The Power of Ten: Book One: Sama Rantha, and Book Two: The Far Future

Some lethal stupidity is Nightmarish...

In the end, I didn’t need my men.

I wasn’t going to tell them that, of course, but it was largely true. With them, I could kill a lot of enemies quicker, and I could claim Glory Awards if we won. I could almost feel the Karma coursing in when some of my lads actually lasted to the end.

But I didn’t need them to live. It just meant I would have to do a lot more slaughter on my own.

Serpentfolk were a base 5 Hit Dice race, extremely tough; their degenerate, savage fighting caste rivaled ogres in lethal power, especially with the venom of their bites. Add in a few Warrior Levels, and they were indeed extremely tough, and could be pretty disciplined.

I was one-hitting them, and two-hitting the elites.

I ran right up the stairs, and the ranks spread to either side, meant to rain death down from above and pincer any advance up the stairs, rushed to stop me.

I switched my lightfoot to Walk the Burning Coals, formal name, which everyone else simply called Hotfoot. It was the extremely energetic dance of the Fire Dragon, the best lightfoot for the chase… and for running uphill.

I hit the closing lines of scaled bastards like a bladed bulldozer. With my Girdle, I was four times as strong as them, and could hurl them around like soccer balls, run right over them, and crush their skulls beneath my feet.

The air was full of telepathic curses, dooms, promises, visions, and sensations, sure to drive a normal person almost mad with the distractions and alien, inhuman images being thrust upon them. This was an ancient race, full of ancient evils and darkness, reptilian emotional states, and a history of totally amoral behavior in pursuit of their interests. What they were promising to do to me would have unnerved any sane mind.

Unfortunately for them, I couldn’t even hear them. Tremble could, but trying to influence the mind of an Item Spirit was kind of an exercise in futility. Tremble basically ignored them, while Singing very loudly both telepathically and audibly in Aklo about snakebite stew, how tasty their poison was, mocking their fall from power and incessant inbreeding, the bone-deep pride that had pushed them into the abyss, their fallen gods and crippled empires, and just how pitiful and miserable of wretches they were, trampled under the feet of those once their slaves and driven from the light into the pits of darkness and the gutter holes of the planes.

Tremble had a total bitch of a tongue when he set his mind to insults, too.

They actually came to Leng and had to deal with the Elder Gods who loomed over this place. Mockmockmock...

Normally, these snake-skulled twits were totally immune to Charm magic and similar things, but taunting? Driving worms of regret and shame into that unyielding pride and arrogance?

They weren’t immune to that. The serpentfolk coming out onto the plaza below, as well as the elites that thought they’d kill us trying to go up the ziggurat, almost went berserk as they pressed forward to show the furless monkeys, only useful for base labor and food, who their masters were!

My lads were perfectly happy to demonstrate what the absolute discipline of a layered spear line did to the proud. If they were willing to die fearlessly attempting to bring us down, we were perfectly willing to kill them endlessly to help them prove said fearlessness.

Bodies flew apart, hide armor shattered, old steel broke wildly, and blood sprayed. Lots of blood, as I forced my way forward, bodies coming apart around me. As fast as they pressed forward, I killed them, and advanced another step. If they held back to try and poke me, I was out of their reach, into the next mass on the next step, and corpses of serpentfolk were falling down the stairs behind me in many more pieces than was recommended by medical science.

The steps of the ziggurat held thousands of these fallen bastards, now all converging, trying to stop me. My lads focused on the fight below, and when the pissed scalies couldn’t catch up to me over the bodies of their dead, they came boiling down off the stepped pyramid, hunting for more victims.

I had three Arcane Casters among my followers. As ex-giants juiced to kill me, they were all Tens, two Sorceresses and a Wizard. We hadn’t shown much of our spell power, so they were happy to unload on this charging mass of elite serpentfolk warriors.

An Energized Fireball reworked to a disc shape went off at ground level, Widened for double the area, clearing out a packed circle a hundred feet across. Two Lightning Bolts ripped through their numbers for hundreds of feet, and scaled bodies exploded as superheated steam tore their flesh apart from within.

Out on the plaza, the knights and lancers were cycle-charging the hordes there, while archers harried other clusters here and there, and pivoting lines of spearmen scissored and pincered smoothly and bloodily. Although the serpentfolk leaders were all geniuses and could see what was happening, they had nowhere near the troop coordination and discipline to counter what we were doing. They were always a step behind in warning their own troops as to what was happening, their minions confused by the merging lines and precision marching.

More swathes of dead serpentfolk soon blanketed the plaza, many burning vivic, and others serving as appetizing distractions for the dinosaurs the snakes were bringing in.

I plowed up the stairs, sending the living and dead flying, Stand beating on almost as much crap as Tremble as he sent serpentfolk tumbling into their peers, knocking them down like bowling pins, while everything in reach of Tremble died with appalling, meat-chopping speed. Their scaled hides and scaled armor simply provided no resistance, nor did their inhuman agility escape me in the slightest. They might as well have been wheat, and I was certainly harvesting them.

A great undead serpent, no, two of them, came flying down the stairs; sixty feet of giant snake swollen to unnatural girth, thinking they could swallow me into the negative energy hell of their gullets.

Tremble flicked over to Bane Undead for a moment, just in case, and my first swing removed a head as it chomped down where I’d been half a second ago, and the second cut ripped the thing open and sent vivus exploding across the sky. The second one, lunging in fearlessly, was simply opened up from the corner of its jaw to halfway down its length as we moved past one another, Finished and Hewed into and blowing apart before it could slither itself back around.

I was two-thirds of the way up now, not really slowing down, spears shattering in series and their owners dying in the next arc, bellies opened and limbs removed violently.

Some twat up top thought that Animating the dead was a good idea, obviously not noticing that the bodies were burning vivic, and adding necromantic energy on top of that was like throwing gasoline onto a bonfire. Over a dozen bodies around me immolated, cooked off scores more, and there was a hissing shriek and burst of unwhite above as the feedback cooked the brains of that twit.

Huh, is there actually a Twelve+ Caster up there...?

The senior spellcasters tried. They brought in viper-demons, four-armed marilith-esque under-demons, mixed them in with ophidian mercenaries (more to mock, the two snake-men races were bitter rivals), and sent them slithering down to fight me as they watched more and more of their own just dying, unable to stop my advance. When they crashed into me, I slid between them, unleashed a Whirlwind, and the follow-up Cleaves from a single crit ended up ripping through the whole lot of them with rather appalling violence.

There was a line of tower shields in front of me, but they were nowhere near as much of a barrier as expected when I wedged Stand under one and tossed the wielder over the top of those behind. Their slitted eyes stared at me, they stabbed out snake-quick (hah!) with their spears, and over the sound of shattering wooden hafts, I carved my way through and was on top of their pyramid.

The revolving Vortex of yellow mist seemed to pull back with me around, but there was no way I could go through. I could feel some hard reality on the other side of that thing, and for all I was solid and real in Nightmare, in the real world I’d just be a disjointed spirit, if I could even pass the thing… which I was pretty sure I couldn’t, as I defined the edge of my own Dream, and there was no mixing that with Reality when you’re a Null.

Serpents made of golden venom streaked across the top of the pyramid from the guy in the feathered frill and lots of golden stuff, and, oh, that really fancy cobra-headed Staff. The spell crashed into me and vanished into empty air, no splashing, no muss, no fuss. Another desperate Priest slammed down his own cobra-staff, raising a shrieking, wailing Wall of Bones, all Animated and motile, down in front of me.

Oh, yeah, white streak on his face, didn’t learn his lesson about necromancy in front of me.

I shattered his Wall, the vivic blowback erupted out his eyes and ate into the negative energy in his skull, and the stupid Priest dropped his Staff to clutch at his face in agony as parts of his brain went away.

The barrier of whirling serpentine force blades came down, and Tremble swept across, shattering the integral structure of the spell. Unsecured curving blades went whipping out in all directions, shredding serpentfolk every which way. Some of the alert ones jumped in front of the Priests, which was very convenient for a Finish-Hew on the way to the death-magic Caster who was trying to focus on me, and lost his head over it.

I stopped by planting my back into another guard, Tremble in his heart, and pushed off to fight the Priest, who uttered an Invocation faster than any auctioneer ever, swelling to twice his height as yellow mists and green flames crackled around him, and then he lashed out with his Staff.

Stand’s beat was more like a sniff of disdain as he batted the massive Staff away. What, come on, it didn’t compare to a Jotun’s saber at all…

My first blow ripped away that Buffing magic, and it shattered away from him like an illusion, leaving him seven feet tall, thin as a rail, with a bloody wound three feet long from hip to shoulder and desperate to get away from me, but with nowhere to go.

Oh, yeah, he could jump into the Vortex, which he immediately tried to do.

Ah, laddie boy, someone forgot to tell you that Nulls and Interdiction are a thing…

He hit the revolving yellow fog… and then, to his visible shock, his scaled feet hit the ground again, the fogs just swirling over and past him harmlessly, as if the dimensional rip was just a special fog effect and nothing more.

I hit it, and the whole effect vanished within ten feet of me as I barreled through and sliced away, ignoring the guards coming and going. He kind of huffed as Tremble inserted into his narrow chest, right where that necessary cardiac organ is located, and smashed back into one of the guards coming to help him.

Not one to not take advantage of an opportunity, Tremble was out, flicking right and left, and both of them lost their hands.

-What ARE you-hkk!- Tremble /relayed to me politely, as I Finished the Priest across the neck, and Hewed into the brawny leader of these guards coming up behind him. His eyes were alive with fanaticism, and kind of puzzled as the diagonal cut removed most of his skull and face while his lunge passed by my ear.

“You brought me from Nightmare, what do you think I am, you idiot?” I murmured to nobody but myself, giving no pause and no mercy. In six seconds, this side of the top was clear, elite serpentfolk warriors were tumbling away in pieces around me, and I paused to look slowly back at the rest of the guards charging over to me.

Their steps slowed and stopped, twenty feet away.

I tilted my head, vertebra popped like breaking stones. I flexed my hands, and they popped even more loudly.

“You are in my way.” The gore and blood covering me like a scarlet sheet began to steam, and then fell away, leaving me unmarked and perfectly clean beneath, shocking them at the simple fact that after all that slaughter, I was completely unharmed. “You brought me from Nightmare, I am your final dream.”

I reached down to the dead Priest, snapped off one fang, lifted it to my lips, and sucked on its poison before their disbelieving eyes, circling it around my lips like a cigarette.

“” whooped Tremble (in Aklo, it sounded much more domineering), and I hit them, blood spraying.

I had come up. Now, I was going to go back down, level by level if I had to. My lads at the bottom were waiting. If these hissy-fits wanted to retreat inside through the main entry I had run right by on the main face, now strewn with several dozen fallen serpentfolk corpses, I was fine with that, too…