I recast the Assay, and it updated as power flowed through me. My Death Curse tingled as it felt the closer link, and I could feel a power connecting me to the death in the sky... linked to me through my Ring.

Ringbound Jinx Witch. I went over the array of abilities: unlimited use of a scaling Hex effect, pre-chosen as Evil Eye; the spells Weaken Gunpowder and Ill Omen; and the spells of a Ringbound Witch, which was basically a Domain effect. Its Valence I spell was Force Armor.

AND my Ring was my Item Familiar, and would serve as a Spellbook... and due to Arcane Bond, hooked to both Sorcerer and Wizard Spells!

Like playing cards being shuffled, all the active Wizard spells in my head flowed down my Arcane Bond into the Ring, and encoded themselves into the matrix of Einz, glowing and ready to be scribed and Slotted into my memory.

Whose Valences were currently suffering mana burn and couldn’t be Cast from for eight hours...

Regardless, I still Slotted Run and Vanish, and another Faith Healing, while also adding Faith Healing to Einz via the Write Cantrip. It would allow me to bring one out as an emergency. I still had one Faith Healing in reserve...

But I had Shardcaster/1 active. I could take Masteries sooner than I would normally be allowed to... I guess the same effect that was juicing me to Six Ranks, despite being a fragile little One.

I flicked up my Dart, and there was a stereo hum as the missiles flicked up... two of them, both with white and black fires swirling around them.

I dismissed the Darts, and brought up my Shards spell.

It defaulted to three now, not two. As I concentrated, a fourth and fifth built up and swirled into existence, jetsilver razor teardrops girt with white and black flames, and faint nimbuses of the proper hues.

Wrathflames, the combo had been called when wiping the Marches from the world. Black banefire, the color of undead ichor; unwhite, the color of necrus-eating vivus.

8d6+25 base Death to the Undead!

I had to be secure to get a place to Meditate and refill my Valences... and I wouldn’t be able to Cast from them, anyways.

But with the Renewal, I had the ability to bring a spell out of my spellbook... and the ability to renew a Spell Slot again, which I didn’t do because I might need it, and spending it now, when I could potentially Meditate to open the Slot in a few hours, was not the smart play.

I looked at my Sorcerer spells, and copied them into Einz via Writing, too.

This meant I now had three potential Shards to use... or I could grab any spell in the book that I needed.

Threat Level at least partially reduced...

And I had this Evil Eye thing to soften up an enemy if I had to, even if the range was ridiculously short for how I liked to do things. Curse magic... I was sensing a theme I didn’t want to get into. Yes, Curses could be horrible to inflict on people, but by their nature they were slow, slow, slow... and battles weren’t something I liked to drag out. I could do attrition play, but it was an option, not a necessity. Cursecasting was something you did outside of combat, if at all possible.

Nonetheless, it was now night-time, not that it was making much difference to my eyes. I looked across the parking lot at the van there, still running, lights still out... and bound to attract something.

I pulled up two Darts; they revolved slowly around my clenched fist.

Darts were definitely Cantrips. A Disrupting Dart was a poor-man’s Shard, doing d6 of damage to undead only. Normal Elemental Darts did a d4 of the chosen Element. Range was short, so 25 feet, +5 feet/2 Caster Levels. Right now, that was 4th, so 35 feet.

It wasn’t auto-target, it was a Ranged Touch Attack, bypassing natural and artificial armor to administer energy damage. That was important, because it meant it had to be aimed, and it could crit if it hit a weak spot.

It could also miss. Damage type, range, no auto-lock, no scaling... all inferior to the real Shards spell.

The extra +3d6 damage of Vivic and Bane were considered Kickers to a spell, and would only apply once per Casting per target on a normal spell. So even if I hit a zombie with two Darts, the damage from the two Metas would not stack up. Also crucially, they weren't affected by crits... nor were they divided by, oh, Chaining...

The Favored Enemy Boosts from my Foe Hunter and Undead Killer attributes were independent buffs. That meant the damage Boosts would normally only apply once per spell, just like Kickers... unless the Shards were fully Weaponized. Then they were per hit, and they were affected by crits!

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Each successive attack against the same target if Weaponized was a -2 to hit, cumulative, just like chain-firing arrows, but the stacking damage was quite impressive... as was the critical threat range going from a base 5% to 10%...

Zombies weren’t that hard to hit, with a base AC of 12. With the +4 Favored Enemy bonus, on top of my +6 from Intellect, my miss chance would be literally 5%, while keeping it as a touch attack... would have the exact same miss on a Nat 1, always a 5% chance without the right Feats.

The Darts crystallized as I walked a bit more quickly, not aching so much down below, towards the van.

I looked down the side alley the van was facing, and grimaced.

Two zombies were already shambling this way... no, there was a third, drawn by the headlights.

I tried the door with one hand, swore at it being locked, glanced at the back, and moved as quickly as could to the swinging door still open there.

The Warlock and his brains were now burnt oily smears, but his watch, earrings, and rings were gleaming there, ready to be scavenged by an opportunistic One who had no assets to her name.

I made my way quickly to the front, orienting on the keys dangling from the steering column. I was having difficulty picturing exactly how to start this thing, but shutting it down, yeah, snap, pull.

It took several more seconds to spot the little symbol that indicated light, and turn it forward, back, and turn off the headlights.

The first zombies were now at the front of the van, and there were half a dozen behind them, coming up the service drive.

I flicked up the Darts as they beat on the van, seeing the motion inside, and I scampered to the best of my ability to the back of the van.

They were still slow and awkward, clearly unenhanced, which was absolutely criminally stupid for any kind of a Dark Minister or Bishop. Zombies would evolve only by force... why hadn’t they upgraded their minions?

I hopped down, grimaced past the pain, and kept going, opening up distance between the two in the lead, but keeping them just in range...

Pop, pop!

The Boosted Darts went in for a nice 4d6+7 damage, average 21, and blew apart their upper chests, sending the heads flying as the necks exploded. Corpses burning vivic fell like puppets with the strings cut... just behind the van and out of sight from the road down there.

I waited out there for the other zombies to make their way up over the next minute or two, come in behind the van, and die.

No activity from the building. I didn’t believe I’d gotten them all, but I was perfectly happy to not be bothered from that direction.

I also didn’t want to remain outside, in case of a flyover from an incorporeal or spirit or something. Once the zombies pulled in were down, and I removed incidental jewelry from them, I headed back into the building.

It was time to clear it out and secure my shelter for the night...

------

With my Detect 0 set to Undead, I basically moved, scanned, moved, and scanned as I made my way through the building, plinking off the zombies wandering the aisles and hallways who hadn’t decided to move on.

I found the open garage where they’d been coming in, if the disturbed dust and debris blown about was any indication. I noted professionally that there were no rat tracks or anything about, and even the spiderwebs seemed to be absent, as if nothing alive was moving down here.

I looked out the open garage to the street outside, and decided that trying to pull down the garage door right now might be a bad idea.

There were literally hundreds of zombies wandering the streets out there, and that was just what I could see. I guess I’d been lucky that there weren’t any outside in the lot in the back, and I wondered how the Warlocks had actually intended to drive through the mess. Sinbound were basically ignored by undead, so maybe they would be expending their Scorn to clear a path through the undead, simple enough to do... or one of them likely had Undead Mastery, and could just order them out of the way, sloooooowly...

This girl would’ve been Animated at midnight. The Shroud here was pretty strong. That would’ve basically made her just one more walking corpse among all of these...

They only wanted the baby, that was obvious.

I eyed the wandering undead out there, with no place to go and no cares.

Where this was, I couldn’t tell at a glance. I’d have to go back and translate, but that wouldn’t actually tell me what the language was, only what the words meant.

However, if this was a modern society, it would have mail, and mail would naturally have an address on it. The offices I’d passed by should have some paperwork laying around, unnaturally preserved by the negative energy.

However, it was something for the morning. I was going to be moving back and forth between the rear doors and this garage all night, securing my position. I had a feeling that at dawn a bunch of undead were going to be wandering in this way for cover from the sunlight, so that would be the perfect time to literally close the ways in.

Prestidigitation was good for applying some lubrication, and fixing up the chains to raise and lower the main garage door wasn’t that hard...

------

I could only grit my teeth when I saw that the four doors of the building had been mangled and couldn’t actually be shut tight. So, zombies could force their way in from any of the four doorways I’d found, and I definitely wasn’t strong enough to create any real obstructions right now. I could stack some cans to create a crude alarm, I suppose...

Fortunately, the amount of killing had been enough to Infuse my Ring via my Arcane Bond, and Sustenance was flowing through me. I didn’t need to eat or drink, which meant I didn’t need to visit the loo which most definitely would not be working, and despite everything I’d been through, I didn’t need to sleep... I just felt like crap.

I could feel my Renewal receding behind me. I wouldn’t have any more changes until dusk tomorrow, which was incredibly annoying and sooooo slow. I wanted my power back now, so I could have some measure of peace of mind.

I breathed deep and took stock of my situation.

This was not a situation where I could run around willy-nilly. There were a lot of undead here, and there were powerful ones among them. I didn’t have any AoE stuff to take out packed hordes of them, and I wasn’t doing enough damage to kill the toughest zombies with absolute confidence with their 2d12+3 Hit Points.

Yeah, my average beat their average, but that wasn’t a guarantee. Only having Cantrips to fight stuff was not an encouraging situation to be in, and the short range was only part of it...