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

It was a tribute to just how fast she could move, and how swift and ruthless in her killing that Princess Kristie Rantha was, that we made it to the inner circle of drudges within only a couple hours. They didn’t seem to have any internal patrols out among the Summons to check on them, the icy night winds being what they were, and they were counting on the Summons themselves to be their screeching alarms. Kris simply opted to keep going, slaughtering to the west and widening the approach zone as we moved away from the river.

I did hear several echoing screeches humming along in the manafield, relayed that to her, and we both took satisfied looks that way as the drudges stumbled across yet another site of the dead. Kris didn’t even break stride, going after the marginally tougher, yet still quick-to-die from being throat-slit, drudges that were in her area.

Over the course of the night, she ran at least thirty miles moving back and forth from target to target, while I threaded my way between them and scouted the way for her, making sure there were no surprises. Unsurprisingly, none of the local wildlife larger than rodents wanted to risk setting off the Summons, as well as it being effing cold and not wanting to tromp around in the snows, and so nothing dangerous got in my way. The area seemed to be partially asleep with the Summons removed, with few creatures roving around in the night for food.

A naturalist would have had a field day with the alternate evolution that had gone on here, especially with the shreth and reedsharks... as well as the phyntos wasps and aggressive Fey zefir. Then again, how much of it was real, and how much of it was artificial, given the extreme amount of magic that had been used in this place?

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We stopped two hours before the dawn, as the growing shadows might give away the slaughter that had gone on. During that time, Princess Kristie had slaughtered over a thousand drudge Summons on their little circles, their little circles were vivified with them, and the dots on the white landscape were being blown over now.

There was a huge gaping swathe of Summons points completely absent on the landscape now, which would become quite obvious in the morning light when the drudges stirred themselves. That Killer Drudge would no doubt be incensed, but that was its problem, not ours.

We were now zipping around the western edge of the Drudge Summons, Kris lightfooting it above the snow effortlessly, leaving no tracks, no warbands out far enough to see us yet, moving to return to the lake shore, see what would be seen, and see where the waters led.

I’d made an argument for the road east, and she thought it over, then shook her head.

“If they ran, the most natural place they’d run to would be to follow the waters upstream to the mountains, or downstream to the sea. That trail of olthoi Summons you saw ran mostly north, I don’t think they’d go racing into the hands of the big bugs. That leaves downstream. There should be other settlements along the waters on the way, and maybe clues will come with it.

“If not, we’ll discover part of the lay of the land. The river will eventually hit a lake, or a sea, and we can start circumnavigating the continent or island, whatever we find ourselves on.

“There should be some sign somewhere...”

Hopefully, we both thought. So far, the incredible number of deaths we were seeing were not proving encouraging.

“If it takes long enough, I can throw a Scrying high enough in the air to get an overview of where we are, at the least.”

“That would be incredibly helpful,” Kris nodded as we skated along, arcing back towards the east now.

“Given the amount of magic we’ve seen casually on display, I’m not at all confident of what we’re going to see,” I admitted. “Look at that lake, it should be totally frozen over. There should be lines of ice mounded up along the shores from wave action.”

We were coming up on it, and she frowned as we wove between Summons, or cut them down in passing. “Yeah, yeah, we both noticed it. You probably didn’t notice it, but when I was in the water and it was trying to get past my Vajra, it was freezing over when it hit my Null. I was constantly moving so it wasn’t visible, and it melted again as soon as it hit the river again.”

“Well, now we know it isn’t super-high Caster Level, just super broad ritual stuff.” Else it would have acted normally in her Null, instead of being neutralized. “What’s your Null at? 35ish?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Yes. That is really annoying, you know.”

“You’re sitting on a +27 Null and calling a Caster annoying to her face?” I just looked at her incredulously.

“I prefer abject terror and soul-gripping fear from a great many of the Casters I have to interact with, thank you,” she sniffed unapologetically, and I just rolled my eyes.

“Immunity to Casters below Fifteen who don’t have a lot of Spell Penetration boosts is not an excuse!” I just huffed at her.

“You’re Casting Shards at a base Fifteen as a Three. With Spell Penetration, and True Casting. So, 85% chance to affect me with Shards?” she shot right back.

“Uh-huh. You think I don’t know you can spellcut them? What’s it take for you to hit a 26? A negative number, right?” Caster level + Spell Level was the AC a Forsaken needed to hit to swat a spell coming at them out of existence offensively.

Her teeth flashed again. “Damn, it’s so nice to have someone around who understands proper defensive measures!” she said cheerfully.

“That being said, I’ll use this to start on a protective Amulet for you today.” I held up the simple golden chain with a stylized pendant. “I’ll slowly work in a five-way Lead-grade Protection for you, and we can upgrade as we go.” I hesitated, and shrugged. “I can agglomerate Force as an overarching Protection that includes the effects of the default Bludgeon, Slashing, and Piercing attack energies, but that’s still going to be five different sets of spells, marching on up the scale in effectiveness. Even if I get them to Gold, that’s 45k each in resonance on one item!” I warned her. With it silently left unspoken that there might be two tiers higher than that!

“I shouldn’t need Fire or Lightning,” she said after a moment, glancing at it thoughtfully. “But that’s still a lot of goldweight...”

“Amusingly enough, these coins are worth one gold apiece, doubled if making something with Air involved.” I tossed one in the air, let it settle back onto its pile with a clink. “It might not surprise you, but there were a lot of them strewn around the city over there, I just didn’t want to risk exposing myself by going and digging them all out. Too easy to be seen.”

She slowed down perceptibly. “We have cash flow issues, so this is important. How much money are we talking about?”

“At an absolute minimum? A hundred thousand, I didn’t go searching all the places. My guess is that the human population was massacred before they could move their wealth away, and the drudges don’t have much use for the coins except as baubles. There could be millions, scattered all over the place, the wealth of what was once a major town or city.”

“They didn’t seem to have much alternative currency. Coins are lousy in large denominations. I imagine they started using paper currency like back home?”

“All decayed or ruined by now, if they were left laying around. There might be some left in storage somewhere, but I’m imagining their eventual use was stuffing and insulation for beds and litters.”

Her face twisted into a scowl as she slowed to a halt in some brush, the nearest Summons an adult deep brown-crimson Blood Shreth forty yards away and ignoring us for the moment. “You’re Casting a Disk at, what? Nine, now?”

“Yes?”

“So, that’s 450k of these Air Gold coins. That’s a lot of Investing and Infusing. The amount of money we need to spend for basic defensive gear already eats up that entire amount. Just the amount you have there we can run through in what, two days?”

I inclined my head. “You want to stay a day or two and loot the city clean.”

Her brilliant violet eyes were hard as amethyst. “And I have no issues with cleaning it right out on all levels.”

She was challenging me, but I just inclined my head. “There’s no Heavenly defense for them, this is pure natural competition, and it’s not like you’re killing them all everywhere. Going after the females and children isn’t optimal, but it’s not like we are strong enough to hit the elders, and they are definitely breeding quickly under the big one’s protection. That Sound Bubble makes you murder, so we can definitely kill a lot of them, so all I need to do is ramp up Detect Precious Materials and find out the best places to hit.”

“And the nights are cold and the sentries are not exactly diligent,” she noted. She inhaled softly, glaring in the town’s direction, hidden behind the young forest. “I’m a Hag. I can do this. But damn them for making it not the wrong thing to do.”

“So, we stick around for another day. Good, that makes it easier to get some Investing and Infusing done,” I admitted. “I’ll get Amulets started for both of us.”

“What are you going to take at dawn?” she asked.

“Soul Warrior.” I waved my Staff at her. “I don’t have the Soul to empower Crown and my Mask.”

“Crown, eh?” She lifted an eyebrow, prompting a response.

“When I found it, it had three sets of skulls mounted on it. It’s going to be earning some different ones, now.”

She just nodded at the irony of its Name. “I should be driving more Soul, too. It’s just...” she waved her hand in the air.

“Karma, right. But if we can harvest Karma off Summons this easily, Leveling should be the least of your worries. Those drudges around that fort were the equals of Ironskull Tens and more,” I told her. “You probably just drove Soul Warrior, lots of Soul Feats, and the Masteries to reach the twenty for your Vajra, and were glad to get there?”

“Yeah. I really, really need to get my Tats up and Energized.” I lifted an eyebrow at her. “All the Ranthas come with full sets of Soul Tats ready to be brought out. Just need the Chakras opened and the Karma poured in.”

“So, priority one the Maulers and Marksmans Gauntlets, and Philosopher’s Might?” I asked knowingly.

“I’ve received the distinct impression that you can’t have too much damage on the stack here,” she admitted. “These bastards have a LOT of Soak or Health Qi to get through.”

“I’m not arguing with you. I am going to ask if Item Magic stacks with Artifice Magic on your Weapon.”

“Yes, if it’s a Cast spell. However, trying to make a charged weapon and an Artificed Weapon do NOT go well together. The end result exploded every time Mom and Dad tried. It seemed that the constant enchantments kept feeding into the charged side of things, overloaded them, and blew them apart.

“On their own, Artifice Infusions acted on the base weapon and stacked on top. Lasted full duration, too, once on the Weapons, unlike base Buffs did on us.”

I gave her a speculative eye. “So I could give you a significant damage boost on Quaver there for a short period of time. That’s... good to know when we fight what is basically a video game boss creature.”

“Given the ridiculous durability of these creatures, I definitely need all the damage I can eke out. Even Mom’s Sagedom isn’t helping me much...” she admitted.