And if anyone ever thought Psions were better than wizards, as psions and PP are all Pools...
The cloud of psionic energy permeated my Matrix, smaller energy units, less potent, more flexible, like the Pool gathered outside. Like Casters, the different advance schema didn’t stack, only the additional Stat bonuses applied.
So, there was the psion cloud. Stacking Advanced Classes raised the base Nine of its Secondary Class to a virtua 17 for CL and Reserve. Psi Warrior for Wisdom and Null Psion for Con added 231 and 295 PP to the base of 250, for 776 PP, of which two points equaled one Valence in overall power.
It was still a whole lot of psionic power. I wouldn’t have any problems triggering a Psychic Weapon...
My Soul Essence and Ki were relatively minor, at 100ish or so respectively. I had a Mark IV Diamond Vajra at 100.
My Fort Save was sitting at +89. My Null was 111. External magic was not something I had to worry about.
Oh, and I was mutating something fierce.
First my legs went, merging into a serpentine, scaled lower torso about twenty feet long. Given I was moving on lightfoot, it wasn’t any slower, I just flowed along the ground now, like I was swimming through the air.
Pop! Out came the feathered wings. Two sets.
Pop! Pop! Out came the two extra pairs of arms.
Out flowed three sets of horns, from my brow, my temples, and the back of my head.
A third eye opened on my forehead.
My skin went black. Wayfair would be so happy. My hair was gold and black and bronze, and shifting through other colors according to my mood. It also grew another four feet.
My lovely blue eyes went away. I popped up my Mask to give me paint there, just so I wouldn’t annoy myself. My whole eyeless face was now basically an eye, with the one on my forehead giving me total True Sight. Yay them lilitu and divs.
And if the amount of energy gathering in my sole eye in front was to be believed, as soon as my hair turned into draconic-snakes, complete with jaws and venomous fangs and eyes I could also see through, that eye would petrify stuff that looked into it. Kinda hard not to focus on it, seeing as it was glowing and all.
My mass continued to swell, I got bigger and bigger, certainly far bigger than a normal marilith. The scales on my serpent lower body grew both thicker and finer, in patterns of bronze, silver, red, black, white, blue, and green, and I recalled all the dragons I’d had bites of during those six months, and the samples I’d helped extract from our allies before Elder Arg had made their Elixirs.
I wasn’t surprised when the three pairs of draconic legs came out, nor the second set of huge wings, turning me into a six-legged winged draconic centaur... or the massive pair of pincer arms from my hips. Thank ye, glabrezu... and ye barbazu, for all the spikes growing out from my scales and skeleton all over.
Still no breath weapon. Pity.
My primary tail had the hissing energy of a lilitu’s brand, but the lilithi stingers were growing from my backside below the sable and silver angel wings, looking more like tentacles now.
Class Levels to Melee Seventeen, which meant Secondary Levels came to Nine.
At Eight came more Stat buffs, but they didn’t seem to have applied-? Well, for some reason, I wasn’t worried.
The clouds of Warpspace were thickening ahead. I looked at my hands, the claws on them now like foot-long curved blades, similar and thicker things on my feet and tail and body, and razored edges on my wings and horns and body spikes.
Okay, basically every part of me was a killing weapon now. Even the spinal crest with its crystalline fractal patterns running down my lower half was sharper than a razor. I was to a marilith what a dragon was to a snake.
I was an unbelievably ruinous, magic-immune killing machine. The gods couldn’t see me, couldn’t do a damn thing to me, and in combat, I was just going to ruin anything that came at me.
Which was probably the whole point here. I’d proven I was a killing machine, it was time to do some truly epic killing and shake some things up?
I wondered why that was important. Showing how tough stuff from outside their little universe could be? Hrm, well, that wouldn’t impress a deity, but being able to schlock all their followers and get away, that could be impressive.
And it would settle things down here in the Warp. So, slaughter for the highest of causes.
Was I going to stay like this? Gah, Hell, no. I was simply too big, too many things I could not do, and in the end, the battlefield was too large.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But, I could turn the battlefield into another anchor point for Outside, and extend influence here. Ah, yes, definitely the thing to do.
My Health was 970ish, my Soak around 1020. I was regenerating at 5 or so a round, even if dead, and Fast Healing at 15 or so otherwise, when juiced with Soul Essence. They’d have to use a freaking Holy Silver artifact to actually kill me, which I felt might be rather difficult to find in a place like this.
Golden and silver light fluttered on my Vajra around every killing surface from the psionic Nimbus around me. I was going to get in a lot of combat with Chalice, which now was about the size of a shortsword to me, and I had to add mass to.
No problem...
My feet touched the ground as space parted around me, and opened up to the vista of a great, dull, stinking battlefield, permeated by the smell of blood, guts, brimstone, fire, and rot, among other even less pleasant things.
I had lots of time to grow her Name. Copper and black orichalcum hummed in my hand in response to my Vajra, and its +V Psibane woke up, ready for work.
Greater Soulbound Vivic Blooding followed. Only six Slots for now, let’s see what happened with +XI Stay Dead Forever on the stuff here.
And I was off, moving at just about the speed of sound within seconds, heading for my first targets.
And if all those Profound Powers who f’d me over by force-feeding me their generous Glory rewards, hoping I’d get morphed into a protean blob of impossible genetics, thought I didn’t realize what they’d done to remove a potential tool of Good from the mortal world, boy, were they going to have another think coming...
==============
I reaped a burning path through the fields of the Warp. It did not matter how large the conflict was, I went right into it. Tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions... didn’t matter. I plunged right in and killed everything.
I actually only had to fight the tougher stuff. It turned out that somehow or other Nymph’s Beauty was active, and since I wasn’t wearing any clothing, perhaps the sheer disbelief that something that looked like me could actually be transcendentally gorgeous blew their minds.
The lesser and medial demons on the battlefields that looked at me literally dropped in place, and burned vivic.
The larger ones that met my glowing third and only eye basically turned to stone, and I shattered them in passing.
Battlefields were covered in vivus. If they were the size of a planet, that just meant more dead to purge and eliminate.
Here in the Warp, the default was supposed (emphasis on supposed) to be a state of serenity. Demons formed from psyche and sin died, were reduced to nothing, and faded into the background of the Warp. They simply ceased to exist, and all awareness of them vanished from their patron gods, who could barely tell something was wrong.
Sometimes I just killed, working on all the fighting techniques I could. I had claws, swords, wings, horns, talons, tentacles, tails, and even elbow spikes now. I could constrict and shred with razor-edged scales and my spinal crest, and every inch of me was a killing surface that could cut, crush, stab, and slay.
Well, I had poison, too, but that was just overkill. Class AB and Racial AB, trained and instinct, practice maketh perfect.
I fought all the legions of the Warp, playing no favorites, and I burned them down. I fought monsters the size of hills and mountains, and reduced them to the size of boulders. I killed mind-blowing monstrosities, literal demigods, demonic titans, corrupted engines of war, demonized cyborgs, possessed robots, psychic agglomerations, and hiveminds... it was all there.
I guess you could say I broadened my horizons on what was out there tremendously, and I disposed of it all.
And I did so Appropriately. The paths I carved were runic signals, etched into the Warp with Vivus. They were anchor points for more and more streams of trapped souls to be drawn from the Warp, extending the reach of the stars, increasing the draw, until the Warp Gods couldn’t help but notice that what was going on needed their personal attention.
Which meant it was time for me to act.
---------------
That looked like a Summoning to the mortal plane.
I’d seen a lot of incursion zones, fluttery Portals to the mortal world where magic, psi, and emotion converged and allowed demons to cross over and have fun on the other side. I’d avoided them because I absolutely knew that something like me didn’t belong on the mortal plane.
But, there were immense prescences nearby in the Warp, looking for me. I knew they couldn’t see me unless I lit the place up with vivus, the deaths of their servants would just be lost amidst the general carnage.
The Spiral Dancer was waiting eagerly for the Portal to manifest. I had the impression she was being Called by Name, instead of stumbling on a lucky attempt.
That was fine. Any way out was a good way out.
She was twenty miles away. I’d be there inside a minute.
=========
She was called Madame Hyiota, the headmistress of one of the most exclusive boarding schools for the wealthy on Janus Prime. The girls she taught here were well-trained, intelligent, decisive, beautiful, and highly-mannered, skilled at negotiating the currents of noble and mercantile circles, and catering to the foibles and fantasies of those around them.
None left here without being initiated into the worship of Amourae to one extent or another, spreading corruption through the noble and merchant families of the whole sector.
The real Hyiota had her soul eaten almost twenty years ago, of course, barely out of school herself. The being wearing her face and body had taken many incarnations over the centuries and millennia, bringing worlds to ruin in decadence and corruption, civil war and sloth, turning the weak upon the strong, the strong upon themselves, and bringing down the hypocrisy of society in flaming ruin, each destroyed world an art and masterpiece to be delivered to the altar of Amourae.
She had bathed in lakes of blood, sat on thrones of skulls in houses of bones, walked streets carpeted in corpses set out just for her, attended shows of cities set aflame for her evening’s pleasure.
Male, female, it didn’t matter what her body was. She had wrought great achievements for her master, and knew great rewards awaited her in the afterlife.
Bringing Kacowrie here was the next step in the plan. With the presence of a Greater Demon of Amourae, the subliminal psychic influence on the radicals and extremist factions of the city around her would start to accelerate, and the influence of Amourae on dreams and desires would increase. Attention would fall from industry and ambition to indulgence and whim, sparks would ignite over the smallest differences, and be fanned into a flame as extreme desires and passions took hold...
She and Kacowrie had worked together in the past, earning great merits in the eyes of Amourae together. Together again, they would lead this world to self-destruction, and it would burn in new and inventive ways for the pleasure of Amourae...