Briggs’ eyes raked over us all, paused on me for just a second, lingered on the Mick in slight acknowledgment of his paramount status, and then zeroed in on Princess Kristie Rantha like a missile finding its target.
Her smile only grew wider.
One stride spanned twenty feet, and he was in front of her, crouching down, his speed shocking, an enormous physical threat just suddenly right in front of us, his face right in front of her.
“Swore I’d find you,” he said to her roughly, and his pale green eyes gleamed every bit as brightly as hers.
“Took you goddamn long enough. Going to another world and everything!” she laughed back at him, leaning forward to clunk foreheads with him, her lips parting to show off her eight canines magnificently.
I distinctly saw him swallow at the sight, and then his own large square teeth were on display, and Kris’ hands visibly twitched.
“Well, that storm at sea delivered me here, instead of to those lands of Ispar I’d heard the traders talking about, and I found some people who needed help. I figured if my Oath brought me here, my Hag would be here, too!” he growled, and shifted his weight.
Kris’ forehead didn’t budge an inch.
“You feel like you’re made of stone!” he cried out in total glee, clearly ready to grab her up, find the nearest bedroom, and do things for hours and hours to her.
She reached up with black-nailed fingers that looked ever more like razored claws to everyone watching this interaction in absolute fascination… and, to some of the younger Stonehold women back in the crowd, with clear heartbreak and envy at what they were seeing.
Black nails across rough skin, those with ki could feel the skirling going on as a half-day’s beard fell away behind her touch. His eyes started to roll up at the sensation. “What,” she asked softly, “brought me here to you at THIS time?” she asked him regretfully, her fingers gathered on his broad chin, above and below his lips, and then drawn away.
He was entirely clean-shaven, leathery skin absent any sign of a beard. The Stoneholders swallowed to see it.
“Ah, dammit. Always the responsible ones.” His head bowed just slightly, and then he sighed and stood up to his full height, towering over her. “We’ve got an army of undead coming this way, over five thousand of them, according to Elder Oswald,” he declared regretfully.
All personal desires had left him in an instant, leaving the Warlord behind, aware and on task.
“Five thousand of them.” Princess Kristie’s voice was cool and unimpressed. “Does that sound to you like someone is reacting to the obliteration of Tou-Tou and the wide reveal of vivus, Magos Ryin?” she asked me, also stepping back from Briggs, her smile fading to something of merely wicked anticipation in the not-too-distant future.
The burning glance he gave her before turning to look at me assured her that her desire was reciprocated.
“Magos?” he asked bluntly.
“Sevenfold Arcane Theurge, actually. But Magos sums it up for the uninitiated,” I answered formally. "A pleasure to meet you, Commander. Good work you’ve done about the place.”
“Ho, a full Power of Ten Magos. That will be useful…” he glanced at Kris’ expression. “What?”
“Bondmage,” Kris pointed. “And she’s an Undead Slaying Magos. Of the very, very Deep kind.”
He blinked at her, looked at me, glanced at Crown in assessment, and then at the rest of our group.
“I’d only heard of fighting against shades and shadow-infused creatures,” he rumbled out. “While it’s not hard to gain experience against the undead, this is not the same thing.”
“Bring twenty of your best to fight the top fifty to a hundred of their best, and I will kill the rest,” I said simply.
He wasn’t the only one looking at me strangely. Even the Mick whistled at that claim, but he didn’t refute it.
“Shades are not the enemy I fight best,” I said simply, flicking a hand at my Masspack. A speck rose out of it, grew into a distorted Empyrean skull wound about with black flames and golden Runework, which I mounted atop Crown smoothly. “If you are lazy, I will kill them all myself, but it may take me a few minutes longer.”
He stared at me, I stared back, and he let out a long breath.
“Wow. A full Power of Ten Magos, indeed,” he murmured in disbelief. He looked back at Kristie, pointing at me. “Where’d you find her?”
“Came through from Ispar ahead of me, literally stumbled into her on arrival. Best Healer you’re ever going to find, and a full Shardcaster with all the bells and whistles.”
“You know how tough the undead are here, and you still claim that?” Briggs asked me, just to be sure.
“Do you want me to list out the Metas, Masteries, and Feats involved in me being able to do this?” I asked archly.
“I would like some numbers to back up the claim, yeah,” he admitted warily.
“Truth is my numbers,” I said, and people shouted as hands clamped to ears and they shook at the inviolability of a Word of Creation. Pointedly, the Mick just closed his eyes and wagged a finger my way on hearing that, while quite a few of the locals were bleeding out the eyes and nose.
Briggs flinched again, but that was all he did, staring at me. “Oh, shit,” he managed to say. “You’re just as mean and nasty as some of the senior Tens, aren’t you?” he had to ask.
“Yes,” I nodded slightly.
“Then let’s form up and go! They’re advancing past the inlet on the western shore, and there’s only limited ways they can get here without using magic, so they’ll be looping around the western end of the Espers to get here. Set up an ambush in the saddleback there, and they’ll be screwed solid!” He turned around to start issuing orders.
“Can you get us done in time to get back to deal with the Gotrok attacking Mayoi?” Kris leaned in to ask me.
“You know how fast I’m going to murder their chaff. How fast can you kill their officers?”
“With Briggs here?! HAHAHAHAH!”
That was a pretty funny summation of the matter.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
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Getting to the location to ambush them wasn’t hard, although it did involve moving through a tight cluster of undead troops that blocked the valley, intending to keep all humans from coming around the Espers to the aid of Stonehold.
A group of undead trying to block our way was target practice for me.
I’d inherited a murderous set of undead-slaying skills from Aelryinth, and the Undead Slaying Imbue that was possible here was the one I’d chosen for Crown, without any hesitation. A Weapon could only have one, and it was the one I picked… but it also interacted with a Baneskull, and the fact that Isparian definitions of undead expanded nicely when they met PoT definitions of the same.
It was also the very first Slayer effect that we’d deciphered and reworked, since the Undead Slaying effect was already an innate power of the Disruption Enhancement! Drakes, amusingly enough, had followed, then Jotuns for the Monugas, because both had prior examples we could infer from. With three examples to work with, the other Slayer effects had continued apace.
Which was important, as the chaff of the incoming force was equal parts undead and skeletons, with a chunk of elite mu-miyahs along to support them, commanded by skeletal warlords and Dark Magus officers, with at least four uniques among them. In the standard Isparian system, those were all different kinds of unliving things, but to Bane, they were Undead, and it pulled the Slayer effect along.
Seventy percent of the invading force was conscripted Summons taken from spawn points, spirits caught by the system here and enslaved to it forever, yet still vulnerable to the control of the independent undead. Unsurprisingly, they comprised most of the chaff.
In human terms, all of them would still have been elite troops, dangerous combatants fully able to hack through a level 100 human with a bit of effort and/or point-blank magical attacks. However, being undead here, they came with some direct weaknesses it was easy to exploit.
For starters, undead and mu-miyah were vulnerable to fire, the latter tremendously so. That did mean that the smart ones Prot’ed up against it as soon as combat started, but the Summons wouldn’t unless instructed to.
The skeletons had brittle bones and were vulnerable to bludgeoning attacks, which I could totally use Shards for, also, simply by adjusting it as I did Isparian Force Magic from the War school of spells.
They were all negative-energy life-forms, they were all Evil based on why they’d fought and how they’d gained their conditions, and Heaven just had absolutely no use for them.
They were heading for a valley at the end of the Espers, a saddleback that would shave a few miles off marching around it, and undead didn’t get tired marching uphill. This blocking force was meant to make sure nothing got out, or at the very least warned them that a fight in the field was going to occur.
The undead would have been happy to take that fight, killing us with their Summons and mocking us for dying and not being immortal like them.
This blocking force ran into my Chained Greater Shards and was obliterated in crisscrossing streams of bludgeoning, flaming Shards, hitting all the nice notes, accented with things like Positive Edge, Undead Slayer, Warcaster’s Edge, Silver Fire, Holy Reserve, Holy damage, three sets of bleeding Elemental damage Kickers, and a base Caster Level of 21 for Arcane Fist’s impact set, meaning each Greater Shard was generating 5-30 +30 base impact damage, Topped to 60, Energized to 90, and then Boosted to over 160 base damage… before Undead Slayer doubled it all.
Then the Kickers added in. +5d6 of Holy Damage from the Sanctified Spell Holy Meta and Crown, maxed out with Consecrated Spell to 30, and then +2d6 from Banefire, +1d6 each from a Token, the Flaming Infusion, a ruby Orb granting fire damage, Vivic, and a noquar Cap giving a force damage boost to a flat +72 Kicker would normally be pretty nice.
Purified Spell and Blessed Spell were only effective against Fiends and Undead, not all Evil things. They increased damage by a die size and +50%, respectively. That meant all those Kickers went from d6’s to d8’s, and then effectively to d12’s, maxed as they were.
That was +144 Kicker damage. Kicker damage was not reduced by half when Chained, unlike the main spell and its Boosts.
Moreover, Kicker damage also applied to Bleed effects, like Scorching, Sizzling, Chilling, and the like inflicted, as well as Silver Fire.
Amusingly enough, those were effects with durations, and Extend Spell doubled them from one Round to two Rounds.
Each of those Bleed Effects were 2x Spell Level, Casting from a V Valence, with Silver Fire’s +2d6 ladled on top of it. So, another 40 points of energy-bleed damage… with all the Kicker damage on top of it, and Imbued Healing’s bump to all Healing spells, too.
Upshot?
Main attack, 160 minimum damage, multiplied by elemental Vulnerability, multiplied by Undead Slayer. Let’s say a minimum of 500 damage, cut in half for the Chains at 250. Kicker damage of +144, doubled to +288.
Rounds two and three, 40 points of Bleeding by roasting, chilling, and being electrocuted, as well as vivic fire eating away at them, with the Kickers continuing to feast with all the Holy Metas raging over them, all of it doubled by Undead Slayer.
These undead were all looking at over a thousand damage minimum a hit, and it didn’t matter if they were the primary target of the first volley, or the secondary ones. If the initial impact didn’t kill them, the Bleed + massive Kickers would.
I only hit them with ten+three primary Greater Shards, but there were only a hundred of them. I picked out the non-Summon commanders, making sure each got hit by a primary Shard and at least four Chains.
Kris didn’t even slow down as she charged at their lines, and they were just starting to gesture and call up their magic when the Shards hit them from a hundred yards away.
None of them kept their feet, smashed off it by Toppling at +44, and the Shards continued on, looping through multiples of them on their hunts for targets, animated flailing corpses scattering in all directions as the smashing impacts hit them in midair and sent them flying randomly. At first they were flailing, and then they were coming apart as the energies feasting on them ripped them apart and Fed them to the Land.
Only one of the undead survived the onslaught, the only living commander, who was still Burning alive with eight different hostile energies eating away at it, staggering and trying to beat out the flames devouring all that it was.