the Fire Bolt went off right in the face of the blasting wind that came howling out of the decaying structure of the fallen Vapor Golem.

The entire chamber in front of us filled with the eruption of gases igniting and exploding in hearty confluence with all that extra atmosphere to have fun with.

I heard Lord Mick’s grunt as he smashed into the Ward Wall with his back, his Shield Clan up to its full size and taking the shockwave and blast of fire with, eh, cool power. He slid down the Ward Wall, landing in a crouch with Clan still in front of him as the flames blew past on both sides of him, along him, and past the archers staring at the shockwave blasting past while searing cracks rippled across the Wall and prevented them from being tossed away as badly as their teacher had been.

The air reversed abruptly, blowing back in past us, then cleared away with, eh, magical speed, the explosion fading and leaving only superheated air behind, which the Fire Resistance dealt with easily. The Ward Wall flared up and was eaten away by tongues of fire, the Mick rocking back before he caught himself with a step and rose back to his feet.

“That were a fucking nasty surprise,” he grunted out with grim appreciation. He turned at a streak of motion, just in time to see Kris slam into the midsection of a Plasma blasted off its feet and sprawled near the lava pit being tapped by the arcane machine here. It was just starting to rise when she hit it, and whatever it weighed didn’t seem to make any difference as her double kick smashed it backwards and over the sheer edge of the pit down to the superheated stone below.

-Withdraw two rooms!- she /ordered as she somersaulted in a full layout over from the rebound, landed on her feet, and was Skating in our direction with haste.

The Mick simply rounded about, Bunita already sheathed, grabbed Crown, and dragged me after him. With me came the line of Archers on Disks.

Everyone ignored the fact they should be whipped off their feet by the abrupt motion, the Disks handling the inertia as they snapped around and were pulled after Lord Mick, while I concentrated on staying on my feet and hanging onto Crown, not having quite the same protection.

We passed through the previous chamber, connecting hall, and slid to the side of the next room, around three bends and with a clear avenue of retreat over spreads of sharp white against the black of the smoothed magma floor where Summon spots had been Sealed by vivus.

Kris Skated up, turning as she glided up next to us and around the corner.

“Wait for it.”

We all blinked, wondering what she was saying, and then there was another BOOM, a roar, and a wall of flames pounded along the wall from two rooms away. It had us stepping back and away from the corner as it blew past us.

BOOM, the second one followed about ten seconds later, right into the teeth of the backblast, the air turning into a churning frenzy of motion from the double explosions so close together.

“The wounded Plasmas were real, and they overloaded on the lava and exploded,” I murmured as the echoes of the explosion slowly died away, running over memories of the fight. “I didn’t see a true positive confirmation from the first Vapor going off… there was a flaring from the lava pits, but it was minor spread. I think that was a Summons and couldn’t rupture fully, a lot of its mass dissipating more slowly.”

“That… be sounding like a cheese move,” the Mick grinned shamelessly. “I admit I never tried t’ push around a golum made o’ gas. How much did those two things actually weigh?”

“About five hundred pounds,” Kris said professionally.

“That is a LOT of compressed gas,” I muttered. “Like, six thousand cubic feet released at once. Blast it into flame and it takes up even more volume, somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand cubic feet… and then it creates a backwash, too, as it cools back down.

“The explosion itself will do almost nothing to any of the golums, although it can blow them over because they have high centers of gravity and will turn to face it like dummies. What’s the weight on the material golums?”

“We’ll probably only see magmas from this point, mixed in with the gas golems,” Kris replied. “Easily a ton if they are ‘real’, like these exploding bastards are.”

“But easy enough t’ knock over, if hit high enough… an’ close to a convenient lava pool.” The Mick rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Nae Plasmas or Vapors normally take damage from fire. Be guessing that happened because we chopped into them a few times, aye?”

“Aye. The cuts broke its force matrix connection to the frozen vapor, the fire infiltrated and overloaded the internal structure, the uncontrolled gas went up, broke the matrix, and triggered the major explosion. Like tossing a torch onto a pool of oil, only much faster and more violent,” I agreed. “That was just murderous how you two were handling them, and fortunate.”

“Easier for the Shields to handle the gaseous ones than the solids,” Kris grumbled, giving her right arm, where Stand was riding, a shake.

“We do NOT want multiples of those things going up at one time in our faces, or everyone is going for a hot ride,” I pointed out.

“Bah. It was only 10d6 or so.” Kris caught my eye. “Okay, 15 dice if you were too close.”

“Multiply by two or three, plus concussion effects.” I flicked out Crown’s foot to tap Lord Mick’s left greave. “Thirty points of impact damage smashing into my Ward Wall, no?”

“Fair,” he acknowledged. “What are we looking ahead o’ us, then?”

“I was blasted into the next room. Two magmas and two vapors,” Kris reported calmly.

Rogar spoke up, “Won’t the remains of the Magmas still be hot when they go down?”

“And then we pop a Vapor and it be like pouring firebombs on the flames in front of ye,” the Mick mused. “Kill the Vapes first, then…”

“Ideally, at almost the same time. Voltage can also light off the gas. Although if any are Summons, they can die first without any sympathy, given how fast they degrade,” Kris agreed.

“Odds are the Magmas won’t have their own surprises at this point?” I prodded their bad news instincts.

“Everybody likes being covered in red-hot liquid rock from pyroclastic Magmas?” Kris queried everyone.

“Resist Fire won’t take it all,” I informed them.

“Assay the golums, identify the Summons and take them down with speed. We can assume the Summons are bouncing or attuning to the real golums here to upgrade themselves, just because the System hates us all.” Everyone grunted agreement with that.

“Kill the Magmas first, then, and cool down the remains with cold attacks until they cool. It should only take an arrow into anything glowing red.” The spidery Soultats around Kris’ waist shimmered as she fed them Soul Essence, and the thin black, insectile Arakne Arms materialized next to her hips. Her Autobow Drop and second Shield Tall flipped out of her Masspack into their hands. The Autobow was at Hand size, and auto-loaded with one footstep, a gleaming Cold bolt coming up as Main Gauche keyed off Quaver’s active magic. “Lord Mick and I can probably avoid the Magmas if they actually explode. Mick, Fire Bane your Armor and Shield.”

“Aye, there’s a good idea,” he agreed, promptly Infusing his suit and Shield as instructed. If he was going to be splattered with lava, be good for his Armor to be soaking in the heat instead of transmitting it on to him. He had Bludgeon Bane on both currently, as the golums universally attacked with their bashing attacks, but there was no reason not to stack them now.

Once, he would have routinely Baned his Armor to every Element, but that used up mana he likely wouldn’t earn back for hours, so he had to be much more frugal now.

“Shall we?” he asked Kris, and Quaver rang softly, icy diamonds chiming along with her expectantly as the rigid ‘flames’ of Banefire to Constructs rippled around everything.

With a swirl of the rest of the Soul Tats popping up around her waist, the arching curve of her Manticore Tail popped up, and four spikes of solid ice revolved around them from where the Main Gauche Runeseal glowed on her tailbone.

Mmmm, she wanted those magma remains cold fast...

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Really fast, because she lit up her Phoenix Cloak, too, reversing the Element to Cold and surrounding herself in a nimbus of icy blue flames that were going to chill the heck out of anything that hit her, or that she skated over or near… like a bunch of really hot rocks on the ground.

The extra Fire Resistance would have helped anyone else, but Ranthas were immune to fire, so that was somewhat wasted here.

It was fine. The Mick and Roaches were staring after Kris enviously, wondering just how the heck she was managing to coordinate so many different limbs so smoothly and in so many different directions at once. Not once did she ever bother turning around to look at her targets or the things she was shooting around and behind her in the slightest.

Someone with viable Blindsight could have done much the same, and Kris had the Rantha Trembling Domain going full bore, her eyes just secondary to everything she could perceive in its reach.

The Pyroclastic Magma Golums did indeed explode, scattering their molten innards in all directions. The superhot rock did no damage to the gas or other lava golums, but covered a twenty-foot area around them in hissing lumps of red-hot molten stone.

Kris and the Mick got their Shields between them and the blasts, bashing off anything that clung to them, while Kris made a circuit of the area, cooling everything with her Cloak while blasting anything else with her Tail and Drop, trading red-hot for cold and black.

It didn’t much interfere with their offense at all, although more coordination was needed to take the remaining Vapors down in tandem, so one couldn’t light off the other.

That was fine, teamwork was what they did best.