The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

Now, there were plenty of ways to cover the weakness of Cantrips. I just wouldn’t be able to address any of them until the next Renewal, and then only to a limited extent.

So, if a powerful undead came this way, or Mithar help me, an energy-drainer, I was basically hosed unless I got lucky. Yay, me...

I sat down at the junction of the long hall, where I could look down it towards the garage, and see anything coming outside from the back, too. If it was just one or two zombies, I could basically get up and kill them within ten seconds, front or back. They would probably be drawn by the almost blindingly white ground outside of the fire door, stained by vivus and purified etherdust, which would fade slowly over the course of the night, and evaporated at sunrise or sunset, whichever came first.

My eyes went to the sky.

There was a Shroud here, and I was under it. That Trait of a Magical Lineage said I was Shroudborn.

Just looking at that dark and unsettling haze across the sky, I could feel the Curse attached to me thrumming in response. Its creator’s magic was up there, a part of the grand and horrible spell that protected the Cancer of Death, the great and unholy necromantic march across realities, subsuming and consuming worlds and making of them Deadworlds, shrines to nihility and oblivion, before repeating the process for more worlds.

This world was under the Shroud...

Why wasn’t it dead?

Why were all these zombies wandering around? Why hadn’t they been gathered up and organized by the lords among their kind? Why was the Shroud just this haze, instead of a brooding hellcloud of damned souls trapped for eternity, blocking away the gods and the afterlife?

I didn’t care what tech level this society was at. When a hundred-million-bodied Dead March got dropped onto an unprepared world, they were hosed!

Especially if magic came...

I thought about the pistols of the Warlocks, and the lights on the van. Obviously, science was still working here. That was different from back on Terra-Luna. Different universe, different rules; I could understand it. I didn’t know how different, but that was enough for now.

Logically, a Dark Minister should have come along, grabbed all these undead, and led them away somewhere to make more undead and promote them upwards.

It hadn’t happened. Why?

The question was going to gnaw at me, so I threw it into the back of my head to percolate, looking up at the sky again.

The Shroud cut off contact with the gods, but it also meant that magic was here. Those Warlocks could not have set up a Ritual to bring something in to Swear a Pact to. That meant that thing was already here, likely a Daemon of some sort, since they were Sinbound...

It also meant that the psychopomp that brought me here could not have done so! It wasn’t a psychopomp!

I inhaled sharply, wanted to jump to my feet in anger, stayed where I was as my gut protested any movement.

It had brought me here and dumped me here. It shouldn’t even have been able to perceive a world under the Shroud, let alone know a girl was getting sacrificed to take away her baby here.

So, either it was very powerful, knowing that the girl was here and would be a great place to stuff me, or it was something more simple.

It was the sponsor of the Warlocks, and naturally could tell what they were doing because of it.

Detective Traveler, that was me, working out the crazy shit...

Its reasons for bringing me here could not be random, if it could manifest here and go out onto the Astral Plane, too.

The fact I had Curse magic that reflected the Shroud? No? How had it sensed me? Randomly? I didn’t think so...

If it was ‘waiting’ for me, that meant it had seen where I came from. The only way it could see that is if it had seen Aelryinth, and that meant it would have had to have been watching the nameless world we’d rescued from a Dark Hierophant as we did so...

A world also under a Shroud, at least until we’d ripped it open with the death of every single goddamn one of the undead...

If it had seen us all free that world, it knew we were doughty undead fighters... terrifying, really. Why bring even a sliver of someone like that here, if it was a Sinbound Pact grantor?

Did it know where we had come from? From Terra-Luna?

Was this an Earth-alternate? It certainly felt like it could be...

I squinted at uninformative cement ceiling overhead, thinking, thinking, drifted to the sign on the wall I could barely make out.

They looked like random characters to me. I flicked my Assay up, and delved down into my Skills.

Languages were listed first. Aelryinth had known dozens, because he’d picked up Polyglot and made a habit of learning any new ones he ran across... including many of the ones of the old world, now out of date with the rise of Human.

There they were. Human, Elven, Necrus, Aklo, Diabolic, Demonic, and Draconic.

I lifted a finger up to trace my slightly-pointed ear, and briefly wondered where Gnome, Gnoll, Orc, Goblin, and Halfling were, but just shook my head. Those were all effectively languages of magic, with a massive leaning towards Dark Magic.

But English wasn’t on there, among other things, so the words weren’t familiar to me, and using Comprehend Languages just translated them into Human for me.

Which could mean Warlock#2 had been speaking English, and it went right by me. Funny...

Introducing Human to a ‘modern’ Earth. Wouldn’t that be a society changer? Humanity’s genetic language...

So we have a confluence of Shroud, Earth, and something Daemonic...

I inhaled.

The creature that had tipped off the Cancer to the existence of Terra-Luna had used daemons...

It also couldn’t be a Divine creature. Nothing Divine or linked to them knew about the Shroud.

So, the same creature had brought the Dead Cancer HERE, to an alternate Terra? Maybe? I would be able to confirm if it was Earth readily enough, as soon as I interrogated someone and got some background information.

Or, you know, found a map, or something...

Going with simplicity is best, that creature had been watching as we toasted its pawns, and acted to bring me here.

Had our victory over that world broken something here? Or, had it given the creature some new idea?

The price of being smart is too much analyzing. Being stupid and focusing on just one thing at a time could be such a blessing at times.

Okay, what were my priorities now?

One, stay alive. That meant managing my Levels, Feats, and Masteries for maximum short-term effectiveness. I was very fragile right now, and I could only get better at a Level a Renewal. I wouldn’t start feeling confident until I was a Four, and I preferred a Six, while I wanted to be a full Ten right now with all the bells and whistles, not building back up to them.

There were a lot of things I wanted to do, could do. All of them would take time... and money.

I had already gathered the gold and silver from rings and stuff that had fallen on the ground, teeth fillings, and so forth. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and if I could only take scraps, then scraps were what I’d take.

I would need an Infusion Pattern to burn gold and infuse Karma into something... and I would need something to Infuse the magic into. I had neither the Skill Ranks to Craft something right now, nor any objects of high enough Quality Level, other than my Ring, to be Crafted. I didn’t even have any Item Creation Feats, actually.

That did bring me into Two, Assets. I needed Gear, and to get Gear, I was going to need money and gold-equivs. As a Caster, that shouldn’t be a problem, but you never knew...

So, scan, scrimp, collect, and Burn. As a Caster, I was less Gear-reliant than a fighting character, who at least needed weapons and armor, but every bit of Gear that I had was one less Spell Slot to waste on Casting Buffs... or that I could Cast complementary Buffs on, more like.

Three, I have to grind, and Level. I couldn’t just Infuse my Ring without actively Casting spells; it was Named and I could put Karma into it, but only Karma earned while wearing it. My ‘natural’ Karma couldn’t be shared with it.

After all, I wasn’t going to be satisfied with just being a Ten. I suppose I should be thankful there were a lot of undead around that hadn’t been wiped out, as they’d be a convenient source of Karma. There had been a lot of debate back in the day about just what a Karma-hungry person would do in a peaceful, moral world to earn more Karma...

I guess I was going to find out what that might be like... although with Dark Warlocks this place definitely wasn’t going to be too peaceful or moral...

Four, I need to find that baby. Whether I liked it or not, I now shared blood with the kid, and I certainly wasn’t going to let Dark Warlocks have their way with it. I certainly wasn’t powerful enough to do so now... but I could get strong quick, if I could live long enough.

And when I was strong, I would have the spells to track that kid down and do some very bad things to the people who took it.

Five, I have to find out what the bastard who sent me here is planning, why it involved me, and then I am going to do something about it, probably violently. I had the feeling that was going to be a very big reason, indeed.

But that was in the future. For now, I just had to kill all the stuff that was threatening me, and somehow make it out alive from here, hoping I didn’t spur some sort of Spirit Host rush of incorps to take me out in seconds...

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A number of wandering zombies came up the side alley, saw the vivus smear, wandered this way, saw me, died, added to the vivus smear inside the building. I was glad the toughest ones didn’t seem to be wandering around much...

Detect Time was tracking as the dawn came near, and the zombies all began to wander in off the roads and into any building nearby, clearly trying to escape from the coming sun. Being the interested sort, I wondered why they bothered, as zombies normally don’t care about the sun or not.

I watched out the open garage as a few zombies made their way over to me, came inside the building, and I shot them down immediately...