She hopped off the ground, her heels streaming mist. Cloudstepping Sandals, he noted numbly, one more Binding of Soul Magic. Twenty feet off the ground, her Sword butterflied, two Shardblades ripped their way out as she swayed back and forth, and found two pairs of Fire Giants out there, cleaving their thick necks from their broad shoulders from forty yards away, pop-pop, pop-pop. They simply never had the chance to threaten her, and the second pair didn't even see her launch the attacks.
She dropped back to the burning ground, landing amid vivus so thick you couldn't see the once-dark stone, and resumed her mass slaughter and that totally impossible salvo of Shardings destroying everything before her. For a few seconds, the death toll was even more appalling, because she'd broken her massacre to deal with the four Jotuns, and the lesser Fireborn actually got closer to her so more of the horde could die at one time.
It was clearly obvious that even Jotuns weren't going to slow her down on her path. Still, the Fireborn came, driven by fanatical loyalty or just plain dominated into total obedience, and she reaped them and Fed them to the Land.
"Is-is that who I think it is?" Weird asked softly next to him.
-Drekzun, can you hear her Sword?- /asked Argos softly.
-Oh, yeah,- the Archer /replied, clearly shaken. The carrying twotones, ogh oooh, agh oooh, rang through the /tell, sigh and scream and hammer-beat and inevitability driving everything before her all in one. Everyone's heartbeat seemed to jerk and try to match time with the unique Sword-Song, cold dread spreading through them at the killing edge to those simple notes.
Whatever she was Singing to it wasn’t audible at this distance, but was certainly not going to be any worse.
-That's Sama Rantha. And she's managed to forge Tremble all the way up.-
Tip of the Spear Sama Rantha. Captain and Commodore Sama Rantha. Grandmaster of the Sword, Sama Rantha. Sage of Swords, Sama Rantha...
Null Forsaken Hagchild Rank F Melee total badass, Sama Rantha. Here, in the Central Charlands. He could barely imagine what she was doing out here. There was no way anyone would have missed her during the Marches with this kind of killing ability. Her chest was still as flat as a board, but nobody was looking at her armor-cleavage. They were too busy being stupefied by how fast she was killing everything.
-Tie it off, everyone.- Vassals blinked, turned to look at him. -You don't really think the Eternal Helm is just going to sit here and watch like damn voyeurs, are you? She may not need it, but we'll have her back, and if she's okay with it, we'll have her sides. Tie it off and get ready to ice a lot of Fireborn if need be.-
---------------
“Dreams of ash, wrought on stone,
Fallen cinders to living bone.
Cold steel quenches living heart,
Fires before the ice do part.
Tremble, She Comes!
A storm of fire across the land,
Burning all to dust and sand.
Winter, Winter, Winter is here!
Know your Place, KNOW YOUR FEAR!
Oh ooooo oh oooo... TREMBLE, SHE COMES!”
There was an Archer sitting there in the air a half-mile back.
I kind of blinked, but didn't lose focus on what I was doing. There were another few miles of Fireborn to kill, and they didn't seem any less eager to be fed to the Land, despite almost quaking in their sweat-socks as I Sang while I slaughtered in their own language, driving terror and fear and invincibility into their Fireborn wave tactics.
Hey, it was a mass Intimidate Check, and I got to add Sneak Attack damage on anything that was suffering a Fear Effect. It all went on the stack. And additional +9d6 damage was not something I would give up if I could.
That Archer was invisible and not moving, so the flying Fireborn focused on me hadn't wised up to his presence yet. They should have invested in Masks of Clarity, and maybe their flyers would have found someone to vent on...
Well, now I knew there were other survivors around, and from PoT if that classic Windbow design in his hands was any indication.
If someone wanted to play the fisherman on me, this was going to get real ugly, real quick.
My suspicions were confirmed when about twenty minutes later, two full Raid Teams came zooming in over the charred landscape, and lit into the Fireborn started converging on them with rather instantaneous, obliterating fury. There was Siegecraft, level Five Dragon Forms, Reserves, rocking volleys of Windfire, and even assorted Warlocks pitching in with eldritch energies, doing the job of blocking most of the incoming spells with their Wards.
Quite quickly, there weren't any Fireborn within spell range of the raid teams, who moved forward and set down on the causeway beyond me exactly beyond the reach of the Stillflight emanating off my Null.
The expressions of the Fireborn I was slaughtering seemed to undergo a huge change. I was, at the end, just one person, and they were perfectly content to wear me out with numbers and eventually overwhelm me. I didn't bother to tell them that I could literally fight like this for three days straight without any problems, Revitalizing snapping up from Arsenal for a blow or two would take care of any fatigue...
But now a whole lot of other mortals had just come up behind me, who were also terribly effective at slaughtering them. What was probably going to happen to them now could very well be imagined...
162 people, most of them looked like Tens, with the exception of the Warlocks. But they didn't start attacking me, at least, probably a little leery of the level of slaughter I was undertaking. They also didn't arc attacks past me and start pounding the Fireborn, although I noticed the Fireborn in the rear ranks ahead of me were finally slowing down in their advances and screeching to a halt right about at the edge of my Stillflight. I could still pop them with my Autobows, but why bother? I had guests!
I turned around, the words of my Song dying to just the two-tones from Tremble, and Stand’s beat. The area immediately in front of me was occupied only by vivus, and saw the ostensible leader of the Raid Teams coming forwards, with a companion.
I was more than a little surprised to see that I recognized both of them.
Average to short, bronzed skin, sharp green eyes, close-cut black hair. His battle garments were an upgraded version of classic frontier magos, with a lot of extra gold trim and Runecraft. A DC35 Staff, looked like he'd Fabricate’d it for stratic improvements, but I was surprised to see that it was laenwork, with a lot of complex runecrystal work inside of it. A Monarch sash crossed his chest, and his badge of an open eye was visible on it, on his shoulder, and on the shoulders, tabards, and shields of most of the Powered behind him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
His companion had electric white hair, which was standing out like a bush; pale white eyes, and little streamers of magic popping about him in a chaotic, distracting manner. He was using a Jo instead of a Staff, also at QL 35; still a Weapon and had probably seen some use, even if he didn't look like he wanted to be this close to a melee fight.
"Argos and Weirdboy." I tilted my head. "The last time I saw you in-game I was hauling the dead carcasses of you and your Fellows out of the Gray Gulches. How far you've come."
They both blinked, and rather to my relief, both of them smiled at the same time. Behind them, I saw people tossing coins to one another.
"Damn it all, it is you," Argos said. His clipped voice seemed to vibrate with command. "What are you doing way out here, Sama?" he asked, still looking a little stunned.
"Well, I'm kind of in the middle of something here, Argos," I said sotto voce, and he actually flushed in embarrassment. "The king, emperor, tyrant, or other appellation of the day boss figure is ensconced in that volcano up there, and he is rather pissed at me for wiping out his seven underbosses these last few months. I aim to carve my way through his little bunch of minions here, then his lieutenants and elite guards and guard monsters, and then Feed him to the Land.
"You're kind of distracting me from completing my Quest, here."
Argos looked at Weirdboy, who sighed and flipped him a crystalline coin, the action once again mirrored by a bunch of the Eternal Helms behind him. Argos returned his gaze to me and cleared his throat. "Well, there's absolutely no way we can just sit there and be about what we were doing and just watch you power through these bastards." His eyes flickered past me. "Extradimensional invaders from Fire?" he asked harshly. "That's Stage Four already, bastards…" Power glowed in his eyes and faded away as he coughed again. "So, what would you like us to do for you? We can just hold your back if you want to solo it all, or we can help you sweep the rabble and keep reinforcements down. Your Quest, you tell us what to do."
Well, that was rather friendly of him. I turned my head to look at the Fireborn packed up a hundred yards away, waiting to die. The Masspack built into the back of my Armor popped open, my Tail arced down and brought out a bag of soft charhound hide. "There's fifty Greater Tokens against Fireborn in there. Eliminates elemental dominance and DR, + a d6 for damage, and converts all damage to force or frost, whatever is more effective." My Tail dropped them in his hands while I glanced at the Greater Tokens vs. Undead hanging from their Implements. "Speeding up this part of the grind shouldn't have all that much impact, and it does get annoying after a while."
A Fire Worm suddenly breached the lava lake in a surging spray of molten stone. Ten feet thick, massive open maw of obsidian teeth leading to a burning pit of a mouth -
Two of my Shardings ripped through it, severing the head and sending thigh-thick veins of frost shooting through the mass left behind. I caught the falling head on my Shield as it rolled down, half-frozen solid, levered it up and away with a casual flip of my arm, and a few tons of Worm went sailing off the far end of the causeway and into the lava on the opposite side from where it had emerged. As for the rain of molten stone, it was pretty much ignored by all present.
Argos and Weirdboy made vaguely impressed faces as their magic brushed off the rapidly cooling stone from their magos uniforms. The watching Fireborn got to watch us deal dismissively with the huge thing with rather slack jaws. "How about we take the left side and clear up whatever you leave behind as you pick up the pace a bit?" He shook the bag meaningfully.
"That should work." These small fries weren't worth overly much Karma, when it came down to it. "I also haven't had time to sweep the road, and they're dropping a fair amount of jewelry, precious metal, and Firemetal Weapons. If you could get your extras to play sweeper, that would also save some time, and you can keep half for your trouble?"
"That's fine." Exactly half the Raid Team peeled off to go japtem-gathering over the very white backtrail, Disks popping out of nowhere to haul the swag. Firemetals were worth dinero.
"How about I get started, and you just move up whenever you're ready?"
"We'll be good to go in less than sixty seconds." Without another word, he and Weird headed back, Tokens floating out of the bag and quickly swapped onto their Implements. I turned back around, lifted my Autobows in my Arakne Arms, and to something of a collective moan from the Fireborn, Tremble commenced to Sing, Fall and Down and my Tail began to send their loads on the way, Stand thrummed a happily ominous beat, and I absolutely and totally ignored the hundred or so spells of flame and fury that converged on me.
Instead of wiping me and blowing a very big hole in the causeway, they hit my Null and instantly dissipated back into the manafield, like raindrops into the sea. Brassmen and Ifrit began to die as heads popped from frozen goodness, my Shield Stand was raised against the rain of their hurled weapons (it's rather hard to manage bows in the Plane of Fire; no wood, ya?) and I picked up my pace considerably as Tremble lifted and space parted like wet cheese behind a +VIII edge.
+VIII meant armor? They weren’t wearing no armor...
Six seconds later, the spear line the Fireborn had settled in to stop me had parted upper and lower halves, and the carnage commenced at furious, terrifyingly close range.
A bit less than sixty seconds later, the Eternal Helm hit them...
“Fires banked and Fires surge,
Here to eat the coming purge.
Seasons change and fires die,
Death rides the cold, cold sky.
Tremble, They Come!
Guards Eternal, with ready swords,
Doom awaiting, the Lands own Wards.
Hunger, hunger, FEED THE LAND!
Her maw opens, YOU CANNOT STAND!
TREMBLE, WE COME!”
The Eternal Guard screamed the refrain, and opened up on them with everything.
---
The first Volley was Windfire arrows, the second was Sieged Rays… mostly Fire, I saw in amusement. The third was combination… and a roaring Bolt of lightning that ignored the minimum damage it was supposed to do via Elemental Suppression, and tossed a lot of screaming, shocked Fireborn around.
I smirked at Argos' contribution. The Fire Rays going out still manifested as frost because of the Tokens, and so were freezing the Fireborn regardless. Quite amusing all around.
I also noted all of his people had Vivic effects going, because the dead were burning vivic. Telling. You don't have Vivic as a primary Slot on a Weapon without a very good reason.
Without further ado, I picked up my pace.
Argos had arranged his people in a line ten across, with Warlocks forwards, tasked to defend against incoming spells with Wards. Likely everyone had 30+ points of Fire Resistance, and the ten Warlocks were all Firebound and immune to non-Pureflame regardless, but it was still the right thing to do.
Behind the Warlocks knelt ten Casters on Disks, the geomagnetism of the Disks keeping them three feet off the ground even in Stillflight. Sieged spells, all Rays, shot past the Warlocks, laden with Banefire from someone doing a Mass Bane Weapon casting, the blue and white halo effect around the burning red magic giving rise to patriotic thoughts. Ohhhh say can you see...
Behind those Warlocks was a line of Melees, doing nothing but being ready to move forwards or sideways in case of attack. Behind them were two more lines of Disks, staggered spacing, Archers in front, combined ranged extras in back.
Behind this mass, another thirty folk were sweeping the ground of the dead as fast as they could, minor telekinetic effects and Cantrips helping immensely.
The assault was gut-slammingly intensive. While none of them could match me individually, and they didn't have anyone with repeated AoE's, they generally didn't have any problem taking the minion-level soldiers out with individual shots. Argos was Bolting from one side to the middle, starting over, killing or greatly weakening the small fries for his people to dispose of.
The Archers naturally had a much faster rate of fire than the Casters, and no shortage of targets. I could see they had real experience working hordes by how utterly thoroughly they took the enemy down. They had clearly delineated fire zones, and precise, unerring judgment on when to waste a shot and when to simply let a Warlock finish it with a stray blast of Wrath.
The trailing crew couldn't really keep up, but they didn't need to grab everything, just the most valuable stuff, while the other Raid group would focus on metal salvage as they trailed behind.
We were moving almost as fast as a normal person could trot, just nonstop annihilation forwards the Fireborn couldn't do anything but come greet. I had no problem keeping up with the tougher stuff that had been sent out; anything below Nine was basically an instant kill as far as I was concerned.
Argos' Raid and I worked out our rhythm of killing, wasting no time, judging the kill rate with the mutual eyes of Tens and at least one Warlord among his Melees keeping everyone else in synch, slowing when tougher stuff was engaged, and pressing forwards when hordes of minions were simply tossed at us.
Tremble chimed, Stand Beat, I Sang, and Fireborn died screaming in Pyric.