Why does it always come down to responsibility? Humanity has a strange idea that responsibility, the acceptance of that lifelong burden, is what makes you an adult, grants the autonomy of maturity so that you can do more and accept even more responsibility later. It’s the way a man strives for a better job when his wife gets pregnant so he can provide, willingly taking on that responsibility to better meet the demands of the future. An old boss of mine once told me, ‘the only reward for a job well done is more work’. Of course, that dude was the epitome of doing the perfect amount so that he stayed right where he was, fat and happy in his comfortable management position. Not that I was jealous of him, but his style allowed him to coast through on his laurels in a way that might have peaked my little green monster.
Which means, in my book, the whole thing’s a racket. Responsibility IS a racket. It is the societal expectation to do more so that other people can do less, at least that’s what it seems like. Helping out New Richmond automatically made a bunch of people there assume that I was in charge, that I was going to stick around and solve all of their problems, willingly putting on blinders to the fact that I had just literally solved most of their problems by properly equipping them with magical gear well beyond their means. And here I was again, about to spit in the eye of some cosmic kick that wanted me to take on the mantle of what was left of Phoenix. Fuck you, is all I have to say. This ain’t my city, these aren’t my people, and I don’t owe any of them jack shit. This decision was strategic in nature, I didn’t want to have a pustule of demons, zombies, necromancers, bugs and any other kind of nastiness anywhere near me when it was time to head up north.
But Acantha, cunt of witch that she is at the moment, is desperately making big, watery eyes at me, begging me without words to solve the problem that she couldn’t solve. Yes, my kind of power is on the heavy side, allowing me to forcibly adjust the weight class scale so I can wreck it at a time of my choosing, but that doesn’t mean I want to be the savior of this place. The real issue was the mistake I made in my initial judgement call. I figured that this would be a good place for a powerful witch to stretch her wings and raze the bitch to the ground, giving her combat experience and taking care of a long-term problem in one convenient swoop. But no, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.
Coming to grips with the fact that my next week was going to be spent magically bleaching this city out of existence, I thought about the other problem at hand several times faster than normal thanks to my mind sorcery. Luneks. From what I can tell from the pitiful amount of time that I’ve spent here already, the Luneks are legitimately retarded. No, not in the medical way, but in the way that their thinking seems to stop, to hit a roadblock, hits something that halts the forward progression of strategic thought along with the value of lives. Like this great question, if the Luneks won’t let anyone retreat because its ‘cowardice’ and they fight to the death, AND, if they know that they’re fighting undead and necromancers that can raise up their comrades and send them back in to fight their former packmates, then they must be retarded right? Isn’t the first thought when fighting someone that can raise your dead friends and force them to fight you to maybe do your best not to die? Maybe, and I’m just spitballing here, the second thought would be to strategize just a tiny bit and go for the dude RAISING THE DEAD? Idiots. Dumbasses. Stupidity at its finest. The wheel is spinnin’ but the hamster’s dead. I could go on.
In order to give myself more time to think at superspeed, I walked over to the wretched forms of Remy and Fernando, conjuring large amounts of water to get the majority of grime off of them even as I began injecting healing magic into them. To be clear, my own motivations and feelings were a bit shocking to me. I wasn’t really mad at the condition of the two magic users that I was currently healing, and I was only a bit angry at how they were treated by the Luneks, but what really pissed me off is that the intervention of the Luneks in messing up my plans for Acantha and these two to team up really fucked up my timeline, which has already been constantly getting pushed back. I had shit to do, places to be, zombies to wreck and a land to invade with my epic golem army. I did not have time to be babysitting weak-ass wizards.
[Your thoughts have taken an unusually dark turn,] Kraken commented. [A Buddhist would say that your chi is all kinds of conflicted.]
[Monks don’t sound like that, dude.] I replied back, setting a broken arm and knitting the bones back together. Remy and Fernando were completely knocked out thanks to my flesh sorcery, allowing me to work without all of the screams that normally accompanies work like this. [I knew two monks before this craziness, both ended up leaving for various reasons but they were still pretty chill dudes. Tony would tell me right now, ‘even the broken leaf rides the angry wind as it falls from grace’. Asshole would never tell me what it meant though.]
Ignoring my momentary reflection, Kraken proposed a new idea which made me grin. Chuckling darkly at the effectiveness of the plan, I finished healing both Remy and Fernando and then turned to Acantha, knocking her out without permission and healing the incredible amount of bruising and numerous cuts. Twenty minutes of healing later with Kraken keeping a watchful eye, I leaned back and sat on my butt. Pivoting, I faced Severak.
“All right buttmunch, you can talk now, but only to answer my questions.” Gungnir lay across my lap in mace form as I pulled out my personal mini-golem from my pocket. Reaching over, I placed the golem on the ground in front of Severak’s face, his body still completely buried up to his neck. “This little dude is a flesh golem, meaning that it can either heal, hurt, or radically change any kind of living flesh. I know you may not respond to torture very well, most barbarian cultures tend not to, but this little fucker can hurt you in other ways.”
Severak sniffed arrogantly. “I’m not done,” I chuckled. “I know you’re a warrior, a big strong leader of were-things that likes to rampage. But I can take that away from you. Imagine yourself with the instincts of a predator, an Alpha, but with the body of something you despise, a coward.”
His eyes went wide. “That’s right, a coward. I can make this little ball of golem slowly change your body bit by bit into a human, a pathetic, weak, pink, defenseless human. For that matter, I can even make you female. Give you all of those vulnerable curves, the kind that make men go crazy with desire. I’ll just leave your head though, so you can remember what you used to be every time you look at your reflection.”
The bear-man Lunek looked at me with more fear than he’s ever felt in his entire life. Wide eyes, trembling face, the stench of urine from pissing himself, ears flat back as his pupils shrank. “Do you see? This is strength, this right here. I can make you feel the kind of uncontrollable fear that you’ve always wished you could instill in your enemies. Change, the ability to affect change, both temporary and permanent. That is power, great and terrible power. And right now, I have power over you, but you also have some power, right here right now. If you want me to stay my hand, you will accept a duty from me. Agreed?”
The poor thing was too afraid to agree outloud. All he managed to do was tremble a pathetic nod. Looking around at all of the other Luneks buried up to their necks, they all had the same expression of unrestrained terror. “Good,” I said, smiling, making sure to bare my teeth just a bit. “Now, your job, your job as a pack, is going to be rather simple. You will be the peacekeepers here in the city after I clean it out. That’s it, simple guardians of the peace. From this point onward, you are mine and mine alone. And, I will require two of your pack, your best male warrior and best female warrior to accompany on my journey.”
The smell of urine strengthened even as a gentle breeze blew through the street, the stench of dead and rotting bodies carried with it reminding me of what I came here to do. Standing up and dusting myself off, I used earth sorcery to release Severak and then water sorcery to blast him clean from his own mess. “Now, point out the two that are mine, and if they disappoint me, I’ll come back here to fulfill my promise, got it?”
It was disconcerting to hear a bear-man whine like a beaten dog. All the fight had gone out of him, my little soliloquy had broken his spirit, at least for now. Severak padded over to a female whose face looked more human than the rest of the pack and poked her in the head with his claw. “This one, master. She is half Lunek, half elf, but in skill, she is unbeaten by all except for myself.” The catlike Lunek also made a strange and pitiful whining sound as I released her from her stony prison and blasted her clean with water.
Ten feet over, Severak poked a male Lunek whose head was egregiously large. “This mutt can’t talk but he is the biggest and strongest of my tribe. He wields an axe and a hammer with an ease that puts the stone giants to shame.”
As I released the big male and hosed him down as well, he started towards me with a growl, his claws extending like he was reaching for my throat. Severak pivoted towards him and roared, straight up karate kicking the giant mongrel in the chin and instantly dropping to the ground to sweep his feet. As the giant Lunek hit the ground, Severak jumped on top of his face with his clawed hands at his throat and eyes, ferociously growling in their language. After a minute, Severak stood up, his eyes downcast. “He understands that he is yours forever master.”
“Their names?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as the female Lunek walked over and stood next to the big one.
“Versonae, my lord.” The cat Lunek’s silky voice took me by surprise. Out of all of the were-creatures here, she seemed to be the only one to quickly come to grips with her fear. Her five foot tall frame no longer trembled as she met my eyes, her palms open and facing me. Her almond eyes were slightly angled but bigger than most humans, that, combined with her finely boned features gave her an exotically attractive look that went well with her white fur. “This,” she said softly, pointing at the large Lunek, “is Arglyn.”
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Taking a closer look at Arglyn, I noticed that his facial features were an ugly mashup of orc with bear-like and tiger-like characteristics. The long canines were reminiscent of sabertooth tigers but the wide beefy face was definitely that of a bear. The squashed nose with the lack of facial hair is what gave him the orcish features. Taking in Arglyn’s oddly submissive behaviour after Severak putting him in his place, I walked over and stood just outside of his reach.
“Your job is to guard the two males,” I ordered, pointing at Remy and Fernando. Turning to Versonae, I pointed to Acantha. “And your job is her. I’m about to purge this city and if you want to avoid that bit of unpleasantness then you’ll make sure they’re real comfortable.” Picking up my little flesh golem and putting him away, I cracked my neck and turned towards the rest of the city.
Phoenix, Arizona is a pretty big city, at least it appears that way from the air. Some of the skyscrapers still stood like forlorn giants towering over their domain but the majority of the city was comprised of comparatively smaller buildings. [Kraken, make the call,] I ordered as I took to the air to survey the city yet again. Fifteen to twenty large buildings that could have been humongous offices or corporate centers surrounded a set of at least five skyscrapers that must have been almost forty stories tall, leaving me to believe that a decent amount of people might actually be left here. And if I’m right, then that would mean that a chunk of that percentage might be the exceptional few suited for magic and combat. What I don’t know is how many portals were here, how many were still open, and where did they all lead to? Deciding to go with my gut, I figured that the middle of the city would actually be the hardest to take but starting from the outskirts near the suburbs would be way harder in terms of trying to cover ground. The surrounding area was just thousands of square miles of homes and suburbs and all kinds of low level areas that I simply didn’t have the manpower to search, yet
Flying directly to the middle of the city, I touched down on the highest skyscraper and slammed the butt of Gungnir into the floor and unleashed a wave of raw mana that shook the building. Checking my gear and stores of power, I grinned as I smacked Svalinn with my hand. “Pucker up baby,” I grinned. “Hunting time!”
Morphing Gungnir into a mace, I had Svalinn on my left arm shift into a large bladed teardrop shield with the point of the tear facing out as I started walking towards the double doors to the stairs. [SAW, engage Shifting Runes mode, proactive defense intent!] Kraken giddily called out, happy to finally get around to testing some of SAW’s features that I hadn’t really used. The runes on my armor lit up and then began to flow across every surface as SAW, with Kraken’s help and direction, took over. The wings on my back flared out for a second and then settled on my back, folding in on themselves until my back was completely covered in a slimmed down turtle shield.
Hostile undead and Shifted lifeforms detected. Requesting permission for ambient sub-protonic particulate absorption for extensive durations of combat?
“Agreed,” I snarled as a nightmare creature boiled up the stairway as I opened up the doors. Gungnir cut loose with a salvo of crystal rounds that tore the long limbed thing apart. “Auto-detect and alert for incoming hostiles, notify of deduced weaknesses if available. Activate Angry Octopus protocol.”
Directive received. Automatic updates delivered via personal energy wavelength, incoming.
[I’ll take that,] Kraken interceded, grasping the incoming flow of data from SAW and carefully feeding it into a background mental process designed to translate the data. [One second, lemme make this a bit more understandable, and THERE!] A shift in my perceptions only threw me off for a second as my mind sorcery overlaid my vision with a more combat friendly version. [Okay boss, I’m feeding your magic senses in through your eyes as well to help out with the immediate surroundings. Enemies will have an outline in red even through walls, bright orange means they’re either magical or high-energy in nature and the blue is for indeterminate organics that might be humans or non-hostiles, but still be cautious.]
[Roger,] I acknowledged as Gungnir turned into an axe. [I think it’s time to test out this new body of mine. Let’s see what I can do.] SAW started up the Angry Octopus under the guidance of Kraken who was just a tiny bit miffed that I had made this defensive feature.
[It is a little bit insulting,] he snipped. [Conjuring water limbs and calling it an octopus and then assigning it to me! As if I’m some primitive water denizen from a backwards planet!]
[Shut up and drive, bitch!] I snapped as a four-armed zombie cranked through the walls, slobber spraying everywhere as it almost bit off its own tongue when I smashed its skull in. The water arms reached out, smacking the dead-again body away and into the other incoming zombie. Rancid flesh came apart like tissue paper between the power of Gungnir and my own newfound strength, making this almost too easy. The Angry Octopus protocol served me well as a defensive feature, the four tendrils quickly alternated between whipping arms tips with ice blades to retracting to become a disk shield that spun like a vortex, fouling the aim of incoming enemies.
[You know, this is kind of a pain in the ass,] I mentally complained. [Zombies stink, there’s who knows what kind of diseases that they’re sprayin’ everywhere, and here I am fighting like a goddamn barbarian when I should be straight up sinking the entire building into the earth.]
[How about we do one tower the hard way just to see if you can,] Kraken urged. [Then the rest we can do with magic or just wait until the sunstone golems get here. If they run at twenty miles an hour then they’ll be here in around nine hours.]
What could only be perceived as vampires tried to swarm me on the next floor down. Giant bats misting out of sight only to reappear as long-fanged humanoids with clawed hands kept popping in only to be smacked away by the water arms. Figuring this was the best time to test it out, I slapped the two pouches on my thighs where I kept the liquid remnants of the Nephilim, the water arms soaking up the holy bits and becoming the flaming holy water arms of death. Each touch of the arms smacking the vampires looked like a goddamn bomb going off, an actinic burst of light with the afterimage like when you look directly at the sun for a few moments. Feral screams sounded out as most of them simply fed while a few larger ones in the corners reached out, snatching the fleeing ones and ripping their heads off, draining the majority of their blood in one go.
“That’s just sick!” I groaned, tossing out a couple enchanted light stones that banished most of the shadows lurking in the building as the evening light faded. Not even giving me the courtesy of introducing themselves, the meathead versions of Hollywood’s Dracula came out to play. The disconcerting part was the way they fought in silence, darting in and out without making a sound, only to withdraw right before my water arms could make contact. Shifting Gungnir into a staff, I planted it into the floor as I focused my magical senses on the shifting pools of light-devouring black. “Light’em up!” I yelled, closing my eyes as I linked up to Kraken who manned the staff.
Even with my eyes closed, the flashes of magically blasted crystal rounds overfilled with mana and light left afterimages. The four pools of black exploded into concentric circles of red and white mixed together before turning into white only. Looking around, I saw the destroyed remnants of this near to the top floor office. “Fuck dude,” I whispered, looking at the destruction I’d wrought. “I’m kinda badass right now.”
[BELOW YOU!]
A skeletal hand the size of a garbage can lid made up of many bone pieces burst through the floor, gripping my leg and yanking me down to the next level. Luckily, I kept ahold of Gungnir with one hand as my other released four more light stones that revealed the ugliest fucking caricature of Halloween’s Bigfoot. Made up of mostly bone, swaths of flesh formed ugly pulsing sacs around its neck and waist and a few other joints, but its mouth was filled with human femurs that were snapped in half, the bone joint as the root of the fangs while the jagged part served as the point of the teeth.
My back hit a chair and then the floor, smashing the poor sitting device that didn’t give a rat’s ass about my lumbar support. SAW and the water arms absorbed most of the impact as my runes took the rest, converting the kinetic impact into raw mana that channeled down Gungnir and blasted the ugly fucker’s face off. [Get up!] Kraken screamed as things swarmed me. Svalinn let loose a roar that blasted a nice bit of a space for me, giving me a second’s worth of time to get to my feet and lob a couple grenades, clearing out the densest packs of vampiric zombies. A few of them were little more than slithering one armed corpses at this point, maybe that’s what happens when vampires starve for long enough.
Crystal rounds zinged out, accurately exploding heads and anything behind them as Kraken screamed inside of my head. The vaunted Scion of Order was two disparate parts right now and it kind of scared me. On the one hand, he was completely in control of his actions, perfectly guiding the combined magical efforts of me and my gear while at the same time freaking out like a little girl in a haunted house! The sheer amount of distracting epithets were simply fascinating, or would be if I knew what half of them were.
Using my holy water arms to clean myself from the tidal wave of gore that had splattered all over me, I set my jaw and expanded my magical senses, noting that the magically densest part of the building was anywhere close to me. The freaking center of stinking blackness was in the basement. [I coulda’ told ya that,] Kraken said drily.
[Fuck you, squid.] I growled, pulling out a few grenades, altering their runic structure to convert the kinetic explosion part into pure light. [Should have had Acantha gimme some of her wytchfire and then made grenades out of it. Burning this entire city to the ground would have been way easier.]
A long metal column six inches thick slammed into my back as if I were a baseball and the pole was held by a steroidal Jackie fuckin’ Robinson. It launched me clear out of the twenty-third floor through the panes of ‘fall-proof’ glass and into the evening sky.
Engaging ‘Anti-Human Missile’ protocol . . . powered flight operational.
As my body sat twenty-three stories up, hanging there for that split second of eternity, I had never been more thankful for Svalinn’s shielding as well as Kraken agreeing with my ever-present paranoia and the myriad insta-activate background protocols I had tucked away. SAW’s wings snapped out, perfectly adjusting to the instant change of environment even as my mind took a few seconds to catch up to the fact that I had been SWATTED. Something had looked at me the same way I glared at mosquitos and took similar action.
The chant of ‘fuck you’ repeated itself in my head so many times that it became my mantra for the rest of the evening. Deciding to abandon my plan of clearing the building floor by floor, I settled for the classic American way, bombing the fuck out of it. Flying back up to the top floor, I called Gungnir to my hand from where it rested on floor number twenty-three, my staff hurtling to me under the control of our bond. Snatching it out of the air as I hovered under the power of magical flight, I took out my upgraded Centauri rifle and sighted in on the scumbag who’s day I was about to wreck.
It was another version of the ugly bone Bigfoot that I destroyed earlier but larger, barely able to work his way on all fours through the confines of the human-sized conference room. Rotating the barrel of the rifle to the penetrating crystal rounds, I opened her up in controlled bursts of three rounds at a time, walking the magically enhanced bullets up and down the fucking monstrosity’s skull. For good measure, Kraken launched an over powered grenade into the floor vaporizing anything and everything.
[I don’t think there are any humans left in that building,] Kraken said. [All my scans reveal rapidly growing blotches of darkness. Besides, I don’t think either of us want to be out here in the dead of night.]
Conceding the point, I began pulling out grenades and consciously over charging them, using Gungnir to blast them like a launcher. I had SAW lower us ten feet at a time as I chucked them in, luckily each floor was missing most of its windows so I didn’t have to worry about a grenade bouncing back at me. Twenty-three grenades later, the building was clear of all life and un-life as well even as the other skyscrapers seemed to moan in anger at their dying comrade.
Swiveling around, I pointed Gungnir at the others. “You’re next bitches!” I yelled, chucking a into the darkest of floors of the buildings, completely sickened by the idea that Kraken was right, nothing was worth saving in this part of town. I began walking back towards Acantha, bits of nausea roiling in my stomach as I contemplated what that meant, the simple fact that all I had seen was death, sickness, diseased undead, and I hadn’t even really gotten started.
[The portal, dumbass! Cry about the rest of it tomorrow!]
With a snarl, I turned back towards the gutted hulk of a skyscraper, growling and muttering dark curses as I approached the entrance, the frames of the mostly glass doors hanging limply off to the side. Channeling my inner Toby Keith, I started singing ‘Beer for My Horses’, one of my favorite songs to myself as I set my rifle to the magic flamethrower setting, “Let the long arm of the law, put a few more in the ground!”