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

There were remarkably few things that could make the water convey a repeated shockwave like that. It wasn’t an explosion. It was steady repeated pressure on the ground, and for some reason she decided she didn’t want to confront what was making it, moving directly away from it and under cover.

“Holoscreen atop us!” she directed me harshly, and I barely got it up before I heard the crackings and crunchings of treetrunks being forced aside, and then something crashed through the resurgent young trees that had reclaimed so much of the land arduously cleared of lumber by farmers and workmen.

Forty feet tall if an inch. I whistled at the size of its boots, wondering what it had skinned to put them on. I popped the Assay at III because I could, and then promptly rewove the Holo at III and crouched down even lower.

“It’s got a million Health Qi,” I whispered to Kris, who blinked once in disbelief, stared at me, and I just nodded.

“Mithar!” she swore, watching as it waded down to the water two hundred paces away, bellowing like a foghorn as it did so, wading out into the shallows. “What is it?”

“A Tremendous Monuga. Which means there might be more than one.” It didn’t have any weapons, probably bashing apart any trees it kicked down to serve as one. It wasn’t moving with any agility, but it didn’t have any problems striding around, having none of the heavy ponderousness that it should at that size. “Jotunic-level strength, for certain. Its none-too bright, but it’s at least at the power of a Storm Jotun.”

“Those are calls of challenge.” We watched it waving its arms around and bellowing at the waters, just in front of the massive Ward there... and then it reached out and pounded at the Ward.

The area in front of it buckled, the air seemed to quiver and crack. Without let-up, the big TM beat on the Ward in front of it, shattering it, pounding it open, and suddenly the energy field in front of it collapsed, a great hole rising in front of it.

Beyond, the waters surged, and something of great size moved in eagerly towards the opening.

It was a niffi, no, a Sleech, a Solgus Sleech, an elder of the species, floating twenty feet in the air and with a dozen writhing tentacles reaching for the Tremendous Monuga, who actually waded out to meet it, the huge mattocks of its fists raised and ready.

I ducked down, letting Kris continue watching in fascination as the real fight began. “I think the TM is fishing for calamari.”

She glanced at me as Water and Acidic magic exploded over the titanic monuga. In return, it began to beat on, kick on, rip at, and pound on the massive floating aberrant in its huge spiral conch-like shell, clearly making the thing waver even as it tried to wrap the monuga up in its multiple tentacles, lashing and searing at him non-stop while blasting him repeatedly with magic, including magical Vulnerabilities, Imperils, and the like.

Unfortunately for it, it only had about forty thousand Health Qi, and it just wasn’t strong enough or big enough to bind the big thing up. The TM’s simple brain was too focused on Feed Me to scare away or control, especially as it seemed to be in a berserker rage as it went to town on magical unnatural shellfish.

It did take it about ten minutes to finally crack the mighty sleech’s shell open, tear off six tentacles (throwing them back through the hole in the Ward), and then reach and tear out the important bits there for a quick snack of the things inside, the elder nefane letting out an odd squicky squeal of disbelief as it died.

Its grip on its shell faded with it, and the monuga hauled its carcass out of the thing, probably losing the innermost portions somewhat and not caring. Hefting its massive gory prize over its shoulder, it kicked the rest of the shell fifty yards into deeper water... and there was an instant frothing there, as a whole lot of somethings waiting further out swarmed over whatever bloody remnants were left inside.

My Assay watched the TM's Health Qi returning with ferocious speed, at least ten a second as it picked up the scattered tentacles, proceeding to munch on one and knot the others together to sling over its other shoulder before striding away with its prizes.

I swept my Assay out through the hole in the Ward, which was rapidly filling in, and nothing seemed to be going to get through the opening before it filled up. Probably held open by the dim will of the Tremendous Monuga, given how fast it was filling up once he passed on through and left it behind.

“Remorans,” I informed Kris, glancing at the churning water. “Shark-like ray-things all in the 200 range. That huge sleech that died was in the area of 350.”

“So, are the niffi spawn and Summons related, or-?” she asked, eyeing the difference in shells and tentacles and stuff.

“Probably a servant or slave species. The remorans are acting more like a swarm of underlings being directed by the smaller sleeches, who just looked on instead of teaming up with their elder.”

“Tactically stupid. Enough massed firepower could even bring that thing down. How much damage did the big guy take?”

“Maybe a hundred thousand? It’s got at least DR/15, and Fast Healing/60,” I told her, an Assay at III being pretty informative. I let her take a look at my Visual File on it.

“SIXTY?” Kris blinked in shock at the Assay, whatever her estimations of what was required to kill it getting a sharp revision.

“I assume Blooding would stop it, but note that still means it’s going to take three hours to regenerate all of that damage. I’ll also note that the dead Sleech knew I was looking at it, but it was kind of busy.”

“I seem to recall Aberrants being unusually sensitive to Divination magic. Nice to see some things are constant. Well, no, but you know.” She smirked as I just inclined my head at the point. “Just the fact there is one of the big ones around is pretty horrible, and you made it sound like there is more than one. I’m surprised it hasn’t eaten out the drudges in the city back there...”

“You didn’t notice? Oh, you don’t have your Mask up yet.” I pulled up the Visual File and zoomed in on my memory of the monuga’s massive body. It had a patchwork of furs on itself, probably from massive ursuins of various sorts on closer inspection, although the lay of some of those other furs was quite different, something we hadn’t seen yet. “Note the white scars on it.”

The thing was greenish-brown, with a slightly taller proportionate skull than human for its three eyes, two thick nailed fingers and an opposed thumb, obviously not made for tool-making. Given how hard it was to find suitable furs, a lot of its body was exposed, and as I zoomed in, it was plain to see that it had tons of parallel white scars all over exposed areas, including its face.

Kris nodded slowly. “Okay, those are definitely about the right size. Wow, you think that Killer Drudge was actually able to drive this thing off?”

“I think it basically took on the entire city of humans itself, and might be so magical the monuga just can’t kill it, maybe with regeneration it can’t compensate for or something. It was able to do some kind of enduring flesh damage to the big guy, so the monuga probably doesn’t want to mess with it to no real effect, even if it can eventually pulp it, we don’t know.”

“Or it’s fast enough, nimble enough, and can climb all over the thing to kill it. It could harm that black tower’s stone, so it can definitely punch the big guy’s Stature DR, and maybe stop the Health Qi from absorbing all the physical damage.”

“Or just put out so much damage...” I hinted at, and she just sighed.

“That means the only chance of beating it is to Not Get Hit.” Her lips quirked in a feral smile. “I feel some strange motivation for getting my Armor Class way, way up, Ryin!”

“Yes. It seems quite capable of taking on beings bigger than itself and winning,” I sighed, Mana Boosting my Valences and Pool back to full. “It also means we’ve definitely been noticed by the deeper creatures in the lake.”

“Eh, if there were humans here, we’re just two more of the same. They are still trapped in there.”

“Indeed. I can’t imagine they are happy about their imprisonment, but given their power, I can see why it was done.”

“We don’t know how large this lake is, but it is clearly fresh water. At best it’ll be the size of a sea, and eventually will run down to an ocean,” Kris predicted.

“And just how big are the things that are in the ocean?” I nodded as we both stood back up, looking once after the huge monuga, then out at the frothing that had died away out in the waters. “After all, it could have gone fishing there.”

“Strange, that. Like it went after the easy prey.”

“Or the freshwater variety tastes better?”

“It’s all possible,” she agreed, as we started our journey again.

“I’m just not happy to find out there’s intelligent sea species with an interest in this place.” She quirked an eye at my words. “Wouldn’t need Wards if they didn’t want to and weren’t able to come ashore, Kris.”

“You’re making me think this place is like a death island full of martial dangers and easy ways to die in every direction, Ryin,” she replied, amused.

“Like it was made to form an army,” I agreed. “An army that was incredibly skilled.”

“That only works if there’s absolutely massive amounts of healing,” she said thoughtfully, Waveskating into motion and resuming our progress south. “After all, dead soldiers don’t learn any more. One miscalculation, and months and years of Karma, all for nothing. Isparian magic doesn’t return the dead, and necromancy was hugely unreliable, when we ran into it.”

“The Milantians were the best at that, true enough, although things I inherited from my teacher suggests the Viamontians know more about it than they let on, possibly inherited from the aliens who started their bloodline.” I blinked a moment. “Why do I have the sudden feeling those aliens might be behind the Portals from Ispar to here? They already knew of our world, and already knew humans had militant leanings and would make good soldiers...”

Kris was silent for a moment as we swooped in on a hovering blue phyntos wasp Summons and she slaughtered the hawk-sized thing with one swing in passing. “That does make sense. Records my parents recovered revealed contact with aliens had occurred many times in the far past, growing increasingly rare in the modern day and age. For the Viamontians, the key recognition factor was blue skin and height. For the Aluvians, it was simply height, although some of the visitors had glowing eyes, according to the legends.”

“That’s a true multi-world magical civilization, then,” I said, sniping down a mud golum as we approached, Sifting it for pyreal dust, and we were on to a couple reedsharks she could see. “That’s definitely a height-of-magic factor. The only thing we’d need otherwise is population and prevalence of magic to explain this place. Were they drafted to fight off the creatures of the deeps, or are only protected from them?” I wondered aloud.

“If they were meant to fight something else, I have to wonder what it could be that could ignore the Wards keeping out a magically-adept and intelligent Aberrant species,” Kris said with feeling.

“I’m more concerned about the implications of an enemy a world-spanning magical civilization stirs up that they can’t beat and so are forced to go stealing help to fight.”

The Hag princess was silent a moment as she digested that, violet eyes flickering at the implications. “Meta that?” she asked after a moment.

“It would have to be a race that is violent, innately resistant to magic, likely numerous and/or breeds quickly, and yet capable of pursuing them across dimensions, even if their Portal network was taken down. Whether they were incited by the mages or just intrinsically conquerors is something else we don’t know. They could be driven by racial instinct, uncaring elder beings, gods, or simply martial tradition and aggressiveness. I imagine if they were to looking at the standing forces of Terra-Luna, any magocracy would find them terrifying. Nulls, Sources, and Voids as the core, integrated standing armies of that world would be horrendously dangerous to a mage-centric society.”