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

The clean-up proceeded quickly thereafter. While the Summons might activate if they were close enough to another spawn point and the zefirs there were alarmed, it also meant they were predictable and we just had to discern what their default orders considered a threatening distance.

If there were one or two of them, I’d Emerald it into paralysis and we’d coup it dead, leaving them burning atop their Spawn Point so we didn’t have to worry about new ones coming in. The Mick repeatedly swore in delight, emphasizing how great it was that we could bull ahead and didn’t have to worry about shit coming in behind us to disrupt our plans or flank us in the middle of a fight.

Kris just nodded along with him. It really would be no different from teleporting a bunch of attackers into or behind your own lines, and the havoc that could create in a fight was to be avoided at all costs.

If there were three or more of them, Kris crept up to spit one of them, got their attention, two were Sharded down, and then she and the Mick would deal with any fourth, which didn’t happen much.

Just like us, the Zefirs weren’t getting the passive mana back very fast anymore, and so they didn’t have the mana to shoot off the spells they wanted to, nor the brains to maybe use the lowest, simple spells. I specifically noted the fizzle of mana burn a few times as they tried to Cast spells they couldn’t pay for, not that they stayed around long enough to regret it, as they didn’t have the brains to realize what the real problem was.

The two sword-wielders worked together with amazing smoothness. The Mick knew how to work in teams, and Kris was a Seven Dragons swordswoman who could read the actions of those in combat with searing clarity. The Mick did the thing that would be the best for the moment, and Kris read everything, setting him up and exploiting what he was doing with fantastic speed.

It kind of turned into a teaching thing, to the point where they started going up on singles and doubles and working out a blistering set of sword moves, testing out how fast they could kill the overly aggressive hell-pixies.

Kris put Sword beats Fist on display more than once, Opportunist and Tactician likewise, and their Swords arced and cut, never really stopping, yet never interfering with one another as the inky zefirs shrieked and tried to dodge them, and basically failed to do so. Kris was always out ahead of them somehow, and the Mick acted like he knew where they going before they did, Bunita already there to greet them.

The little bastards couldn’t run away, which was nice, nor did they want to come to a grapple, which would have been a real case of death by soul-claws and superhumanly strong hands squeezing them into multiple pieces rapidly. The Mick proved to be delightfully casual at batting them away from his face and into the reach of his or Kris’ sword, it was fun watching the whole show of tumbling murder-sprites getting shriek-chopped.

In a little more than an hour, we swept through the entire set of Spawn Points in and around the ruined settlement, making sure nothing would be coming back and using them for the foreseeable future.

Kris had noted things worthy of retrieving as we strolled from point to point, but that was not my job for the moment. As she’d said earlier, she sent me out up the road to see what I could see, a-flight and Invisible, and so largely safe from the enemy, barring unforeseen happenings.

I did not believe such simple magicks were going to fool the enemy long, and they probably had methods to stop it that they didn’t even know about since they’d never had to use them. Thus, passive use and exploiting them while not letting any survivors report about it seemed a really good way to go.

Really, shadow-things NOT having something to sense hidden opponents really seemed to be impossible on the face of it, right?

The settlement was another five or so miles up the road. It was actually in better shape than the one Kris and the Mick were poking through now, but that was largely because of what was occupying it.

Those things had to be the grievvers that the Mick had mentioned.

This variety was a kind of diseased green with black spots that were wisping out shadowy energy. They were… big in area, but not in size, having widely-splayed spike-like legs that covered ten feet or more, but with slender bodies in the middle of them, and a strange elevated sensory organ thing in place of a head, something more like a feeler or stalk than a limb.

They also crackled intermittently with lightning, and spit shadowy acids about, which didn’t do much damage because the area was largely covered in webs.

There were at least forty of the things in the area. Half of them were real, and the other half were not-shadow Infused, popping up on Assay as Grievver Shredders and Deranged Grievvers, respectively.

I didn’t get within a hundred yards of them, content to survey them from up in the sky, especially when I saw them spitting lightning and acid. The spots on their bodies could easily be photosensitive, but I had the impression they had both tremblesense and a form of blindsight, probably based on reading Kirlian fields, and my Invisibility wasn’t going to be worth anything when facing them.

The Mick was heartily enthusiastic about not investigating those buildings more closely. The whole area was under webs that the grievvers navigated with effortless precision, giving me further proof of the accuracy of the Assay I couldn’t peg deeper without getting uncomfortably closer.

While Kris wasn’t opposed to ganging up on one of them to see how hard it was to kill, there were at least two score of the things, and my Assay indicated an average of 1500 Health on the real ones. We all agreed it was something to put off until later.

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I had to Sift through a bunch of dirt, Shaping some Stone out of the way and into new boxes and containers for what we found. A couple of the cottages had been drop points for personal belongings, mostly bags of what the adventurers here called ‘salvage’, raw purified stuff used in improving their Gear. True ‘wealth’ wasn’t kept in the pyreal coins, which weighed too much and took up too much room. Money was kept in the form of personal paper notes, which stacked up nicely, represented a lot of money back then, and were absolutely worthless now.

The Mick talked freely about how the value of coins had dropped to nigh-worthlessness over time, as it was possible to make absolute mountains of cash over time with the dropped loot the Summons left behind. Weirdly enough, it didn’t have that much effect on common food and goods, as the demand for that stuff remained constant, and desired, magical stuff that wasn’t sold at the stores went for literal mountains or hills of the paper cash notes, or not at all, and could only be traded for, or gained by service or charity.

When the broken magical economy had died, well, the absolute worth of things began to rear its head again, especially since they had to start over from scratch, and lost a lot of the knowledge, power, and materials to recover with.

The Mick fetched the Wagon while Kris and I dug out everything of value, finding nothing magical to retrieve despite it all. It had either exploded or disintegrated, who knew what. The Mick said people often stored old Weapons and other Gear in their chests, or mounted them on walls and the like, and that was probably how we’d found the Sword of Lost Light and Atlan Stones that we had.

The next community he wanted us to go over was made up of Villas, which were four times the size of the Cottages. Each had their own devoted spatial basement at one time, although not nearly as large as that of a Mansion. We should have more stuff to look at there, and the Mick was racking his brains trying to think of all the communities in Dereth we could now loot and pillage for stuff that was now actually worth the time to retrieve.

Or, at the least, remembering someone with a map of Dereth that might have such locations pointed out.

Then we were out of there and heading east, towards the sun starting to color the horizon. It was a small haul, but enough to make everyone happy.

We made good time, although there were near ten miles to cover, and there were scattered Shadow-things all over the place. There were also random Summons of agitated Elementals of all five kinds, and then more that were distorted combinations of two or more Elements, obviously in great pain with the conjunction and just waiting for two certain someones to gang up and cut them down.

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“That were a Maelstrom Elemental,” the Mick said easily, watching as the Elemental of intertwined lightning and acid collapsed. He twitched, reflexively looking for something to pop up, and instead there was just a white spot on the grass as the vivic fire consumed whatever energies had manifested it and stopped any future Summons. “A reaction and corruption ta what is going on in Tou-Tou. Doesn’t really affect much of anything, the shades there can rip them apart without effort.” He thumbed Bunita thoughtfully. “It were strange fighting this one, however. Fighting them afore, it was like they were solid, almost. This… was more like trying to hit it right, like its substance was trying to slide around me Blade, instead of just eating most of it?”

“Didn’t notice it on the other creatures?” Kris asked archly.

“Not really? Or mayhap it were less pronounced on them, and it didn’t stand out so much?” he answered after thinking about the last few fights.

“It had straight-out Damage Reduction, not just armor ablation,” I informed him. “DR 15/-, actually, equal to that of a Greater Elemental. You probably noticed that you weren’t doing much actual damage to it unless you got a true clean hit, a crit, off on it?”

“Aye,” he agreed, going over every motion in the fight. “It dinnae have innards like a human, more like where fields of force intersect and blend, cutting through them, especially where the different elements had to meet...” He glanced at Kris. “That profound swordwork of yers bypass that, too?” he asked with resigned appreciation.

“Crystal Dragon associated Feat, Penetrate Damage Reduction. Reduces DR by one point per Melee Attack Bonus in personal combat. Stacks into Anathema, which turns their Damage Reduction against them, if it has a weakness. Doesn’t really apply to most Elementals, however,” Kris informed him.

“DR 15/- what, now?” the Mick asked in confusion, scratching his beard.

“It represents an absolute reduction of incoming attack force from physical objects,” Kris explained promptly. “It doesn’t have any effect on most energy attacks, unless they manifest as physical blows. Think of it as throwing a rock against a stone wall. Unless you get above a certain level of force, you’re not going to even mark the stone wall. Damage Reduction works the same way.”

“Okay, that’s easy enough to understand.” Our casual trotting slowed as we saw what was ahead of us. “What’s the 15/- for? A 15, for how much it soaks up before the rest gets through?”

“Yes. The /- means that there’s no special way to get around it, other then using energy attacks, or Penetrate Damage Reduction. Basically, you just have to overwhelm it.

“Most Damage Reduction has a weakness to it, however.” The Mick shot her an alert look at that.

“And doesn’t that require a whole golf bag of Weapons or Feats,” I muttered.

“Similar to how some things are more vulnerable to some energy types than others?” the Mick asked quickly.