The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

Baltimore, Maryland, Present Day...

Briggs arranged a team for each of the incursion tunnels with deft speed and confidence in his men. Finding they were going to be fighting sahaug on their own turf, his men were all eager to go at it.

That said, he was perfectly aware they had ears and would be sensitive to vibration. To cover the troops moving into the locations, he arranged for a couple extra trucks to go with them, and drive past them loudly, which would cover their footsteps when they breached.

Fred offered to place the explosives to seal the tunnel, being a great deal stealthier than any of his team, and Briggs agreed without batting an eye.

I stayed on Sleipner as he Rode the Shadow to where he needed to go with a radio-detonated wedge or two of plastic explosives. The tunnel came up in an abandoned building nearby that should have been razed, the entry bored in from the sewers. Clearing it would be a stinky job.

He came back by growing up out of Sleipner’s shadow, and swung back on as I waited calmly. I was annoyed that I wasn’t more useful, but understood that it was going to take time for that to happen.

The other tunnel was halfway around the harbor, and the team from the temple was already in place by the time we drove up.

This tunnel was actually coming up under a secluded and walled-in home about a quarter-mile from the water in a decent neighborhood. From the outside, nothing looked amiss, but Fred reiterated that the city didn’t like what was going on here, and quickly hooked his Vaccine into the assault team’s coms.

I told them I would cover them, and I would have healing if anyone needed it. They started to say something, shut up when my Shards spun up, crackling with thin red flames that were Bane to Aquatic Humanoids.

A thermyte charge melted through the lock on the gate, and the team charged in silently. I was covering and following; not afraid, but not about to get in front of them.

Jinxing the cameras wasn’t hard, nor was Detecting them. The team moved swift and sure up toward the house, with the quicker members breaking to cover the back and sides just in case. There wasn’t much cover, so if anything came out of the house, it was going to have a bad day.

“Motion! Blow the charges!” a man called out over the coms, and a second later there was a definite rumble through the ground from below.

Nobody charged in, keeping down and in cover, looking for any sign of windows opening or something gaining line of sight.

The reason for that was that a Senior Warlock was coming up from below...

A flicker of motion up high. “Attic!” I noted for the shooters around me, as a window opened, something was aimed... and a volley of automatic fire blew the window and anything around it to complete shit.

If you don’t want to come up from below, there’s a window access here, I /Messaged to Fred. I got a soft click in response, wondered what was going on below, and shrugged.

The explosion of golden fire punching through two floors and exiting through the roof a minute later was proof he was being busy.

Windows and doors exploded as scaled forms came leaping and running out through them. They were moving awkwardly, their movements rippling and strong, but erratic and jerky without water providing the resistance they were used to using. Barbed bolts and hurled javelins were shooting out... and the team opened up without mercy on everything, including the living humans in robes and odd garb shooting at them desperately.

It was pretty much a slaughter, until a shark-faced female with a lot of shells and teeth on necklaces came out, a shield of force in front of her dealing with all the incoming fire as she gestured, and all the teeth she was wearing started to rise...

My Shards slammed into her, tore off an arm, and sent her flying back into the house, the floating teeth scattering in all directions as the magic was interrupted. Her bodyguards turned to look at me, bellowed strangely hollow cries in rage, and raced in my direction.

They got about five steps before the concentrated automatic fire reduced them to chunks of dead meat.

There were golden flashes from inside the house, but his Silenced Grit didn’t roar to announce him, we could just see the results as the flames exploded through the house and chased out everything inside to the withering fire outside. Anything tough enough to stay inside was just going to inherit a very heavy grain bullet.

The fires faded away as rapidly as they’d begun, and even the residual burns died away as Fred pulled back his Wrath.

He tossed the dead priestess out the biggest window casually, and waved the team in. The leader waved one of the men to report, while the support trucks came rumbling in the gates, ready to collect the bodies and any evidence of malfeasance of the aquatic sort.

---

Fred came out a few minutes later, finding me leaning on Sleipner. I’d basically only had to treat one guy winged by a lucky shot, and had nothing else to do.

SOME GOLD STUFF AND TRINKETS. THERE’S A SHRINE TO CARCADOS IN A SUB-BASEMENT, AND EVIDENCE OF SACRIFICES TO IT.

“This city really needs some Citybound,” I noted, as he glanced at the strings of teeth from sharks and more exotic and unnatural stuff in my hand. “Mana fuel,” I said calmly. He nodded.

YOUR PLACE?, the fires above his shoulder asked.

“Sure,” I sighed, eying the setting sun. “I’m so looking forwards to it.” I glanced down at the fishy head of the Sahaugh Priestess burning its flesh away in my hand, in preparation to becoming a Baneskull in the future, and wondered how long it was going to be.

------

Renewal...

The rushing power of darkness came in as the light receded, sweeping over and past me as we motored along shadowed streets on the edge of the Veil.

Ding! Ding!

*&+*^$&@*0!!

Resigned, I tossed up the Assay and took a look at what my Bloodline had purchased for me.

Inquisitor/1. Inquisitor? Inquisitor!

I frowned. A religious investigator? Searching for enemies of the faith? Since when did I qualify as...

Well, if you counted my desire to totally obliterate these undead, and searching out these minor problems, and investigating my background, and helping pop some Hellbound... right. Inquisitor...

Inquisitors were an Advanced Class on Terra-Luna, and fairly rare. The only common ones were those of Harse... or the zealots of Imprus and Huul who profaned the name of them with their accusations of heresy against anyone not members of their churches.

And they were Wisdom-based spontaneous Casters...

I narrowed my eyes. Was this arrangement forcing me to get multi-Stat bonuses for both Casting styles?

Whatever...

D8, saves, profs, all irrelevant. I did get to pick two Spells Known from the Inquisitor List, which was an abbreviated version of the Ur-Priest List, and four Orison/Cantrips, too.

Wonderful. Sift, Elemental Orb 0, Light, and Stabilize for the Cantrips, and True Seeking and True Dodge as the Spells Known. Gave me my Wisdom bonus in Spell Slots...so, +1 per day. Wahoo? Well, I suppose in the long term it was important...

Domain... I get to pick the Domain? I blinked, and filled in Good instantly. Well, didn’t that work out well for once?

+1 Caster Level to all Good spells, +d6 to Sanctified Spell... which was now maxed out at +3d6. What was not to love?

It had pre-chosen the Feat... Beyond Law and Chaos?

Well. I definitely wanted that Feat, as it was an incredible defensive tool, removing yourself from the dominion of luck and predestiny... and knuckleheads playing prescience games. I supposed it was a counterpart to Beyond Good and Evil, although the mechanics were very different. Combined, the two were very effective at removing a wide set of tools from the arsenals of many Casters... and since I was already playing Alignment games and futzing with divine prerogatives, this was simply a continuation of theme.

But I got to choose the Mastery again, finally? I picked Shard Mastery/2, which let me assign an Elemental Damage type to my Shards... which could come in all types of useful for doing additional damage to enemies, or stacking on other effects...

It also came with a reactive Shield 1/day I could cast in response to an attack... which wasn’t a lot, but was a lot better than nothing.

Skills... it filled up the last Ranks I needed in Spellcraft and Stealth, and then gave a +1 each to four Lore skills: Religion, Mythos, Planar, and Arcane. There were a lot more, of course, but a surfeit of Skill points. The sudden knowledge gained focused heavily on identifying local monsters, which dovetailed with an Inquisitor’s interest in knowing their enemies.

Without much thought, I threw this set of non-vital Skills into Einz.

This effectively moved them from my memory into that of the Ring, a unique ability for an Item Familiar. For every 3 Ranks held in the Ring, I got a +1 typeless bonus to a Skill NOT in Einz.

4 Ranks, so +1. I placed it on Stealth for now, as avoiding being seen was a great way to survive being Level One.

I flicked a Light up on my palm, and glowered at the ball of black flame wound about with a silver light, shedding illumination. No, no, that wouldn’t be all kinds of strange to people to see...

It appeared my magic was undergoing Spell Thematics, whether I liked it or not. I sighed and returned to my duly appointed intellectual dread of what was coming.

-------

Her condominium was located in a small subdivision of gathered houses sharing a common parking lot. Sleipner pulled in to one of the empty places close to the door, while I glanced at the common mailbox, sighed, and made my way over to it, followed by Fred.

“No key,” I told him, which didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. He pulled something out of his vest, golden light flowed into it, and he inserted it into the appropriate lock. There was a click, and the box opened up.

I barely caught the first envelopes that wanted to tumble out. Muttering to myself, I picked up the collection of envelopes and magazines and fliers (apparently even the Haze couldn’t stop mass marketing), and with them bundled in my arms, we headed for the door to my unit.

There didn’t seem to be anything particularly wrong about the place, a stand-alone townhouse condo lined up next to its neighbors. Still, I took nothing for granted, and scanned it three ways...

“Someone laid a Ward on the door,” I murmured, stepping back, and his nonesuch eyes narrowed. Focusing, he brought up his Wrath, and sent it against the magic on the door, once, twice, and there were sparks as the magic was Devoured.

He tried the door, found it locked, and his magic lockpick made short work of it. His hand was near his Blade as he pushed the door open, and looked inside.

Gouges from energy attacks marred a couple of the walls, had torn a sofa apart, and a table in the kitchen had been reduced to splinters. There was blood on a wall and floor in the entry hall, too.

No pets came running up for attention, so that was something not to feel guilty about.