The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

She met up with the excited Chomps and withdrew two miles from the conflagration, back to a location where she could see the main road leading up to it, and the traffic going back and forth.

Less than an hour after she started her vigil, three pickups with lots of brawny, hairy men riding in the back rumbled past.

About a half hour after that, she watched two helicopters come in from the southeast, and smiled. Let’s see that cover-up squad deal with a bunch of angry werewolves..., she thought, eyes glinting hard.

Not long after that, some unmarked sedans hurtled past, fairly exuding government vehicles. That should be the FBI, here to get their feet involved in a murder investigation.

They were raced to their destination by an ivory-and-black helicopter that came thwop-thwopping in, fairly exuding a severe air of no-nonsense business.

That symbol of Harse on the underside, modified to a sword balancing the scales instead of a hammer, would make any reasonable person wary.

The Inquisition of Harse technically had no secular authority. Realistically, nobody really dared to get in their way, as interfering with god-backed criminal investigators who were always happy to cooperate and share their findings with the authorities, and who also were divinely good at the practice of law and wielding it like a terrifyingly brutal hammer on those who deserved it or who impeded their pursuit of Justice, was often a career-ending move.

There were a LOT of faithful of Harse in law enforcement... except maybe in the SWAT teams. Mithar pretty much held everyone there.

It basically didn’t matter how badly Hexar wanted to make this matter go away. Once the Inquisition was onto them, they were in for a bad, triple indemnity, time.

She pictured the amount of the fine: all profits from this pumping, costs to clean up industrial waste being pumped into the ground, which would take Rituals by Sevens of Flora or Druids, at the least, with the requisite material components; cost to replant the area and clean it up, doubtless also taking spellcasters and paying them through the nose...

Then, triple that.

She smiled widely. Yes, that wasn’t going to be a small hit...

But, oh, the worst part of it was that the Inquisition knew... and Inquisitors were not dumb people. Oh, no, not in the slightest. Now that they knew Hexar was involved in shady stuff, they’d be looking into it... and into its parent companies.

Inquisitors were very much not stupid, and Justice was Blind as far as who it went after, not in what it was doing. There were a lot of clever people who had found out that the Inquisitors were anything but dumb, and tended to know a whole lot of people everywhere.

In front of her, a cursed, unclean Weapon made from the vertebra of something, maybe fully advanced werewolves, was writhing slowly in the vivic flame of her Floating Forge, while her Autobow was sucking in the power burning off of it, and it was being reduced to dirt.

Her Autobow had been Named Fall in the game she remembered, and she saw no reason to change it now.

She still had to work on a proper Shield, but everything in time. She didn’t have the Battlesmith ability to apply Naming Karma to both a Weapon and Armor piece every day yet, anyways...

As for whatever was watching her from over there, probably thinking it was a sneaky predator and not having the slightest idea that under her mask were Whiskers that let her hear all the forest animals chatting about the big intimidating supernaturally powerful thing crouching over yonder, well, if it wasn’t bugging her as she broke this stuff down and finally made her starter Autobow magical, that was fine by her.

She could feel Karma accumulating as the feeling of a Quest being fulfilled percolated. Not just eliminating the perpetrators, but starting a rolling series of events that would punish the powers behind them.

The internet was a fairly informative place to tool around, even if she couldn’t do it herself. Still, people wrote lots of books, and she read them.

The Good Churches were here, and most of the Neutral ones. That naturally meant the Evil ones had something here as well.

In addition, vampires and werewolves and secretive mages had always been here. Even now, seventy years after magic came to the world, they were secretive and hadn’t stepped into the light. There were old Evils here, from before the undead came, and just because there were a lot more magical people around didn’t mean they wanted to reveal themselves, either. Indeed, having a lot more magical beings who protected their prior victims could hardly be a good thing for most of the existing powers on the world... especially those newly empowered humans who clove to the Good powers that were so nastily effective against them.

Old Evils, new Evils... native assholes who were slow to adapt and with centuries of confrontation and mutual distrust between them. Mmm, a fine cocktail.

The vampires and werewolves had been forced out into the open because there was no way they could hide from the Powered, especially all the new Clerics who just seemed to get empowered out of nowhere, complete with all sorts of spells and magic without even having to labor for centuries to decipher the changing paradigm and build up a library.

Sama smirked. Most Casters had to work out their spells and build up a personal library. Clerics and Druids, nope, had access to the whole list. Bah-roken! They might not know everything that was on the basic list, and custom spells still had to be learned individually... but it was a big list, nonetheless!

Being able to sniff out shapechangers and undead had been a pretty big thing. Trying to fight back against the effect was useless... there were far too many Powered being born, and all killing a few of them did was make the rest even more determined to ace you. The utterly fearless Paladins, Champions, and Heavenbound were particularly annoying at all facets of that.

But their existences being forced into the open certainly didn’t mean abandoning their beliefs, sharing their histories, or viewing humanity with any kind of equality.

The Vampire Wars had been remarkably short and brutal. Fast-Leveling Powered had hunted them down wherever they were, piercing through their Masquerade with appalling speed and sureness, and were equipped with the magic and power to destroy them.

Changes, they were a-coming. Going from the horribly powerful masters of all you surveyed to another item to be checked off on a Magical Church’s hit list was a hard fall. Humanity was no longer just sheep to be fed upon, and you weren’t greater beings evolved past them.

How are they going to respond to a Rantha Hagchild?, she smiled to herself, and turned her head as a stick cracked loudly out in the forest, and chittering and soft hoots indicated that Scary Big Thing out there was moving.

He was being obvious about his approach. Testing her for readiness, seeing how afraid she was?

He probably didn’t realize that she was sitting down on the opposite side of her Forge from him just so she didn’t have to get up and turn to face him.

He sped up when she didn’t react, making more noise, trying to make her nervous. She glanced in that direction indifferently, waiting for him to show himself.

The werewolf came out of the forest in monstrous hybrid form, clearly having some of them Racial Levels, seven feet tall, but clearly smaller than he was two steps before. His fur was steely grey, eyes green and glowing slightly as they glowered at her from where he stopped to meet her eyes.

“I was going to offer you something to eat, but you’re way too big.” She stroked Chomps’ head reassuringly as the dog tensed before the gaze of the werewolf. “Seeing you were waiting over there for so long, you must have had something important to think about. Anything I should know about?”

He glowered at her suspiciously. After all, she should be totally terrified, but he wasn’t getting any elf or fey vibes off of her.

His growl compared favorably to a push mower starting off. “You are arrogant, little one,” he said, crouching down. The prelude to a possible jumping attack still didn’t make her take an overt stance against him. “How do you know I am not here to deal with you?”

Sama just lifted an eyebrow. “Because you smell of caution and curiosity, not anger, territorialism, or hunger. After all, you just watched me wipe six hostile werewolves, and whatever those other six things were; blow a source of pollution and corruption all to Heaven and gone; and if you were competent and well-informed, noticed me bring in forces that can actually make a difference in punishing those responsible for this place.

“Also, there’s five more of the werewolves along a back trail where I lured them out yesterday.” She waved vaguely in that direction. “So if you’re wondering where the ones who left early yesterday went and didn’t come back with those eel-head things, fret not... they won’t be returning.”

He grunted, taking two long steps forward, and sat down cross-legged from her abruptly. He was nearly as tall sitting as she was standing, which was pretty amusing as he looked down across the burning bone-chain and the crossbow at the center of the floating Disk.

“What is this?” he demanded to know.

“Exactly what it looks like,” she replied easily. “What Pack are you part of?”

His stare met hers, and she didn’t back down. He was definitely wary of her and how unknown her powers were, far more than she was of him, and even if he didn’t like the defiance, she didn’t care, and it showed.

“The Manitou,” he finally replied, somewhat stiffly as he also realized he was intruding on her fire and being rude. “I am Strikes At Shadows.”

She nodded. “I don’t belong to any organizations larger than my family unit, so I am merely Sama. Welcome to my fire. Like I said, no food suitable for one of your kind, and I doubt you drink bottled water.”

His lips revealed fangs for a moment. “No, we do not,” he agreed. “What is your purpose in these lands?” he demanded properly.

“Um, trying to get to twelve years old? I was born here and live here. A werewolf decided to make a mess of things after she couldn’t control her urges, probably a new one Awakening. I followed her back to her den, where I found a bunch of human meat in her fridge, and more being brought up by another member of her pack. I killed him, too, and when I tracked down his car, it was full of coolers of more human flesh.

“The ones waiting for his delivery finally tracked him down, came and took it... four more weres, and four of the eel-guys. I killed the weres, and tracked the eel-guys back here, then had a fun and exciting night. Hopefully enough that I can grow up without putting the rest of my family at risk, you know?”

“This Weapon,” he gestured at the black chain burning so unwillingly, “is tainted with the magic of the Worm. I will be taking it.”

“No, you won’t,” she replied, perfectly calmly and dryly, and he visibly tensed. “It’s mine, I won it in fair battle. If you want to take it, then we’re going to fight, and you’re going to die. It will still be mine, and the Manitou will have one less member of their Pack.”

His clawed hands began to flex, and totally unconcerned, Sama stared back at him, the picture of serenity.

He did take in her mangled sleeves and ripped shirt, and not a single claw mark or bloody wound showing anywhere.

“You are very confident of yourself, little Sama,” he growled.

“Yes,” she agreed. “You have good judgement, Strikes At Shadows.”

He was trying to suss her out, and that was rather hard to do to a Null. She simply didn’t look like she was ready for a fight, he couldn’t even smell her properly, and there was nothing magical about her. Yet she had definitely wrought a fiery doom upon the creatures of the Hexar compound... but whether that was something to approve of, or merely a dangerous flexing of her powers, was something he couldn’t ascertain...