The Power of Ten

When his Brothers began to crackle with the purple and opalescent of Shapechanger Bane, they really took notice. They couldn’t see the Defiant/Shapechangers shimmering on his Armor, either, courtesy of those Artificing Levels he’d been so reluctant to take.

He jumped down to the ground, finding himself centered and focused like he had never been in his life. It was like all his lack of focus, his doubts, his fears, his desires, and his dreams all fell away.

There was only the now, and killing what was in front of him. If he didn’t give them his all, he was going to die.

He pushed over a mental Lever he’d been saving, as Senpai had told him to, just in case. He’d put in the Karma long ago... or rather, she had beat the Karma into him, as had all his opponents in the arenas.

“Melee Five,” he said to nobody in particular. “Purchase Feat, Sword Beats Fist. Purchase Mastery, Favored Enemy/2, Shapechangers.” Undead being the first, of course...

The light Armor under his clothes was basically weightless, but all he could afford to wear given his training so far... except for the new greaves he’d added from his go-bag, as his new Armor Mastery for Melee/5 turned medium Armor into light. His Crystal Ki hummed through them, giving him more protection than he’d ever had in a fight before, without slowing him in the slightest.

“Melee Combat Feat, Combat Vigor.” He didn’t know how long this fight was going to last, but he did know he was going to get hurt, and some Soak restoral was anything but unwelcome. It wouldn’t last long, merely two minutes or so. “Melee Training Feat, Archer Stands Thrust. Inspire, Improved Flanking, Steadfast, Hedged Stance.”

He could feel his whole mindset seem to ripple and sharpen, looking for opportunities to hit the bounding, loping, leering, blood-stained, and gore-wearing creatures that were coming his way, even as he and his fellow students, with Weapons trailing cold, fire, and lightning, were also coming for them.

His Brothers were with him, thrumming in readiness in his hands. The steps he could take, moves he could make, the flanking and teamwork attacks that they had worked on for hours and hours trying to take down Senpai, rose in front of him like lines of life and death.

These things do not move at all like Senpai...

The fight he had waited his whole life for was in front of him, and Edward Freundel went to meet his destiny.

=========

Sama hit the line of weres ravaging the trapped cars and panicked families who’d gone west with blood and Banefire. She couldn’t save the first dozen cars, and the skidding as families braked and tried to turn around caused more accidents, forcing cars off the roads and setting them up for the ravening werewolves to enjoy themselves.

They were out in the middle of the day, the dark cloud of the genius loci’s influence staining the Haze, following it, giving clear indication of where it was as violent green and yellow lightning slammed this way and that, no doubt targeting anything man-made and artificial on its approach to the small town.

Sama’s abrupt and merciless removal of the anthropes by separation of important primary body parts stopped the slaughter here, but didn’t clear the road. Strong as she was, she wasn’t going to be moving the multi-ton crisscrossed trees with any speed, and could only call out, “Road blocked, go the other way!”, waving the cars away quickly, pointing urgently behind them. Given the gore-strewn wreckage behind her, and panicked cars trying to outrun the lightning storm closing in on the town, the cars turned around and fled with all speed, some of them in shock as she zipped by in the other direction doing over fifty mph, her eyes to the south and the death coming there.

The ground was collapsing around the thing in broad swathes, rumbling through to her feet, as abandoned mine tunnels and excavations collapsed as its passing, forming crater after crater as they did so. Anything artificial, like homes or roads or vehicles or signs, was torn down by tentacles part tree-root and part earth coming out of the ground and ripping them apart like taffy.

Wakefield wasn’t going to survive this. Their only relief was that the creature was destroying everything man-made that it could sense, and so wasn’t hurrying to the town to try and catch the people who were abandoning it as fast as they could.

Other weres had snuck into town, ambushing the people attempting to flee, or those either too dumb or too brave not to do so. Guns were firing, with silver loads to them, so the price the werewolves were demanding of the people was requiring some collateral from them in return.

Tremble Singing, drawing their eyes with her glowing golden-edged Blade, sweeping golden hair, and Masked face, Sama got their attention, diverting them from easier prey... which was nice, because they died before considering that maybe killing a few innocents before they passed on would be worthwhile.

“Fey Cataclysm coming! Get out of here!” she called out, her Voice almost lost between the almost constant thunderclaps of falling lightning. Even the most thick-headed numbskull with a shotgun in his hands and a dead werewolf in front of him after eating two barrels of silvershot to the head got the idea he was out of his league when looking up at that massive column of lightning coming their way, and peeled out of there with his woman and his dog as fast as he could.

------

The storm hit the town in descending thunderbolts and ripping earth. Houses exploded, propane tanks blew sky high, and the earth crumbled and creaked as all the pipes and cement and concrete and brick and cables and posts and pillars that sapients put down were rent and crushed and buried under a tide of incoming earth and wood.

It couldn’t sense her through the ground, as she was moving above it, so it didn’t target her with the lightning coming down: minor bolts every six seconds, major ones once a minute. It had hit on the propane tanks as being delightful sources of cleansing fire, and the smaller bolts were targeting them incessantly, resulting in continuous rising fireballs as it tore into the town.

Great writhing tentacles reached out with the power of wood and stone, and ripped houses right off their foundations, pounding in the brick, tearing them apart in a frenzy of blows emanating hatred and fury. Barns and sheds fairly exploded, pieces flying everywhere, as the moving circle of tentacles ripped and tore and destroyed everything of humanity in range. What the tentacles didn’t pull or slice or tear, the ground opened up and swallowed, sending the remnants of civilization deep into the ground where they would be buried forever.

That included any humans who weren’t smart enough to run, and while the werewolves were bloodthirsty, they weren’t here to confront this animated place spirit and its fury. They fled as rapidly as everyone else from its enraged reach, as it likely wouldn’t consider them any purer than the works of humanity upon its sacred soil.

A Genius Loci, a spirit of a place. She didn’t know how big the area was that had condensed it, but obviously this town was part of it. It was basically drawing all of its power and essence here, Animating the natural material of the land with its spirit and power to punish and destroy these desecrations to its ‘body’.

But whatever it Animated was, in effect, its body. This effectively made the Fey spirit a working Ooze, just a collection of material powered by life, very similar to an Elemental in many ways.

The werewolves had probably freed it, it had probably enslaved the strongest of them, and was using the Mazed werewolves as more servants, probably infected by the same kind of demonic madness that drove them.

Infectious stuff, Taint was...

Whatever, it had still been trapped for a few hundred years, and was definitely not at its full power. Could she even fight such a thing?

Her eyes gleamed at the thought of it, and all seven of Tremble’s active Rune Slots lit up.

Greater Ki-Bound. Blooding. Enmity/Supernatural. Bane to the Fey. Bane of Legends. Courageous. For the moment, Valorous.

Vivic could wait for the final blow, so this thing didn’t know what was coming for it. Tremble’s Song began to swell with power and glory against this animate thing that was racing through the town like a tidal wave of destruction.

Sama was also very sure to max out her own Fast Healing and Regeneration to a full 4 points a combat round each, because she knew she was about to take one HELL of a hammering. Her Bracers were aligned to Defiant/Fey, just that much more Damage Reduction on the stack, and she was going to need it all. She abandoned any thoughts of real defense, knowing it was going to hit her just given how big and how fast those tentacles were moving, shifting the alignment of her internal powers to shoring up ever more damage reduction.

This would have been a great time to have a suit of skinplate on for even more DR, she mused, eyes flashing. Expertise of +4 turned to DR +8. Three Tiers of Way of Stone Mastery for DR 3/- that stacked with anything; Way of Crystal II for another +4; her Rantha Hag 1/Level DR /Holy Silver for another +6, and +2 from Defiant stacking onto her Crystal Shield set.

DR 23/Holy Silver, which it couldn't bypass. She was still going to feel like she was getting hit by a tree... a lot of trees, actually. Multi-ton woodstone tentacles moving that fast were not gentle. She watched one whip through a house sideways, tearing through the entire front of the building without slowing down.

Her only way to beat it straight off was to surpass its own Damage Reduction, be able to carve into it, do a lot of damage with every attack, and have more attacks than it did.

Technically, it shouldn’t even be able to see her with her using the Darkstalker Feat, regardless of its blindsight. It was a pure unintelligent spirit, tied to the land, lacking coherent thought and memory. It was simply reacting in the most brutal and overpowering way against the intrusion on its body, and wouldn’t even have the sense to run away, because how could you run from your own skin?

She could kill it!

That thought firmly in mind, she charged it, Valorous flaring.

It blew through the stoutly built ranch house of the Gunneriengs like a groundwave of earth and roots, hurling the whole house twenty feet in the air, where a dozen whipping tentacles as thick as tree trunks promptly smashed it apart like slicing tissue paper, sending debris flying for hundreds of feet as the basement caved in all around and the ground opened up to eat the shredded remains. As six tentacles slammed into the cement of the driveway and reduced it to pebbles and shards instantly, she threaded between them all, and hit it with her first blow.

Her Sword was her spear, double damage on charge. Spirited Charge, triple damage on charge with a spear. Valorous, quadruple damage on charge. One Strike, hextuple damage on charge.

Tremble had been reforged with adamantine during the past three years, a full QL 40 Weapon, able to sink oh so much gold now... She only had seven Slots open; opening the final three would take as much gold and Naming Karma as the first seven had. Still, it was a base 2-12 Heavy arming Sword, a Profound Weapon and Soulsword, with three damage increases. 3-15, 3-18, 3-21.

Currently, Tremble was sitting at +XII, a stupefyingly powerful level of Enhancement, with +4d6 of Banefire add-ons. This thing’s natural DR might as well have been cheese for all that it slowed her Sword down.

She was Singing a Bladesong, a Wardance only for herself, doubling the Morale Bonuses from it. It was only +1, but Song of the Heart increased that to +2, Bladesong doubled that to +4, and Courageous dumped +6 on top of that. Morale bonuses at +9 total reassured her that yes, she most certainly could do this!

Her Strength was a full 28, as strong as ten men, for +9 to hit and damage, moving with the speed and power that was the definition of superhuman.

It couldn’t tell where she was. She had a Stealth check in the +30 range, and it had no Ranks in Perception at all, relying on its absolute blindsight awareness of the elements around itself, which the Darkstalker Feat slid right through. That meant with every attack, +6d6+12 Sneak Attack damage was going on the stack, too.

She wasn’t supposed to be a Grandmaster yet, but it and her Sagedom were a part of her, and it had kicked in. She had ten appropriate weapon-oriented Skills at the required five Ranks, Profound Artisan to get the synergy bonus to damage, and her Sagedom to collect all of them, rather than just one.

+20 fixed bonus to damage. +6 Melee Attack Bonus to hit...

Weapon Mastery, Combat Genius, Weapon Master’s Gauntlets: +4/+4. Sword Specialist, +1/+2. Extraordinary Weapon Proficiency, change threat and crit to 19-20/x3. Improved Threat and Improved Critical, 17-20/x4.

Greater Sun Striking as she could, for +4-24 at a time, releasing Mystic Focus each time, 3 attacks per cycle. Improved Power Attacking for -3/+12, no penalty on the first attack, Deep Impact cushioning the next 3 and making them touch attacks with the Sun Strikes, combined with Finesse Attack and Improved Precise Attack for another +9 damage on those attacks.

-4 to its Natural Armor, Dexterity, and Deflection Aura, for Way of Fire, Storm, and Ocean II, effectively +12 to hit... except it was blind and effectively couldn’t see her to dodge her, so it wasn’t getting a Dexterity bonus, anyways...

+2 charging, +2 for Way of the Sun II, +4 on that first attack.

The math said she was hitting at a base of +43, and Beyond Law and Chaos said she couldn’t miss.