Having the power and breath to sing while in a fight for your life is a clear display of domination, and the old Mosswart Cynic had no experience with the morale-crushing and raising power of Heartsong, that was evident.
“FLEE! You cannot run! Your day is over, your time is done!
“DIE! You cannot fight! Your will is broken, as is your might!
“WAIL! Your heart is broken! Your will is shattered, your Fate is spoken!
“TREMBLE! TREMBLE! TREMBLE!”
A blazing phoenix surrounded by a swirling silver-shadow dragon rose about her as Quaver came up, and the old mosswart gawked at the show and the Singing, unable to believe what it was seeing, how art and combat came together so beautifully, so... distractingly.
And then the Butterfly One Strike fluttered, looking like it was in three places at once, and silver-hot flames removed both its blocking hands and sliced through its neck in one stroke.
Kris gasped as she fell down to one knee, heaving for breath, while the startled mosswart watched its callused, scaled hands fall down. Then its world spun as its head fell from its shoulders, blood spurting flaming from the wounds and cauterizing them as its body toppled after it.
Even a Rantha’s utterly inhuman vitality had been stretched with the level of absolute effort she’d been burning.
“Malar Zhavik,” I said calmly, and Healing energy aimed at her Stamina rushed back into her. I belatedly remembered that there was a massive line of Melee Feats that involved the use of Stamina, and I had the feeling that she had just used a bunch of them I hadn’t been able to see, as they’d all been internal usage. Unlike magical effects, Nulls and the like could certainly burn Stamina.
Maybe the Stamina stuff wasn’t so inapplicable after all. It might even be incredibly useful, just not for me!
Kris’ breathing didn’t calm, but it did deepen. She was sucking in a lot of oxygen, but the trembling in her muscles stopped almost instantly.
“Mithar and His Mighty Mutt,” she swore, and I could only nod agreement. “Quaver just burned through my entire Ki Pool, Ryin,” she muttered hoarsely. “I won’t be able to do something like that again for hours.”
“Hey, I would have been dead in like twelve seconds if it reached me, so happy to have the meat shield around,” I responded lightly, and she snorted and grinned at the point.
“You pumped how much Healing into me?”
“Uh, seven Silver spells, in total? 700ish points plus the Imbued Healing, let’s say 800?”
“So, I’d’ve been dead solo.”
“Well, you were letting it hit you so you could rage all over it in return. I’m just not sure you could have outrun it if you chose to go defensive and flee.”
She turned her eyes down the pristine road south. Despite this outpost being ruined and then reclaimed by these mosswarts in a very primitive manner, the road itself was completely unharmed and unaffected, with nary a stone out of place or weed growing upon it, despite, you know, being at the edges of a swamp.
“I am suddenly very trepidatious viz-a-viz our expectations of what exactly is a couple miles down that road.”
“You’re actually still planning on checking out the city?” I inquired in mock amazement. “Can’t believe it, nope-nope.”
“If these suckers are around to protect their kind, I could see them holding onto a city.” I inclined my head in agreement with that. They’d pound any of those virindi things we’d seen down in short order, although I doubt they could have dealt with the Killer Drudge. That kind of combat ability plus being able to use at least fire magic and the Vulns to support it? Nothing much would have lived long... and they were living things, not Summons.
If there were Summons this powerful, well, just, wow.
Which meant... “The only powerful Summons were the spell-flingers, and they weren’t much. We have to see if they can replicate anything stronger. If we have to clear this place in the future...” the princess sighed at the thought, and then something crazy sparked in her deep violet eyes. “If I’m strong enough to take on multiples of these things, and you are to shoot them down, wouldn’t that be saying something?”
I considered that as her toothy smile sank its fangs into that image. “I still don’t want to get into melee range of these old things,” I murmured. “And that’s a lot of Health Qi and Soak and whatever these things had.”
She heaved herself to her feet, clapping me lightly on the shoulder. “We are going to look, measure, and run. I’m not getting into another of those fights without proper Gear to back me up, promise!”
I just nodded. “Sneaky-sneak it is.”
------
For me, that meant lying flat on a Disk, while Invisible, renewing the Invisibility I was Casting on Kris, only good for ten minutes because her Null forced it off despite anything she might want.
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It was fine. The spell was easy to replace, and it meant we could use the road and they wouldn’t see us coming, which also meant she could run really fast if needed.
Thus it was that less than five minutes later she was Waveskating along the stones through the outlying houses of Yanshi, and we were both grimacing.
This was a major settlement of the mosswarts. If the human-built houses and barns were all starting to rot, they had at least been shored up with intelligent hands, reeds and rough-cut lumber and even bamboo filling in holes here and there. There still didn’t seem to be any ranching going on, and the trails all led down towards the river itself and further south, making it plain they were working the shallow waters for their food, but taking care not to venture that far north.
My guess was that the virindi had made a lethal impression on them, and they wanted nothing to do with the area around Rithwic.
There were occasional Summons standing guard, and they were all mosswarts, whatever method was used to attune and affix them to a specific spawn used and in force.
The old Cynics were there, too.
There were at least a dozen of them scattered through the ruins of the town, although I noticed that the ruins were... old?
I was sure Kris noticed it as we scooted through the town, avoiding individual mosswarts out at night for whatever reason, but after seeing the old pillar for the ‘Town of the Boulder’, there really wasn’t a lot of human buildings left here, just some scattered and burned foundations that had been built over and used by mosswarts.
Oh, and the boulder in the center of town, which was now surrounded by four... kinda cutish rounded-cat-head/Buddha idols of some kind, constructs around a carved stone with a walkway up it, festooned now with garish idols and fetishes emblematic of whatever they worshipped here.
There were a half-dozen Cynics there... and two were Summons!
Such good news.
I relayed that to Kris, along with the fact the Constructs might be able to see through the Invisibility, and we stayed well clear.
The only other thing of moderate interest was what used to be a Copper Construct of a reedshark by its design, melted and fused and inactive, but then built out with wicker and straw and ‘completed’ by so doing, looking grim and ferocious on its raised mound there, obviously admired by the natives.
Kris made a silent tour of the environment, and then just as quietly skated out of town.
“It opened up to the west, the treeline vanished quickly, and the road let out that way, too,” I recited as soon as we were largely clear of the place. There were at least a couple thousand mosswarts living in the vicinity of the place, and those I’d noticed tended to have scars of fighting and conflict that had not healed perfectly.
“There was only one place of recent damage, you saw the pit spewing out those four elemental flames, and they built a shrine around it to contain them. All the rest of the stuff was damage years older,” were her terse observations.
“So our map was out of date. That never happens. The farms and remnants extended to the west. If the place was destroyed and rebuilt elsewhere, it’s likely in that direction.”
She coasted to a halt, turning in that direction. “How far, do you think?’
“Let’s go find out.”
-----
It wasn’t that far, again a couple of miles, and the walls of the place were soon visible over the rolling hills rising up rapidly from the mosswart town. The landscape Summons seemed to be more three-eyed monugas and reedsharks than anything else, with the occasional cat-headed banderling thrown in. Other living sapients seemed to be avoiding the area, and it was soon obvious why, as all the landscape Summons soon turned into the base Undead.
They didn’t have any special ability to sense the Invisible, and Kris warily skated around and between them, both of us unnoticed as the things kept up their ceaseless vigil.
There was a new town pillar with the symbol in Sho of Yanshi leading up to the hill upon which the new town was centered. Farms and other buildings had sprung up beyond a certain perimeter, and the area about what almost looked like a castle was actually somewhat picturesque.
Also, ruined.
Kris glided to a halt to study a series of circular platforms connected by slender stone walkways, except all of them were cracked and shattered, as if they’d fallen from a height and broke apart on impact. They were in a rough circular pattern around what might once have been a church or shrine, but which had been largely razed and was unrecognizable now.
Some sort of martial parade area was on the northwest side, downhill of the city, it even seemed to be getting some use, and a small defensive fortification was on the southeast.
The area had a number of the unliving moving in and out of it. Some of them were indeed quite powerful, lording it over their kind imperiously, and were obeyed without hesitation.
There seemed to be three kinds of them. First were the tall, blue-purple undead, gaunt flesh preserved and eyes glowing black with necromantic power. Second were a number of skeletons, some of them with skulls dancing with flames, all of them moving as if they still had flesh, and generally martially clad and equipped, yet largely subordinated to the undead, who usually towered a head over them.
A servant race or people, I deduced, likely ‘blessed’ with eternal service to their masters in the form of fleshless skeletons. Kris concurred.
The last was the least frequently seen, we saw only a handful. Clearly mummified, they were dried and brown of skin, but built powerfully and accorded more respect than the skeletons were, yet still ultimately subordinate to the undead.
The town itself was actually mostly intact. There was another of the columned buildings that had fallen into the mound of its own basement being forced into reality beneath it, the pit left open and ignored by all about instead of being covered over or used. The high walls of the town were largely intact, incidental spell damage that looked to have been maintained and repaired in good form, and even the buildings were well-maintained, although much of the ornamentation and cultural artwork had been left to lapse and rot away, or had been actively defaced or struck off.
We didn’t attempt to go inside, as the undead were all moving about, possessing a stiff energy that belied their unliving states. Patrols and messengers seemed to be coming and going at a regular basis, judging by how one was arriving from the west, and a smaller one seemed to be heading off to the south.
There was another copper statue pedestal there. The statue atop it was active and fully powered... and clearly altered from something else. It now looked like a zombie warrior, complete with their traditional harness, ancient saber extended out to protect the town.
Kris had seen enough. We peeled off and headed back east towards the swamp and the river. It was plain nothing living was present here.