The Blessed Legionnaires were clad in breastplate and greaves, with greatshields fifteen feet high and thicker than your average door. Some had Axes, some had Spears, and the Hagspawn commanders seemed to prefer Swords. There were a hundred of the brutes, lined up and waiting for us, shields set in a wall, ready to thrust and hack as soon as we came in range.
Mama Hags be so proud of their widdle boys...
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But they couldn’t see what we were going to do, and that ominous feeling of not having Luck with them was making them quite tense.
They were big, incredibly tough, fast, strong, smart. But Luck and Fate weren’t with them, as they were in any and every other fight since these brutes had been blessed by the Hag Witches. Their lesser kin were being slaughtered even faster than they could do so, and that ominous storm was pointing at them.
Hags opened up with spells from six different angles. Energy-devouring necroic bolts, rains of flesh-cutting crystals, seething dark tentacles from places unknown dripping acidic poison, hellfire eruptions, lightning called down from the skies desperately...
None of it even slowed the incoming little attackers down. The magic evaporated, or simply passed through that swirl of lights as if the target wasn’t there.
The giant shields locked down, the front rank of spear users got ready, and as the three broke loose of the melee with the lesser giants, the first javelins went streaking out.
There seemed to be no way they could avoid them, but somehow, they did. The giants had never seen anything so agile, like they could dance between raindrops, and as javelins thudded into the corpses of the dead Jotuns around and behind them, they bounced off Shields, seemed to bend away from the trio just enough to miss them entirely... or bounced off the armor of the faceless one.
Then they were coming, moving even faster than the incredible speed of the Blessed Legion. The javelins became an intermittent rain that simply couldn’t seem to hit anything as the trio wove and jagged, scarcely slowing down as they came in –
Spears lunged at the armored figure in the lead, backed by more than enough power to penetrate steel like paper.
He stopped on a dime, so suddenly the extended Jotuns almost fell down trying to reach him. His bleeding Hammer knocked the closest Spears up and away, and then the woman with the cloak-like flowing golden hair was running at them along their own Spears, while the swirl of bloody lights and Glaive heralding the end of their time was flowing along underneath them.
A full volley of Spikes and Bolts opened up on every Giant within reach. Pure instinct had them raising their shields to deflect the shots heading right for their astonished faces. Some made it in time, some did not.
The Ancient and the Axe slid in right underneath their upraised shields, and the first of the Blessed went down with a cry as Banefire coursed up through the gut-opening slashed up underneath his breastplate. He collapsed, vivic fire boiling out his seven orifices already.
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Briggs jumped like a cannonball, slamming into the dead giant, driving the corpse back into his fellows... and lining himself up to strike the backsides of that disciplined battle line. Endure crashed into a spine as tough as a tree, and Lumberjack Ranks did their thing with the crit, taking the legs of that giant out instantly.
Up top, I was dancing on the shields raised to defend against me, poking shots through the narrow openings, and if they chose to hack or thrust or swing at me instead, their heads were exposed. Quaver dipped, and that generally didn’t remain a problem. Wayfair and Sparky were even crueler, lashing out like snakes over the edges of the shields, and as the giants gawked at the glowing spikes or bulging Tail in front of them, let go at point-blank range.
If I couldn’t reach a head, there was often a giant arm jutting up waving around some heavy implement, looking like it needed to be trimmed up a bit. The screams following the severed limbs added to the chaos.
The shields stayed up. Below, Briggs and AA made full use of that, staying below the giant’s line of sight with the best of Rockborn Jotun-fighting techniques, and really ripping them apart. Like bowling pins, the giants were falling, unable to see who was coming below, only me and Fall with the trigger held down, or Quaver rushing to meet any giant brave enough to expose his face to lock on me for a blow.
We had already found out that this Lesser Exemplar Template, derived from a Legendary Template, was generally enough to trigger Bane of Legends. The giants below us were not happy to discover likewise.
They were smart, and they realized very quickly that we were wielding Weapons designed to kill giants, and especially giants like them. It didn’t do them any good, but I could see the recognition in their eyes as I shot them in the face, buried Quaver a foot or two through their noses, slit their throats, sliced a path through their eyes, or if I was lucky and in the right position, actually took their heads right off.
We had Bane of Giants on them. We had Bane of Legends. We had Blooding, to offset their fast healing. We had Enmity, preying on the Evil in their souls. Courageous was blaring +7 to everything to everyone, Soulfire was letting them know our spirits weren’t any weaker than theirs, and Discipline Weapons were making sure we had that extra edge in wielding our weapons to really annoy them.
AA had the Ocean Style to III, and Shadow as well. Zeitgeist’s shaft was shifting between a foot and six feet in length on a whim, wielded without difficulty in the tight press of massive bodies, finding all the weak spots and biting very deep as he did so. Blinded by my shots, his opponents were meat on the plate, carved up and through and being hacked down thoroughly and rather messily.
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Briggs used Crystal and Ocean, but AA’s killing power came from his Helix, while Briggs’ came from his Grandmastery, and multiplied on crits. Thus, any crit was an instant kill, be it pounding a chest so hard it pulped the heart behind it, or hitting the skull hard enough to shatter it, or breaking the giant’s neck like a twig. AA was a Master of the glaive, there was no doubt of that, but his Helices would work with any weapon or no weapon in his hands.
In Briggs’ hands, a Hammer was death. Even in the skirl of giant bodies, crashing armor, clanging shields, and deep shouts and screams, the impacts of Endure stood out. The momentous crack of iron-hard bone giving way. The shriek of thick steel punched through. The thunderous whump of blunt impact against flesh that liquified the cells and sent bodies sprawling. The crunch of bone driving into cushioning brains and not finding enough support to stop them.
Truly, Endure had the beat down.
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The head of a Hagspawn Ogre went flying. Estemar Clove through, sinking Angfar deep into the guts of the ogre behind it. Aftershock activated, tearing out its belly in a gory spray of blood and vivic fire. He raised his Shield to take a massive blow on it, momentarily numbing his arm, but not sending him flying as it should have. The ogre behind it blinked down at him, and then a Spear came thrusting past him like it was mounted on a piston, driving up through its thick throat, into its brain, and three inches of it punching through the thick bone out the back of its skull.
It was drawn back as perfectly as it came in, and he rammed his shoulder into the stinking carcass, while Veis tumbled past and between the legs of the next ogre there, hamstringing it with smooth touches of her kukri. It took a step, tendons snapped, and it began to fall. Amber’s rapier flickered past its neck, blood spurted out as its throat opened, and then she inserted the narrow blade into its ear as it fell past, just avoiding the spray as she did so.
Nearby, the North Wind was also butchering ogres quickly. They no longer held a great advantage over the rest of the company, but they were still strong and skilled. Talatha and Jhon continued their one-two-kill teamwork, Liiss let loose endless bolts of lightning and balls of fire from Reserve, and Feist and Grym were ganging up on the much-bigger ogres, with the hyn using the Rockborn as a launching platform to strike high, while Grym hacked them down from below. Barus was playing healing duty, while the small moving hill that was Brown was dealing with any ogres that managed to force their way through the lines, with extreme prejudice and comfy hugs with lightning-dripping claws.
Oh, yeah, he was intelligent. Why not Open his Chakras, too?
A cone of freezing breath blew past them, tightly packed ogres screamed as air liquified and frozen skin shattered like clay. A few of them died, hearts, lungs, eyes, and brains flash-frozen. The rest were disposed of quickly, but their enthusiastic fellows behind didn’t slow down, trampling over their frosted compatriots, just in time to receive the flaming follow-up.
Captains Fido and Shirley followed up their breaths with leaps, clamping with jaws and ripping with claws that burned with lightning, great wrenches, and blood spraying from torn throats and chests.
Great burning heaps of ogres and giants were piled up, and unlike the undead, the vivic flames didn’t stop those behind. However, they did make fine cover.
Tremble was hovering over the center of the formation, dishing out healing spells without fail as quickly as possible, for there was no doubt that they were taking a beating all around. Luckily, the dragons and the dogs were slamming the thickest concentrations of giants with their breath weapons, breaking them time and again as magical or ranged fire finished off the weakened brutes, if the waiting Axes or Spears did not.
The berserkers were getting a lot of Wound Transfers, but there were also several long knives being traded among them called the “Little Healers’, which were +I Healing Edge, and helping hold back the damage. Even the most berserk among them knew they were facing very dangerous foes, and knew not to be stupid about the fighting... which hardly meant they didn’t enjoy cutting down fellow sapient bipeds bigger than they were.
All in all, it was pitched combat and a fairly enjoyable experience for all concerned... as long as it resolved before too awful long.
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“Good morning. You’re in no danger. Wolf is here to reassure you that we are not taking advantage of you, enslaving you, subjugating you, or forcing you to obey. He wears the Mark on his head because he wants it there, and he has the power, as do you, to remove it at any time. I am going to put it in place, then I am going to work on your restraints.”
The golden lion was magnificent, over six hundred pounds, all King of Cats... yet still just a basic lion that hadn’t taken any Level advances. He was staring curiously at the pony-sized Wolf, as he could tell that something was very different about Wolf.
Thus, he only growled as I placed the Mark, and then went absolutely stupid quiet as he beheld the Mark, and walked through the Door and the Markspace exploded with presences around him.
He waited quietly as I applied acidic oxidizer to his restraints, and then opened his first set of Chakra. I think he was too busy /talking to Elder Arg, who was twisting the heads off of ogres and throwing the rocks of giants back at them energetically while he /chatted with the Lion.
That Lion definitely had some grievances built up. As I let Briggs and AA clean up the last of the elite Lesser Exemplar Giants, I learned that the reason that there were no were-lions or Exemplar Lite ogres is because his bloodline was too strong. It instantly subjugated them if they were imbued, and they went berserk and tried to free him. The stronger giants and the Hags didn’t have that issue.
On the flip side, because their bloodline was strong, it took more of his blood and the Mu Goop to make them, so there weren’t nearly as many of them as there were of the drow.
I thought that was pretty reasonable. The Wolf noted the thick bands of metal were broken, and only needed to be bent and lifted out of the way. He yanked out the Spear that was bleeding the lion with a jerk, giving the great cat time to heal.
Barus walked over, and cast Animal Growth on the Lion. The great cat erupted in size, doubling in every dimension, flinging the metal irresistibly out of the way, and burst out roaring to its feet, the sound drawing shocked gazes from the giants in every direction.
-Go hunting,- I /told the Wolf and Lion, and that was exactly what they set out to do. When an Exemplar Bite/Claw/Claw/Rake/Rake killing machine leaps on a giant, well, the results are explosively bloody. While he couldn’t one-round a Jotun without a crit, he could play merry havoc on the ogres... but I hinted the giants were worth more, and he hated them more, so that’s who he went to play with.
Now, there was only hastily bringing the Obelisk down. However, the Rockborn Priests had received a thorough briefing from Hazé on what she had done, and now we had two powerful killing machines who would be soooo happy to send it tumbling down...
I glanced at the discretely placed Jar sucking up all those hundreds of gallons of Exemplar Lion blood, and whistled to myself as I got back to work.