The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

I drew up a full array of Shards, six of them now, leaving off vivic for now, as I didn’t want these things to see I had access to it. It was still daytime, so undead weren’t going to be a problem.

I looked over his shoulder at Sleipner’s display, noting little lights at the fringes of the holo underneath and around us, trying to converge on us and falling behind too quickly.

OH, THERE’S SOMETHING BIG. And it was right in our path. He drew his monster of a Grit and fired a silent golden round straight up. It flared with light and detonated a couple hundred feet above us, a clear sign to get attention.

The blob in front of us was rising.

Sleipner neighed in disgust.

MYTHOS SOMETHING, Fred said, as the water seemed to blacken and foam in front of us, and something with too many tentacles and mouths and teeth was vomited up almost directly in front of us.

Several things happened in series.

Fred leveled his Grit and let loose another blazing Wrath-shot, which detonated against the rubbery ugh of its hide, and immediately sent fracturing edges of light spreading across it.

Nice! He had fractured its magic resistance, just before my Shards blasted into it with Aberrant Bane pre-loaded, and really expanded upon the glowing hole he had made in it.

Then Sleipner spent a bit of his stored Wrath, and made a ramp of the Ward. At the same time, his alicorn glowed and seemed to extend a wedge of light two meters forwards, while his wheels suddenly ejected double rows of razor blades that blazed with Wrath of their own.

Over a thousand pounds of chainsaw-wheeled, cycle-backed holy lancing unicorn horn smashed into this thing, which already had quite the hole in it, while its tentacles lashed down and below and didn’t quite close in time as Sleipner smashed into it.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised when we managed to rip our way completely through the mass of the thing, sending burning gaah in every direction, and landed on the far side heavily, immediately leaning right and wheels churning up a wall of water as we got out of the way of what was really coming.

Pshewshewshew...

Burning Light lashed past us, through the spray of the water, and punched through the thing and whatever amount of it was still concealed underwater. It didn’t so much scream as gurgle and fall back into the waters, but not before another Grit round blew more of its mass off, and sent 7d6+something of fun through its system to complete the job.

I saw the biggest blip on Sleipner’s Evil-dar wink out. “Dead!” I announced, as the unicorn righted us smoothly, leaving a nice spray of water behind as he began to rumble not so quickly away from other stuff converging here.

Fred flicked up Ward Walls to either side, just as nearly a dozen cruelly barbed quarrels came streaking out from the water, and bounced futilely off the primarily golden energy of the barriers. Three of the shooters got too close to the surface, and each inherited two Shards to the face, to disastrous effect.

“Sahaug,” I informed him, if he hadn’t noticed. Devasight and Devilsight meant he could see right through the distortion of the water without a problem, so it was probably unneeded.

He didn’t reply as his Grit bloomed silently twice, and golden shots went into the water with confident accuracy.

Then pshewshewshew came in, literally blew three superheated scaled corpses out of the water into hot red steam, and the rest of them scattered with great urgency.

To my surprise, Sleipner turned around, not exactly chasing the sahaugin, but circling back to the big dark blob in the water behind us.

Leaning over, Fred plunged his hand through the water, and latched onto something. Without breaking his grip, he lifted out a razor-suckered tentacle as thick as his thigh, crunched it between his fingers, and held on as Sleipner resumed course for the far shore.

I didn’t know how much that thing weighed, but Angel Weight was playing down it and reducing it to a quarter-normal. His 4g physique was fully capable of holding onto it as the waters pushed it towards the surface, and hauling a multi-ton abomination behind him, we resumed course for the walls ahead of us, now definitely occupied by a lot of shooters.

I waved at them and put a big smiley face above us. Nothing like being friendly to make the snipers wonder if they should shoot you.

Still, there were a lot of guns pointed in our direction as we rode towards the wall. Then Sleipner popped up the Ward Ride, and we lifted off the waves... and dragged that tentacled horror right out of the water with us.

I could tell it was a little heavy for him, but the thin grin on his face said it was all worth it as Sleipner rose high enough in the air to haul the ungodly sight of the corpse over the wall, only hitting it with a couple trailing tentacles, and then descended to the ground, laying it out on the sands and grass there for everyone to gawk at as he came down.

“You there! Hold it where you are!” boomed a magnificently deep voice with real carrying power. All of us could not help but look that way, and even Sleipner slowed down at the command in that voice.

A monster of a man in full armor hopped off the top of the wall, hit the ground barely flexing his knees, and came striding for us with the combination of heavy steps and weightless stride of a master heavyfooter, a Hammer that would qualify as a maul to anyone else slung over his shoulder, and clearly glowing with several shades of light.

His helm was open, his face clearly revealed. I froze despite myself.

“Briggs?” I blurted out in shock on seeing those pale violet eyes.

The hammer-wielding Ancient caught up to us very quickly, leaving most of the others on the wall behind. A half-dozen men in heavy armor pounded urgently after him, trying to match his longer strides, bearing what looked like combat shotguns or something... smaller versions of the one this Ancient had slung over his shoulder.

His eyes moved from Master Fred to me. “Have we met? I think I’d remember eyes like yours,” he growled in irritation, made somewhat milder when he saw me. “Who the fuck crosses the harbor in broad daylight on a damn motorcycle? Are you fucking insane?” he bellowed at us, loud enough to ruffle my hair and make me squint.

“The answer to your first question is I know a Commander Briggs of Redshore, and the second is Bait. The third is ‘just fearless’.”

He froze in shock.

Sonuvabitch...

“Wha, where did you hear that?” he blurted out, almost gaping at me.

I inclined my head at the men around. He paused a breath longer, closed his eyes, grumbled something very deeply, and opened them again. “Fucking bait?!” he repeated.

EIGHT DEAD SAHAUG... AND WHATEVER THAT IS, Master Fred’s flames flickered up.

Briggs looked at Master Fred’s eyes, then back at the tentacled thing dumped behind their wall so rudely. “Fuck. I thought they looked ugly at night.” There were murmurs of agreement from his boys. “Someone get the chop squad on the phone, and tell them there’s a gulliogtru rotting on my beach, and would they please come here and do all their crazy alchemical shit to it somewhere else, thank you?”

One of his men quickly pulled out a phone and hit something on the speed dial as he stepped away.

“Bait, huh? Eight of them, plus that?” He kicked the tentacle Fred had let drop. “We’ll call it even and not charge you for the rescue. Ballsy move, pulling something like this out.” Master Fred made a dismissive gesture. “Okay, I see the silver, I see black, I see blue, and the rectangles. A multi-Pact Warlock, but Heavenbound.”

“Yeah, just like Sole.”

His mouth opened, closed, as he looked at me again. “Yeah, just like Sole,” he agreed, earning me an interested look from Master Fred. “None of which tells me why you are actually here.”

“We’re picking up a delivery from Heavenbound Hall, and dropping off some blood from a magic creature, and its hide.”

“What creature, and who for?”

“Sir.” Briggs looked over at the sergeant who had spoken. “I think that’s Traveler...” he said softly. I belatedly noticed he was speaking Human.

Briggs looked back at me sharply. “Well, shit. I have a goddamn internet celebrity accompanying a multi-Pact Warlock and riding a bike across open water so they can shoot sahaug here.” His pale violet eyes rolled in disbelief. “Sergeant Tooms, set up a perimeter around this thing, make sure nobody steps in the fluids off it, and get someone to clean up the shit it dripped on the wall.”

“Yessir!” The chosen man hurried away quickly, delegating tasks.

“Bravis, bring the alert status down to orange until nightfall. I don’t think we’re going to have further trouble. Goholsky, let the lads on the Sun know they did some good shooting, and drinks on me tonight.”

Fred flicked out a hundred and held it out. GOOD DRINKS, he flamed.

Briggs took it without batting an eye, nodding. His eyes drifted over to me. “Let me escort you up to the temple, if you’re supposed to be picking something up. Who are you meeting, and what kind of critter did you pop off?”

LUMINOUS PORTHIER, Fred returned, and looked back at me.

“Rakshasa-blooded tiger. Uses illusions to disguise itself as a kitten in plain sight,” I informed the big guy.

“No shit.” He just glanced at the last soldier next to him. “Where was this at?”

“Philadelphia. Killed four vagrants. The city asked us to take care of the problem.”

“The city, eh? It saying anything here?” He was definitely interested.

IT WOULD LIKE YOU TO REFER A FEW GOOD MEN HERE AS CITYBOUND, COMMANDER, Master Fred replied calmly. THEN IT WOULDN’T HAVE TO HAVE AN OUTSIDER COME BY TO TELL YOU THAT THE SAHAUG HAVE DUG TWO TUNNEL ACCESSES INTO THE CITY.

His lips drew back in a ferocious smile, for all the fact his teeth were very square. “Two tunnels, huh?” His voice got so low and grim it shook my fingers. “Well, that sounds like something I should do something about. And the city wants ME to recommend Citybound? Don’t they teach them up in Detroit?”

BALTIMORE DOESN’T HAVE ANY CITYBOUND, AND THE ONES TRAINED IN DETROIT PROBABLY DON’T WANT TO COME HERE, Fred replied.

“Probably not. Let me think about it. Let’s go, we can talk while we walk.” He waved off the last soldier, who saluted and headed back to the wall. “Starting with how you know about Redshore.” He pointed at me.

“Pointed question: How much do you remember outside the game?” I countered, as Sleipner rolled along, and Briggs kept pace, as if five hundred pounds of man and metal weighed nothing.

He flinched again. “Not much.” He looked to Master Fred. “He in on this?”

“He knows that our martial traditions come from a video game invented by the Archmage, and my soul is a shard of the soul of the Ringlord from that world.”