We met back by the waterfall.
There was a large and picturesque waterfall located about halfway between the bridge and the city. Impossibly, there was still no frozen icicles and the like around it from the scattered spray.
There seemed to have been almost no river traffic upstream, because there were only a few scattered homes around the place, all of the patchwork repaired and used as overnight shelters by hunting bands, species depending on which side of the river they were on, judging by the tracks in the snow about them. None dared to make a permanent lair there, having a good idea what would happen to them if they did. Nothing like portage services or a water lift or anything of the kind remained there.
There had been a drudge hunter team here with nets and crude spears to hunt for fish. They were bubbling away mistily underwater now, Kris having no use for them as she sat at the top of the falls, waiting for me with cool violet eyes.
“Took your time,” she said mirthlessly, as I came out of Invisibility and sat down next to her, going right into Aurora Stance.
“I’m also down two hundred mana,” I murmured. She’d watched me cutting down every drudge warband messing with Summons or hunting along the river for my entire trip back here. As she’d been doing much the same thing, using Sound Bubbles to make sure she wasn’t heard instead of Toppling to knock them off their feet and then hammer them if they still lived, she had nothing to complain about my tactics.
We’d both racked up over a hundred kills between us.
“I’ve a feeling the banderlings and the mites would do the work on the females and kids if we took out their hunters, but it’s all immaterial as long as that big guy is holding them all at bay.” I let Kris take my new staff from my hand and run her fingers up and down it. The skulls that had been tied to the top of it were long-gone, Burned to vivus and fallen off now.
“QL 23. A lot of work put into making it look and feel good, only never to be used. A perfect staff of office for the local steward.” She rubbed a series of golden bands upon it gently. “Elysa Strathelar. The name familiar to you?”
“No. Very Aluvian. Should it be?”
“East Aluvian, I think, the low country. Nothing noble about it, but apparently the wielder served at her behest. The scrollwork is significant, it’s a major position. Like serving as Steward of Celdon, back home. Might be her face on those coins.” She waved at the pale green coins on the Disk behind her.
I glanced back in the direction of the city. “That was the local capital?” I considered the arrangement of the terrain I’d seen, a lot of it now overgrown with new foliage. “Possible. There were hundreds of farms in the vicinity, I believe, and major access to the river and the lake... although I didn’t see much sign of boat traffic.”
“Any sign of things inside that Ward?” she asked coolly.
“I couldn’t see anything, but something was watching, staying concealed, and I didn’t go underwater to see what might be there, and I can’t use Wavesight at the moment.”
“But all the neighboring Summons were drudges.”
“The fort there was the center of the effect. The drudges radiated out from it, lowering in power the further away they were.”
“Not a true dissuasion, but it would eat away at any invaders with the continual respawns, while not interfering with the locals at all. It’s an excellent passive defense that costs nothing,” she commented coolly. “Do you know how they reset the spawn points?”
“Given what I was seeing, the spawns take longer and longer to renew themselves between kills if you keep killing them. The warbands were camping several sites apiece, killing them over and over.
“If I were a gambling person, I’d wager that when dusk or dawn Renewal hits, an empty Summons resets what it pops out. Maybe randomly, maybe not. I’d also guess that there’s a possibility that a death by exposure could trigger a random reset, but I’ve no idea without longer-term study. I’m sure the natives know the trick by now.”
“And since we can shut them down, it’s not a real issue.”
“About that.” I looked back south. “I saw a line of olthoi Summons extending north off the river.”
“A scouting path?” she asked archly, instantly figuring the tactic.
“What do you suppose those scouts might do if they look across the river and see absolutely nothing on the other side?”
Her violet eyes narrowed with malice, and the scar-brand on the side of her face pulsed blue-black and shifted on their own with dark thoughts. “That’s like saying the drudges have abandoned their territory.”
“So, they’ll send something to investigate. What if that empty spot goes all the way up to the city walls?”
Her left eye actually flashed white as the Brand extended across from it, the first time I’d seen that happen. “You’ve extended an invasion route for the opportunistic into the city...”
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“And bugs are good at throwing away drones in pursuit of their goals.”
“Won’t do anything to the big guy, if that queen and pile of carapaces is true.”
“Consider him a force of nature. Wipe out his foundation, and what does he have?”
“A lonely god with no worshipers.” The eye gone white seemed to glow with wrath. “If I have to shut down every Summon spot within five goddamn miles of that place and leave it isolated, I’ll do it!”
I just sighed and nodded. “It’s a better job for you. They’ll see the flash of magic from me at too great a distance. You can take each of them down in complete silence, and if they are in melee, none of them should be able to Cast on you in return.”
“You could plot their positions out during the day, share the Visual File with me, and I could move from one to the next with maximum speed,” she nodded, the smile she was showing me not at all friendly to anything right now.
“Better. You could follow along visually and pick out the path you want to open up. When I get closer to the city and the ground opens up, I could Levitate up and plot out the immediate defenses of the city.
“As long as the corpses are in the tall grass and snow as they Burn, it should stop an alarm from being sounded,” she agreed. “Also, the bastard is going to be running up and down the river once they stumble over the white zones, if they can identify them in the snow.” All the blood would be vivisized, too, after all. “The weapons left behind will be solid clues on what happened... if some of the local tribes don’t realize the opportunity and make off with them.”
I had the feeling the banderlings would be happy to do so, and I was pretty damn sure I’d been noticed Sharding down the smaller groups of drudges out to expand their territory. Making off with the drudges’ simple weapons was a no-brainer for poor scavengers.
“My question to you is... do we want to take the time to be doing this, or do we want to be exploring more and trying to find out where all the humans went to, Kris?”
She gave me a fierce look at even daring to ask the question, then looked away and grimaced so violently it looked like she was going to rip out something’s throat. Hag faces can get VERY expressive.
“One night. We’ll carve a path right up to the walls of the place. You scout it out and set the targets while Invisible, I’ll cut their throats and bury the alarms in Quaver’s Sound Bubble.”
“Sucks making the smart play and knowing it’s the right play, doesn’t it?” I asked softly.
“After seeing those dead babies and kids? I just want to slaughter them all. You weren’t looking for it, but I saw the gnaw marks on those bones, Ryin.”
I grimaced, flicked a look back at it, and yeah, she was right. “Just more meat for their bellies, I see...”
This wasn’t about genocide now. This was predator and prey, and removing one from the other. As natural a rivalry as existed.
If they ate humans, Kris would hunt them down to the last cub, and I wouldn’t blame her for doing so. We made fantastic war on everything that preyed on humans back on Terra-Luna, and our own instincts on that matter were finely honed.
It wouldn’t even be a bad thing. If they could have raised something better out of the ashes of humans falling, even Good couldn’t fault them for racial enmity, and even forgiven them the barbarism of feeding upon us.
It was clear there was precious little development occurring, if any, and their morals certainly weren’t improving.
That their boss liked magic mushrooms was probably not in their favor, either.
The hunting bands would have been called back by the alarm horns, and would notice some of them hadn’t heard anything, and had not returned by the dusk. Someone would go out to investigate, and probably find the white areas which would fade rapidly by Natural Renewal/dawn.
If the Killer Drudge had an ego, and it probably did, it might just go on a rampage looking for who was responsible. The fact a human had been seen in the ruins of what might just have been the capital for the Aluvian immigrants on this world would probably be one of those moments about the horrible humans coming back to kill them all.
Which, since a bunch of them were already dead, wasn’t that far off the truth.
------
Dusk fell. I moved through the night, as Princess Kristie Rantha stalked a hundred yards back from me, marking who and what I marked as I drifted past them. She was unseen and quiet inside her Sound Bubble as she glided above the snow. Behind me the random sounds of Summons moving around went silent, while unwhite flames Burned inside the deep grasses and brush and atop white snows where they would not be seen, the Summons points also vivified and their replacements never going to appear.
Drudges were moving warily along the river to the west of us, some of them bearing torches just in case, while the simmering pull of the unseen Killer Drudge was prowling along the river on its east side, looking and hoping for trouble.
Kris was clearing a path two hundred yards wide behind me, moving as fast and lethally as a ghost, the death cries of her victims, if they happened, contained within her Sword’s Sound Bubble. She had my ears to hear anything happening outside the Bubble, and with her own sounds completely concealed, she was moving with speed and surety from victim to victim, the Summons going down quickly and violently.
Something flying overhead might have noted the soft white flames Burning on the Summons points, but only for a short while, the vivic stains clearing up much more swiftly since all that was Burning was ectoplasm. The wind soon started covering the Summons spots over with blowing snow, erasing all evidence. True bodies would have a much more lasting impression.
Quaver harvested them, and behind us, more silence followed. The drudges weren’t strong enough to get anything off magically on her, and their screams went unheard. They perished, one after another, as I watched the nearest Summons sharply to make sure there were no further surprises.
Kris had done some very basic Runework on my new Staff, enough to get it to serve as a basic Implement. Her carving tools were her claws, which were perfectly functional for the job, and far more subtle than any but the most enchanted knives. At one point she was shaving off layers so thin I could see through them, raising the Quality Level up, up, up, and doing it without real effort, not even looking at what she was working with.
Ah, so convenient have a higher-Level Null around. She had basically a bottomless hole of Karma sinks, however, soooo many Eternal-class Stat raises and special abilities to buy, and limited in how much effective ‘bio-magic’ she could produce a day.
Which didn’t bother me, as I had the same kind of limitations, plodding along when Mira wanted to hit all of the buttons right now and shoot to a level of power that would have made us a living legend back on Ispar.
The deep of the night moved towards light in the east, and the killing continued.