Nightmare might be getting a little tense...
Gargorians came. Finally, they went. So much for grims-worth of uber oversized gargoyles.
Bacchae and maenads were next, insane revelers possessed by divine madness as they caroused, and wanting to tear apart anyone that didn’t join them in their demented carousing. Sweeping up the townsfolk and turning them into a killer mob of giants… a horde/swarm of giants, and extremely strong and fast, coming in through the gates.
I used my last Potion to get through them, as I needed the reach to contest with theirs and deal the amounts of damage I needed to inflict upon them, as their damage was basically AoE and unavoidable, so DR rode to the rescue.
Tremble totally pissed them off by Singing counterpoint to the chants and mad singing, and Stand began to chime in with a drumming backbeat that totally played with their heads. He couldn’t talk yet, but Tremble was enthusiastically making music with him. My Wardance juked through their revelry, matching and tearing it apart all at once, and the gore that flew as I ripped through the madmen was extreme, to say the least. They felt no pain and died laughing and calling for more.
Amouraens were never fun to deal with.
The squads of soldiers with spears appeared, operating in tight squads, alternating with swordsmen, group after group, one arriving as the one before them fell. They were tests of endurance and skill, constant motion as they out-reached me and I had to close with them to kill them, One Strikes heaping big damage on me that couldn’t be mended so easily. I poked them with Banestars, and they chased me, but if I ran too far, I’d run into a second squad, so I was tightly limited in my operating area, and Banestars took a while to bring one of them down, especially since they all had shields.
Battle Vigor was constantly stopping and restarting as I re-centered myself and went after them again, but it wouldn’t reset without at least some rest, so never during one squad, as truly running away from a fight was impossible in this Nightmare. Thankfully they had no form of regeneration, or they would have taken forever. I could still kill them fast if I got in on them, but what generally happened is that I had to get them to expend their readied actions to make a move on me for a kill-stroke, and then flash in with a charge and kill one before they could recover and block for one another. Once they were missing a squad-mate, their effectiveness fell sharply, and I could get one out of position and kill him, then pick apart the last two as needed.
The spearmen had the weakness of fighting something a lot smaller and faster than them, and not having close defense. If I got in among their legs, they were going down. Swordsmen were better off, but couldn’t threaten me from as far away, which meant they were more vulnerable to charges going after their legs.
I cut a lot of kneecaps and tendons, I used a lot of Banestars, and decided to Name my Katar Doc, because Healing was a thing, and it deserved a name.
Its blade went all snow-white, with runnel, guard, cutting edges, and hilt turning crimson, in response to the Name. I was definitely amused at this, but as long as it did its thing keeping me going, I wasn’t going to protest its aesthetics.
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The last man of the patrol squads fell down heavily, hamstrung efficiently and his life pouring out a huge gash in his thigh. The amount of blood was tremendous, but the vivic flames took care of it all. The bodies I’d left behind in a long trail down the stone road had basically all burned away with great speed, as the Curse wasn’t going to fight the vivus.
Physically I was being beat on, since they could hurt me faster than I could mend myself when they had a full squad. I could slowly recover once I killed the second soldier, and was able to do a fair amount of mending with Doc from the last two.
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Still, I ended up spending Vigor uses, just an endurance crawl, and I wasn’t using Healing Potions without a good reason now.
It was enough to finally make it to the morning of the second day.
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The sun, as always, was gloomy in Nightmare, somehow casting long shadows even when bright, and overcast without a cloud in the sky.
Still, seeing it rising over the city around me was impressive enough… and I actually got two minutes to appreciate it as the Curse decided what to do next in a fit of pique.
I was about at half Health, covered with thin cuts that Doc hadn’t been able to completely mend, although I wasn’t bleeding. The short rest allowed me to fully refocus, and Battle Vigor would be ready immediately… although I had precious little Soak at the moment, even with the now-speedier regeneration of it. There simply wasn’t enough time…
“I have to admit, you are getting a tremendous workout doing all this,” Tremble noted, and Stand beat once in agreement.
“Hah, yeah, it’s true. Nothing like deadly combat to pound the lessons of spontaneously gifted Feats into you proper-like.” I looked around at the looming buildings of stone and wood nearby, studying the architecture, which had similarities to both Chinese and East European in ornamentation.
“What do you think is coming next?” he asked, looking around with me.
“There’s motion on the walls there.” I pointed him at the long line in the distance, past the rising and falling streets and homes in the way, looming over most of them. We waited as a dark tide spilled over them, and murders of crows were streaming past overhead. There were sounds of fighting, screams, and horns of bone and wood blowing vicious notes of combat… interspersed with mesmerizing, maddening pipes. “I think… the city is being invaded by Fey.”
It was a visual mile, but the distance was closed quickly, fires starting to spread as whatever force was coming hurried directly towards me, hacking down the distant shadows of townsfolk who were running around in surreal fashion.
“Do you think her home actually got invaded?” Tremble asked, as the incoming force poured towards me.
“No. More likely she’s heard some war stories or histories, and the Curse is drawing on them for inspiration. This looks like a force of Fey…”
I could pick out the redcaps at the fore, hacking down anything and everything they could with their oversized axes. They should be only waist-high on me, but were actually taller than I was now, waving around axes bigger than they were as they pounded along in their iron boots. Backing them were spriggans, inflated into their Giant forms, with satyrs forming a spear line, centaur archers and lancers heading this way and that, and quicklings whizzing around in blurs of motions to wreak as much havoc as they could.
“Umwow,” Tremble offered, as a massive fire Elemental tore through a house and spread the end of civilization, as was its wont.
“Look up.” My head was tilted back to see the true leader of this force, a winged figure of ‘human’ size, up among the crows, black feathered wings spread wide, calmly directing and leading this bunch of rabid incarnate misfits on their orgy of destruction.
“That’s an Erlking; defenders of nature, foes of civilization, and especially colonizers, with a big mad on for humans especially.”
“He’s about to fall down go boom,” Tremble noted smugly.
“Probably not yet. We’ve got too much other stuff to go through.” Quicklings playing super-speedster being only the forefront of this, and rains of arrows sure to follow. Well, the Curse really hadn’t tried prolonged missile combat against me, had it?
Coming in at better than sixty mph, quicklings as tall as I was raised the knives in their hands, their hatchet-faces bearing grins of bloodlust and anticipation as they charged in.
They hit my Null, slowed down out of temporal acceleration very abruptly, and removed their own heads as I slid aside, one, two, three, didn’t even have to swing. Their bodies continued past, re-accelerated outside my Null, and flipped wildly over the bars of the riverwalk behind me. They and their heads went spinning down into the accepting waters, burning unwhite as they fell into the dark waters.
The line of eight-foot redcaps came pounding in with their heavy boots, making the ground shake. I noted sharply that the size magnifiers had changed to merely double human or so, and if I had a Potion, I could actually look these guys in the eyes. The satyrs behind them seemed to be about twelve feet tall…
Well, the Curse might have finally deduced that more foes surrounding me was good, as long as they didn’t die. Keeping enough height to keep the additional Hit Dice and not die instantly might be a good way to fight me, as long as they kept a reach advantage.
I didn’t expect to make it through all of this fighting force to the Erlking quite yet, but now I at least had something to look forward to in the morning…