AA and I were still shooting up towards the walls, tossed up like softballs, when Briggs shot right on by; last to jump, first to get there. His broad shoulders rotated Endure back to his right as he came over the edge of the parapet just as the Queen Xeno was looming forward to get a look over the edge.
His right foot hit the ground, anchored him as if he weighed ten tons with Crystal Dragon heavyfoot, and Endure came around.
Well, that’s what it looked like, at least, because Endure was on his right side, then it was on his left, and the head of the Queen was spraying out in a burning cloud of acid over everything to his left side. It was literally just an eyeblink. Mixed in that spray was a shattered and pulped cerebrovore the size of a small pig that had just been enlightened on what it meant to be a Hammer Grandmaster first-hand.
Briggs’ left foot descended, a step forward and down. His shoulder hit the Queen’s headless carcass, sent it flying back off the curved and knurled stone of the walk she was latched onto with her immense lower claws, and away she fell, wheee...
She didn’t get much of anywhere before AA and I alighted.
There was a horde of the things on the walk, on the walls, down in the courtyard, and the psionic backlash of their Queen dying was now reverberating through their hivemind. They were at once directionless and going territorially berserk. The cerebrovore in charge dying had also disrupted the telepathic network of the little neo-peabrains, and now they had to work out a new hierarchy of command. Given their Evil nature, exactly how seamless a transition was there going to be with that?
Maybe in the future I could advise them that they might not want to put the commander of both themselves and their rides in the same place. Why it had risked itself out here was another bizarre mystery I’d just chalk up to sheer arrogant overconfidence of someone riding a 15 HD giant xenosym...
Briggs and I saw the subtle motions of the horde dividing between competing factions instantly, picked out the three warrior-class drones being piloted by the second-rank ‘vores clamoring for authority on their tele-bands, doubtless making their cases for I Be Da Boss with great urgency while also trying to direct this horde of dispirited and woe-is-us Queen-less xenosyms.
There just might have been a little bit of a multi-tasking problem we took advantage of.
Welp, change of plans. AA went left, I went right, and Briggs dropped down after the Queen. Battleplans surviving first contact and all...
I let go with pretty much everything.
They had carapaces as hard as good steel, which might have impressed me if I wasn’t currently wielding a set of +VIII Weapons made of adamant, which meant very, very sharp, i.e. tracing lines of spatial cuts behind them, and also very, very hard.
The normal xenosyms had eight or so hit dice, giving them a high end of about eighty Health, freakishly tough, with DR 5/- or so. Their claws were psionically empowered by the same phrenic forces that allowed their unnatural physiologies to exist, doing improbable amounts of damage, very similar to having ki-boosted weapons and fighting skills. When cut, poked, or getting their carapaces broken, their acidic blood sprayed out under high pressure, powerful enough to eat through steel like cheese, but strangely not so effective on the greasy basalt underneath my feet.
It also sloughed off my Vajra like rainwater, as my Swords began to trace arcs of it in flowering sprays of death.
Quaver and Tremble were Singing with me, transcendent music pounding at the ears of the xenosyms with awful angelic rhythms in Aklo, letting them know that the wrath of the Heavens was upon them in Cerulean words.
Trust me, to the ‘syms, the words Definitely had Color.
Intimidate check at +50, swift action if you kill an opponent. -5 to apply it to everyone in sight. Sneak Attack damage applying to all frightened opponents...
Stand slammed into a thrusting jaw hard enough to snap it closed on the extended teeth, cutting them off and spraying acid at me, which I ignored. Sparky turned the Steel Manticore Tail and drove two spikes into its skull, Anathema blowing it apart, and exposing the cerebrovore riding it. A third spike punched into the turkey-sized thing, and then two rays of Soul Light hit that spike of force, punched into its innards, and blew the supernaturally tough little brain-eater into spraying pulp.
Sparky really loved the Tail!
Fall’s trigger was pulled, the Arm holding it able to rotate unnaturally and keep impossibly steady as it pumped out a steady and endless stream of Force quarrels at whatever was beyond my shoto and convenient as I moved along the walk surrounded by flowering sprays of phosphorescent yellow-green blood, hissing stone, and xenosym carcasses igniting like tinder.
Vivic fire loved to feed phrenics to the Land, too, even if it didn’t do any extra damage to them.
Two seconds after our slaughter commenced, Errant had completed his somersault, shifted to full Angel Walk, reduced gravity to one-sixth of normal, leapt after us, shot up a full hundred feet, and landed on the parapet behind AA. Boy had springs!...
Now Grace and Purity came singing out. He flowed off the battlement to the walkway, and Grace hissed through the heads and necks of two xenosyms crawling over the edge there in an arc of decapitating Wrath. He swung onto the flank of Brother Ancientaxe, who was plying Zeitgeist like a reaping scythe of death as fear shot through the screeching, writhing horde of xenosyms on Cerulean words from Reality and Heaven come calling.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Hey, Cutting Life operates off base Sneak Attack damage dice. You mean the Brother got both Cutting Life and ALL his SA dice on these Intimidated Aberrations, too? Man, what dumb Hagchild thought up that combo?
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Behind us, the rest of our forces were charging down that OSHA-noncompliant arch and onto the broken ground behind us, led by Corgun and his riders, lining up even as they charged forwards into the breaching formations they needed, under strict finger-wagging from Warlord Sama’s Mark-glare of Tyranny.
Corgun reached the proper point first, turned and put his shoulders down, and his tail up into the air.
Pursuing elven Casters cast their spells rat-tat-tat, and a line of Mass Disks winked into existence above him, extending from the end of his tail all the way up to the edge of the parapets above.
His two Riders were the first ones up that slope, running up his broad back, up the extended tail, and onto the Disks.
Flowing up after him were the elven archers, interspersed with Ironblood to block for them, going up his claw, shoulder, back, and tail in a smooth, easy stream.
Sir Harbrom hit the parapet, charged into three xenosyms who had crawled up to block him, and Thunder sounded in a place never meant to hear such purity. Sunlight punched a hole in the clouds above, xenosyms screamed at the touch of it, and shattered carcasses blew back from the ramparts, yay-us!
Vialeste was exactly one step behind him, hopping up for height, two arrows leaving her bow at ninety degrees to one another, striking down and past him on either side.
Lightning gathered up the remnants of Thunder and blew down the sides of the walls, hammering through the hordes coming up the walls as she came down.
Two more archers came up behind her, and everyone moved left, making room for those behind. Two arrows punched through the skulls of smoking ‘syms coming over the edge, sending them off the walls as the first Ironblood arrived, shield and axe at the ready. More elven archers danced up the battlements behind and above him as he brought his cerulean-burning Axe down upon a smoking skull, treading sideways to make room as arrows hissed past him and nailed two more wounded ‘syms through the head.
Don’t watch the bosses, don’t watch the bosses, don’t watch the bosses, rang through all their heads. Follow the music, watch the paint, keep moving, make way for those behind you...
They very, very much wanted to watch their bosses slaughtering everything, just stand there in awe at the fact any living beings could actually wreck that much carnage on everything before them... before the inevitable, acerbic -Why can’t you do the same thing?- /came along to kick them into action once again, and they remembered that they too were some of the deadliest warriors alive, and it was their job to kill!
---
Errant hit the parapet above about the same time as Briggs hit the ground below. His heavy boots and weightier heavyfoot slammed down on the carapace of the Queen, radiated sideways, and blew out her shell with the impact of his Heavyfoot soles. Soul-soles? Acidic innards blew out in a flat stream in all directions, and xenosyms screamed and smoked under the deluge.
His Tremblesense radiated out like sonar in all directions, locating every clawed foot, every shift of weight, and tensing of talons on the ground, reverberating up into those unnatural bodies pulsing with phrenic energies, and reading them, noting which ones were unnaturally reinforced and strong, painting them into the Marktell for sixty feet around himself.
There, There, and There were in range.
The handle of his Hammer grew to ten feet long, and his arm moved up and down.
From behind him, Endure was now in front of him, along with the head of a ‘sym with a ‘vore rider that had been reduced to the thickness of a pancake beneath the impact of his Hammer, creating a nice dent in the ground.
The rebound lifted Endure as Briggs took a precise step and pivot, and the Hammer arced up and down, and then another pivot, up and down, and then a rotation.
Whamwhamwham, three ‘vores were flattened to spongecakes, the Hammer only seeming to get faster and faster, and he spun in a circle as his ki and motion seemed to pull their heads into a line. He completed a full circle and let go of Endure.
Six heads exploded in passing, and Endure smashed through two more skulls, sent two more careening away, and a warrior drone starting to rise up from their mass got caught right in the eyeless-face, which promptly decided to flatten itself against the ‘vore behind it, and that thing decided to take a brain nap against the unflinching and supportive basalt of the wall behind it.
There was a beat, and Endure was back in his gauntleted hand, drumming happily around, covered in steaming acidic gore that had absolutely no effect on either of them. One more beat, and the acid was blown off the Hammer by Briggs’ Vajra, and he casually took a step fifteen feet long, and struck out.
Carapaces shattered like brittle glass, and ‘syms swarming instinctively to the attack went flying back, their own acidic blood coating their kin.
Beat, step, left. Beat, step, right. Beat, step, left. Beat, step, right, release, flatten another head against a wall sixty feet away, watch the telepathic shudders and loss of control ripple through the horde.
Beat. Left. Three ‘syms around him found four arrows each punching through their heads, and the ‘vores also impaled there didn’t seem to like it too much. Acid fed back, and mount and rider liquified explosively in that classic cranial out-all-the-orifices way.
Four more arrows bracketed him as he took two more steps towards another drone at the entrance to the hive fortress. He pulled his Sun in, and four fireballs went off all around him, flat Disks overlapping in multiple areas, pulling up just shy of him with perfect placement of the AoE effects. Xenosyms screamed and died, and two revealed ‘vores were nailed to the ground a second later by unerring arrow fire. A step, wham, and a toss later, they were shatter-splattered, and his unhurried, irrevocable progress continued.
There was a momentous hiss as a couple brood guards, almost as big as the Queen, rose behind the drone. Unlike the drone, their narrower heads didn’t allow for a ‘vore rider. They had come hurtling up in response to the death of the Queen, and without hesitation, the massive things bounded towards him.
Step left.
A crossbow quarrel, three spikes, and two Rays drove into the side of the head of the one on the left, smashing its head to the side and throwing it off pace as Briggs took another step, and brought Endure back as it overstepped, looming up on him, blocking the other one trying to lunge at him-
A leaping ‘sym’s head disintegrated, so did the narrow head of the brood guard as its extending jaw bounced off his skinplate, and Endure continued on through into the shoulder joint of the second, shattering it like glass and smashing it away from its course as acid spurted from the broken carapace.
He didn’t look back as a shining Shardstroke sliced down from above through the middle of the second’s head before it could find its feet, cutting its foreskull and brain right off. Up on the battlements, Errant continued after Ancientaxe, not breaking his own warding of Brother AA’s flanks.
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Glossary: Phrenic is the psionic equivalent of spell-like abilities. Any creature born with natural psionic powers is phrenic. A creature with psionic talent, but who gets their powers from Class Levels, is just psionic. So, Marvel's X-Men mutants would be considered phrenics (and psionic), but Moondragon, who got her telepathic powers via training, is merely psionic.