- Location
- USA
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- He/Him
Given how much fun they were apparently having (ahem nudge nudge ahem) I'm confident that they will continue with the good work. Well, I know that *she* was having fun. Apparently the other one is the quiet type.
The Patchwork Realms: Arrival
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- He/Him
Should this be "prayed to her god for reinforcement of everyone's weapons" or something similar? As is, it sounds almost like a chore... Input prayer, get guaranteed reinforcement.
This made me laugh so hard!!
Fricking OP. Athos go FOOM
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hm. Both ways work but I'm going to stick with the current one. Her magic is predictable, in general. Her god will answer requests as long as he's not too peeved or feeling unappreciated.
I'm glad. :>
He's limited to 5 uses per day and only regains mana if he's using it on himself, but yes. It definitely helps.
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- Location
- Pacific standard
Wait. This effect should work for any type of healing on Athos right? Doesn't Aerith have a heal only gated by mana?
[X] Action plan sit!
Sit on Aerith until he gives you the nice spells. Unlock them for him plus a stat point the next day to say thanks.
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- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...excuse me, I need to see if there's any aspirin in the house.
(Also, you can't buy stat points or Skills for other people. Only unlocks.)
- Location
- Pacific standard
Achievement get! Give your qm a migraine in good faith without referencing their actual quest ^_^
Joking aside, I'm pretty sure that spell has its CD increase based on how big the heal is. Depending on how specifically the spell gains attunement it should be balanceable, either turning into a pseudo regen effect for anyone around him or a once per x time frame trump card to nuke back to full hp and mana. Athos is at 5% resources, he burns 4% hp and 10 spirit, goes back to full hp and full spirit, cd of 4 days or something. Not completely broken
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I went back and looked at the numbers and I think it's okay. It's supposed to be a trash-tier healing Skill so I had it cap out at level 5 and the cooldown per point healed doubles each time you use it in a day. Your Channeling stat limits how much mana you can pump into a Skill in one go so you can't heal THAT much and the cooldown soon gets to the point of being impractical.Achievement get! Give your qm a migraine in good faith without referencing their actual quest ^_^
Joking aside, I'm pretty sure that spell has its CD increase based on how big the heal is. Depending on how specifically the spell gains attunement it should be balanceable, either turning into a pseudo regen effect for anyone around him or a once per x time frame trump card to nuke back to full hp and mana. Athos is at 5% resources, he burns 4% hp and 10 spirit, goes back to full hp and full spirit, cd of 4 days or something. Not completely broken
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Marathoned this in one night because stress and sleep don't mix well. Some idle, sleep-deprived thoughts...
-Atmos is good boy and a wonderful person
-Eugene needs to die.
-Did all dogs go to heaven? Who knows, but they certainly don't go to hell
-Aerith is a shame to the name.
-Murray is a saint
-These guards are good people
-Hethlok reminds me of Breeze from Mistborn, just a little bit...
-I totally ship Hethlok with the mage lady. I hope her god can push power to her via the sacrifices, allowing her to remain a mage for longer. Aerith doesn't deserve to be right
-Atmos is a good boy and a dear
-Atmos is good boy and a wonderful person
-Eugene needs to die.
-Did all dogs go to heaven? Who knows, but they certainly don't go to hell
-Aerith is a shame to the name.
-Murray is a saint
-These guards are good people
-Hethlok reminds me of Breeze from Mistborn, just a little bit...
-I totally ship Hethlok with the mage lady. I hope her god can push power to her via the sacrifices, allowing her to remain a mage for longer. Aerith doesn't deserve to be right
-Atmos is a good boy and a dear
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
*hug* I hope you sleep better tonight.
Athos gives you the Slurp of Appreciation.
*siiiiggh* Here we go again, with everyone hating on Eugene. Honestly, what's he ever done? He bought Athos breakfast that time, so obviously Eugene is a good guy! Okay, okay, maybe talking him out of all the details of his Epic skill in violation of social norms was a little dodgy and I suppose he has talked Athos into literal dogfighting without telling him in advance but seriously! Breakfast!
"Oi! Dontchew be gettin' me wrapped up wid dose guys! Ya tryin' ta tank my review?!"
Haven't read any of the Mistborn books, but I hear they're good.
Thank
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- He/Him
Post reminder!
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- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 31
I finished killing the fifth—I had jumped on him from behind, smashing him into the ground and biting through his neck—and turned to find that the rest were dealt with. Four were dead on the ground, already starting to dissolve, and the last was captured.
When I say 'captured', I'm being a bit generous. The guardsmen had knocked it down, lopped its legs off at the knees and its arms at the biceps, and Master Hethok had cauterized the wounds so it didn't bleed out. Private Garcia's left greave was shoved into the balor's mouth and tied around its head with a leather strip so that it couldn't use its fangs. The metal was squeaking and groaning with the force of the demon's bite, but it was holding.
I looked from the demon to Corporal Belker.
He shrugged. "We needed to capture one of them, remember? You mind if we strap him on you? He's still a heavy bastard."
I minded. I minded a lot, because this seemed wrong. On the other hand, it was already done so I let them sling the monster over my hips. Private Funter and Private Smith walked beside me on each side, holding the demon in place so it didn't slip off. If it started thrashing too much one of them would smack it in the head with the flat of a god-reinforced sword and it would go obediently limp again. It seemed to like the touch of the divine energy no more than I liked the touch of scorching asphalt on my pads back home.
We made it to the Magisterium Sympathetique without further encounters—well, without serious further encounters. There were a dozen more minor demons that the guardsmen dispatched without effort, an animated hatrack and armoire that ran away as soon as we saw them, and a water elemental that fled when Master Hethok spurted a scrap of fire at it.
The Magisterium was a walled compound containing a trio of massive Gothic buildings filled with deep time, sweeping windows with stained glass like spun candy, and billowing arches with and without bulkwarked oaken doors. Colonnaded porticoes whispered about generations of stately professorial promenades and freshmen furiously arguing philosophical questions that had been old before the first spark in the eyes of their great-great-grandparents. The flooring was grey slate and for the first time since coming to Hellsport the scent of brimstone was muted and the sunlight trickled warmth into my fur.
"Patched ground," Master Hethok murmured as we stepped through the gate. "I hadn't realized. When did it arrive?"
"Six, seven years ago?" Sergeant Carpenter said. "Something like that."
"Did it substitute or insert?"
"Substitute. There used to be a primary school here."
"And a spa," Annette said sadly. "It was a high-end school, only for the children of Citizens. The nannies would drop the kids off in the mornings and then go to the spa until the schoolday ended. It was open to the public, too. Some friends clubbed up to buy me a session for my naming day."
"What happened to the people when this place Patched in?" I asked. "The kids, and the people in the spa?"
Annette shrugged. "They went away to another Realm? They ceased to exist? No one knows for sure."
"I think they merged with the place!" Sergeant Smith said. "See, there's this book series, Adventures of the Wanderer, and it explains how when something Patches in, whatever is on the spot before can get melded into it. There could be people wandering through the walls of this place right n—"
"Shut the fuck up," Corporal Belker snapped. "Melting Talani, Smith. They were fucking kids."
Smith looked abashed and stopped talking.
"Good afternoon," said a man in a black silk robe, stepping out from behind one of the pillars that lined the atrium we were standing in. "I am Professor Baratos. How may the Magisterium help you today?"
"Good afternoon, Professor," Sergeant Carpenter said from where he stood beside me, one hand on my neck. He nodded politely. "I am Sergeant Carpenter of the City Guard, and we're here about the demon invasion."
"And you are welcome," the Professor said. "Messenger imp service is experiencing interruptions right now, but your Commander Selb managed to get a message to us via the heliograph." He gestured upwards to the spire that topped the building. "Hence why we had taken down the wards and opened the gate for you."
Sergeant Carpenter chuckled. "I was wondering about that. I didn't expect a Magisterium to be stupid enough to be undefended in the midddle of a city-wide emergency."
"No indeed. I see that you brought the necessary?" He waved towards the slightly dismembered demon draped over my butt. "That should do nicely. With a live subject from which to calibrate we will be able to start building antipathy fences around the city in order to hem the demons in." He turned and led us to the portico attached to the smallest of the three buildings.
"That will help," Master Hethok said, nodding. "My understanding from what I heard back at the Bastion is that the demons have an annoying habit of being everywhere and nowhere. Usually in small units that slaughter and then move on, and sometimes temporarily gathering into hordes to annhilate a difficult target before breaking up and dispersing again. Tell me, might you be able to locate their leaders? Commander Selb was almost literally tearing his hair out trying to deduce it." He smiled, showing a mouth full of too many molars. "I grant you, he would appear far less unsettling with a few handfuls less, but I gather that humans disprefer being smooth-pated. Silly creatures."
"Yes, well, perhaps we can discuss the Commander's barbering preferences later?" Sergeant Carpenter asked drily. "Professor, can you find the leaders or not?"
"Not I, perhaps," the man said, smiling. "Fortunately, we find ourselves blessed with help from without."
He must have intentionally timed the words for the right moment, because just as he spoke we came around a corner to find a happy sight: Estelle, Eugene, and Marcus standing in the hallway. Deimos stood beside them, still in his shapeless carmine crushed-linen outfit with the bird on his head.
"You're here!" I pounced forward, bulldozing into my friends with excited wigglies of lurrrv.
I had forgotten two things: I was carrying a balor and pouncing would drop him on the flagstones with a pained grunt of I-don't-care. Also, I was a lot bigger than I used to be and wigglies of lurrrv sent my friends tumbling. Still, that was okay because it let me get in a very comforting bit of face-slurping. I decided to start with Marcus because he was handy.
Well, the face-slurping was comforting for me, anyway. They were still pretending not to like it because humans are silly.
"Nice to see you too," Marcus said, laughing even as he struggled to push my snoot aside and wiggle out from under me. I put a paw on his chest to keep him steady because I wasn't done cleaning his ears yet.
"How did you find us?"
"That would be me," Deimos said, puffing himself up proudly. "Brand new theoretical framework proving out. There's an Atolu Prize in it, I'd say!"
Estelle snorted. "Yes, because finding half the dogs in the city was definitely an effective demonstration."
"Hey, it's not my fault! He kept moving around, and your thoughts kept wandering. How am I supposed to—"
"Whatever," Eugene said. "Hey, buddy. Good to see you again." He held out a fist and I bumped it.
"Hey, Athos," Estelle said, climbing to her feet with a smile. "Glad to see you're okay." I hurried over to lurrv on her. She laughed and caught me around the neck, hugging tight and giving scritches. I leaned on her a little bit and she braced, her body at a 45-degree angle to the ground.
"My framework really did prove out!" Deimos said. "It's been fascinating! Social accord is a quantifact of accordant interactions. It turns out that there are more than three usable chords on a Talakao wheel, just as I expected, which means that the harmonic interactions can move through an N-space instead of only a nine-space. And that of course implies that—"
"Thank you for finding us," I said, turning away from Estelle and giving Deimos a slurp. I didn't know him as well as the others so I settled for one lick instead of holding him down so I could do a really thorough job.
"And you would be...?" Sergeant Carpenter asked.
"Accordant Erathos Deimos, at your service!" He bowed floridly, putting one hand up to keep the bird on his head. The creature flipped its wings slightly but seemed largely unbothered.
"He's a student, not an Accordant," Eugene said with a snort. "Doesn't have his papers yet."
"A minor quibble! I'll be testing out of the rest of the curriculum once they see my new theoretical framework. Social accordance as a quantifact! Do you understand how big a deal this is? Can't have a winner of the Atolu be a mere student, right?" He rubbed his hands, smiling gleefully. "I wonder if they'll make me a senior professor right away or start me at associate? I know there's a seat open at—"
Sergeant Carpenter turned away to look at my friends. "And who are you lot?"
"Eugene de Maliyé, citizen of Ozurdati. I ran the caravan that brought Athos here a week ago. These are my operator and one of our security guards, Marcus and Estelle."
Marcus's lips tightened at the introduction but he said nothing. Estelle's face didn't change at all.
"Based on the greeting, I take it you all know Athos," the sergeant said, grinning.
"A little bit, yes," Marcus said, wiping his face on his elbow.
"Why are you guys here?" I asked, ceasing to lean on Estelle so that I could look at her properly.
She straightened up, patting me on the shoulder affectionately. "Not sure you've noticed, but there's a demon invasion of the city. We were worried."
"And that's how I found you!" Deimos said. "I followed the social accord between them and you!"
"Followed it to most of the dogs in the city," Eugene said.
The bird on Deimos's head squawked.
"Yes, yes, it worked better after I added in a thread to the accord of spiritual energy and yes, you're a very clever bird. Now hush!"
"Excuse me," the Professor said. "Could I prevail on someone to delay this reunion long enough to carry our research subject to the labs?"
Everyone looked at the delimbed balor lying quiescent on the floor of the hallway. Whether from ichorloss or something else, it wasn't complaining around its gag or struggling to escape.
"Wow," Eugene said. "What the hell happened there?"
"We were told that the Magisterium needed a live demon," I said. "So we captured one."
"You did a little more than just capture it," Estelle noted.
"You got a problem with that?" Corporal Belker demanded, frowning. "It's a fucking demon."
She looked at him steadily. "No problem." The words were calm but I could smell the acidic bile in her throat and see the pounding of the vein on her throat.
"Hey, hang on," I said. The excitement of seeing them had finally worn off and I could take the time to look my friends over properly and wuffle at them a bit to see what I could smell. All three of them had wet hair and were wearing clothes I didn't recognize. They reeked of soap but there were traces of demon ichor under it. And I could smell traces of the orichalcum but they weren't carrying backpacks and their pockets weren't bulging.
"What have you been doing?" I asked suspiciously.
"Nothing important," Marcus said. "We ran into a couple issues on the way here but we dealt with it."
Eugene snorted. "If by 'we dealt with it' you mean that I had to save your fool ass then yes, we dealt with it."
"Yes," Estelle said. "You fisted those big scary demons very well, Eugene. Good job."
He glared at her but didn't say anything.
"This way, if you please?" the Professor said, gesturing down the hallway.
We got the balor loaded back on me and continued down to a room the size of a basketball court. The center of the room was taken up by a massive table covered in a scale model of the city, individual buildings carved from stone or bone or other materials. Multiple other black-robed professors swarmed around it, with grey-robed students rushing back and forth with pots of ink, furiousy whittling new buildings, and bringing messages to and from from several doors.
"Ah, excellent!" one of the professors said, his dried-apple face lighting up. "Just plop it over here, please."
We dropped the balor next to the table; students promptly descended on it with knives and needles, slicing bits of flesh off and sucking up the leaking ichor before hurrying over to the table. My stomach did a flip as the demon moaned and whimpered.
"Don't worry, boss, it's cool," Murray said, patting me on the head. "Demons don't really feel pain. It's all simulated as a way ah manipulatin' mortals. Most ah youse guys are all soft an' squishy inside. A few little wimpahs, maybe even a scream ah agony, we can get ya ta do any'ting. Dey teach classes." He paused, and then hurried to add. "Imps is different. Totally different taxonomic ordah, despite some surface similarities. Us imps, we do feel pain."
Eugene nudged me. When I looked over he tipped his head in a 'come with me quietly' gesture.
I followed along quietly; everyone else was distracted by the table and the demon's protestations and it seemed impolite to bother them.
Eugene led me into the hall and around the nearest corner before turning to me with a big smile.
"It's great to see you again, bro."
I slurped him happily; he tensed up as I leaned in and then let it happen. When I dropped my chin on his shoulder he braced himself against my weight and patted my neck.
"We've got to get out of here," he said. "We need to get to Simon's shop and get into the next Realm."
"What?" I stepped back so I could see him again. "Why? We still need to save the city."
Eugene shook his head. "No, we need to get you out of here. You're what they're looking for, not the orichalcum."
"Huh? Why?"
He glanced at Murray and then back at me. "I mean, I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure. It's that Dyadic Unity skill of yours, the one with all the stat boosts and the 'body and spirit are one' thing—"
"Actually, the stat boosts are from Supreme Exemplar, the Epic Skill," I said. "Dyadic Unity is only Legendary. "Dyadic Unity makes my body and spirit one, but Supreme Exemplar is the one that makes me big and smart and gives me all the stat boosts."
"Interesting. So it's a big package deal..." He thought about that for a minute, then shrugged. "Anyway, you are this giant well of Spirit and you regenerate it super fast."
"Even faster now that I have Enhanced Rapid Recovery!" I said proudly. "I can only use it five times a day but it restores all my mana and heals me and restores a whole bunch of Spirit and removes status effects so if I get hit with, um, another of those attacks with the, you know, the things, then I can get rid of it."
"Right. Okay, well, that just makes it worse. Demons are all about gathering Spirit, right? You're this giant well of it and you regenerate it really fast. They can mine you for the stuff forever. Plus, you broke into Gliv's weapons factory and killed all his guards and blew up all his stuff so he needs to capture you to save his rep. They want the orichalcum back, but they're going to want you even more. We need to get you out of this Realm, and we can't afford to wait. Remember, you're on a short clock to get home. We need to plow through those different Realms if we want to get you out. Come on, let's go."
"...Okay. Let me just grab the others." I started to turn around but he caught me by the snoot.
"Leave them," he said. "They'll be a lot safer here."
"But...I made a deal with them. They wanted to come."
"They wanted to come so that they could get Attunement, not so they could help you. There's plenty of demons running around the city for them to farm. This place is a richer hunting ground than anything we're likely to meet, and they've got the City Guard backing them up. They'll be fine."
"But—"
"Damnit, Athos, just trust me on this one, okay? You're terrible with understanding people, so just take my word for it. They don't care about you, they're just in it for the points." He studied me for a moment. "I'm sorry, buddy. I know they seemed nice, and maybe I could have said that a little more gently, but you're tough. You can take it. Now, let's get moving."
"But—we were friends. They got the Spirit I needed to get healed."
"They scammed a whole bunch of homeless people."
"They did set up the shelter, though. And they were going to use their share of the orichalcum to follow through on their promise..."
"Athos," he said, putting his hands on either side of my face so that he could make me look him in the eyes, "why do you always have to be this way? I love you, man, but you're so stubborn. I was your first friend in this world and I've known those two a lot longer than you have. They're street rats. They grew up together and they don't care about anyone else. Not really. Sure, they'll work together if it helps them, but they'd abandon you—"
"Everything okay here?" Marcus said from the corner, a few feet behind me.
Eugene grimaced, then let go of my face and smiled as he stepped into view. "Everything's cool. I was just reminding Athos that we're short on time to get him home and the four of us should get out of the city as soon as possible. Plus, you know, demons."
"Oh, right," I said. "For a second I forgot about those. I need to go kill the hazdahem."
"What?!" Eugene said. "Dude, you can't—"
"Pretty sure I can. I'm big and strong and my teeth are spiritual weapons, remember? Besides, I promised." I pushed my chest out to make the City Guard badge move. "I'm a guardsman now! Well, a deputy. I promised Commander Selb that I would kill the demons and apparently if I don't then it's treason. I'm pretty sure that treason is bad."
Eugene facepalmed. "Look—"
"He's not wrong about the short timer," Marcus said slowly. "And the demons are hunting us for the orichalcum we're carrying. They got the bulk of it but they want the rest."
"Also, we caused this mess," Estelle said. "We brought the orichalcum here. People are dying because of us. We need to fix it."
Eugene rubbed his face and sighed. "Fine. Let's talk to those guards and the eggheads, see what we can get for backup."
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Goddamn I hate Eugene. Le Sigh. Which means you're writing him well. Thanks for the update!
He is literally the worst. Every time he opens his mouth I can just feel the weight of karmic retribution growing stronger.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Eugene needs a punch in the face... Repeatedly. With the business end of a broadsword.
Eventually Eugene's gonna say it do something that makes Athos realize he's bad news (probably a murder attempt, tbh). And then Eugene gets shredded by divine dog teeth >:3
Eventually Eugene's gonna say it do something that makes Athos realize he's bad news (probably a murder attempt, tbh). And then Eugene gets shredded by divine dog teeth >:3
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
I can't wait for something like this to happen.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Poor Athos, though. Gonna break his heart (even if it gives him xp)
Chapter 31 - Reunion
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 31
I finished killing the fifth—I had jumped on him from behind, smashing him into the ground and biting through his neck—and turned to find that the rest were dealt with. Four were dead on the ground, already starting to dissolve, and the last was captured.
When I say 'captured', I'm being a bit generous. The guardsmen had knocked it down, lopped its legs off at the knees and its arms at the biceps, and Master Hethok had cauterized the wounds so it didn't bleed out. Private Garcia's left greave was shoved into the balor's mouth and tied around its head with a leather strip so that it couldn't use its fangs. The metal was squeaking and groaning with the force of the demon's bite, but it was holding.
I looked from the demon to Corporal Belker.
He shrugged. "We needed to capture one of them, remember? You mind if we strap him on you? He's still a heavy bastard."
I minded. I minded a lot, because this seemed wrong. On the other hand, it was already done so I let them sling the monster over my hips. Private Funter and Private Smith walked beside me on each side, holding the demon in place so it didn't slip off. If it started thrashing too much one of them would smack it in the head with the flat of a god-reinforced sword and it would go obediently limp again. It seemed to like the touch of the divine energy no more than I liked the touch of scorching asphalt on my pads back home.
We made it to the Magisterium Sympathetique without further encounters—well, without serious further encounters. There were a dozen more minor demons that the guardsmen dispatched without effort, an animated hatrack and armoire that ran away as soon as we saw them, and a water elemental that fled when Master Hethok spurted a scrap of fire at it.
The Magisterium was a walled compound containing a trio of massive Gothic buildings filled with deep time, sweeping windows with stained glass like spun candy, and billowing arches with and without bulkwarked oaken doors. Colonnaded porticoes whispered about generations of stately professorial promenades and freshmen furiously arguing philosophical questions that had been old before the first spark in the eyes of their great-great-grandparents. The flooring was grey slate and for the first time since coming to Hellsport the scent of brimstone was muted and the sunlight trickled warmth into my fur.
"Patched ground," Master Hethok murmured as we stepped through the gate. "I hadn't realized. When did it arrive?"
"Six, seven years ago?" Sergeant Carpenter said. "Something like that."
"Did it substitute or insert?"
"Substitute. There used to be a primary school here."
"And a spa," Annette said sadly. "It was a high-end school, only for the children of Citizens. The nannies would drop the kids off in the mornings and then go to the spa until the schoolday ended. It was open to the public, too. Some friends clubbed up to buy me a session for my naming day."
"What happened to the people when this place Patched in?" I asked. "The kids, and the people in the spa?"
Annette shrugged. "They went away to another Realm? They ceased to exist? No one knows for sure."
"I think they merged with the place!" Sergeant Smith said. "See, there's this book series, Adventures of the Wanderer, and it explains how when something Patches in, whatever is on the spot before can get melded into it. There could be people wandering through the walls of this place right n—"
"Shut the fuck up," Corporal Belker snapped. "Melting Talani, Smith. They were fucking kids."
Smith looked abashed and stopped talking.
"Good afternoon," said a man in a black silk robe, stepping out from behind one of the pillars that lined the atrium we were standing in. "I am Professor Baratos. How may the Magisterium help you today?"
"Good afternoon, Professor," Sergeant Carpenter said from where he stood beside me, one hand on my neck. He nodded politely. "I am Sergeant Carpenter of the City Guard, and we're here about the demon invasion."
"And you are welcome," the Professor said. "Messenger imp service is experiencing interruptions right now, but your Commander Selb managed to get a message to us via the heliograph." He gestured upwards to the spire that topped the building. "Hence why we had taken down the wards and opened the gate for you."
Sergeant Carpenter chuckled. "I was wondering about that. I didn't expect a Magisterium to be stupid enough to be undefended in the midddle of a city-wide emergency."
"No indeed. I see that you brought the necessary?" He waved towards the slightly dismembered demon draped over my butt. "That should do nicely. With a live subject from which to calibrate we will be able to start building antipathy fences around the city in order to hem the demons in." He turned and led us to the portico attached to the smallest of the three buildings.
"That will help," Master Hethok said, nodding. "My understanding from what I heard back at the Bastion is that the demons have an annoying habit of being everywhere and nowhere. Usually in small units that slaughter and then move on, and sometimes temporarily gathering into hordes to annhilate a difficult target before breaking up and dispersing again. Tell me, might you be able to locate their leaders? Commander Selb was almost literally tearing his hair out trying to deduce it." He smiled, showing a mouth full of too many molars. "I grant you, he would appear far less unsettling with a few handfuls less, but I gather that humans disprefer being smooth-pated. Silly creatures."
"Yes, well, perhaps we can discuss the Commander's barbering preferences later?" Sergeant Carpenter asked drily. "Professor, can you find the leaders or not?"
"Not I, perhaps," the man said, smiling. "Fortunately, we find ourselves blessed with help from without."
He must have intentionally timed the words for the right moment, because just as he spoke we came around a corner to find a happy sight: Estelle, Eugene, and Marcus standing in the hallway. Deimos stood beside them, still in his shapeless carmine crushed-linen outfit with the bird on his head.
"You're here!" I pounced forward, bulldozing into my friends with excited wigglies of lurrrv.
I had forgotten two things: I was carrying a balor and pouncing would drop him on the flagstones with a pained grunt of I-don't-care. Also, I was a lot bigger than I used to be and wigglies of lurrrv sent my friends tumbling. Still, that was okay because it let me get in a very comforting bit of face-slurping. I decided to start with Marcus because he was handy.
Well, the face-slurping was comforting for me, anyway. They were still pretending not to like it because humans are silly.
"Nice to see you too," Marcus said, laughing even as he struggled to push my snoot aside and wiggle out from under me. I put a paw on his chest to keep him steady because I wasn't done cleaning his ears yet.
"How did you find us?"
"That would be me," Deimos said, puffing himself up proudly. "Brand new theoretical framework proving out. There's an Atolu Prize in it, I'd say!"
Estelle snorted. "Yes, because finding half the dogs in the city was definitely an effective demonstration."
"Hey, it's not my fault! He kept moving around, and your thoughts kept wandering. How am I supposed to—"
"Whatever," Eugene said. "Hey, buddy. Good to see you again." He held out a fist and I bumped it.
"Hey, Athos," Estelle said, climbing to her feet with a smile. "Glad to see you're okay." I hurried over to lurrv on her. She laughed and caught me around the neck, hugging tight and giving scritches. I leaned on her a little bit and she braced, her body at a 45-degree angle to the ground.
"My framework really did prove out!" Deimos said. "It's been fascinating! Social accord is a quantifact of accordant interactions. It turns out that there are more than three usable chords on a Talakao wheel, just as I expected, which means that the harmonic interactions can move through an N-space instead of only a nine-space. And that of course implies that—"
"Thank you for finding us," I said, turning away from Estelle and giving Deimos a slurp. I didn't know him as well as the others so I settled for one lick instead of holding him down so I could do a really thorough job.
"And you would be...?" Sergeant Carpenter asked.
"Accordant Erathos Deimos, at your service!" He bowed floridly, putting one hand up to keep the bird on his head. The creature flipped its wings slightly but seemed largely unbothered.
"He's a student, not an Accordant," Eugene said with a snort. "Doesn't have his papers yet."
"A minor quibble! I'll be testing out of the rest of the curriculum once they see my new theoretical framework. Social accordance as a quantifact! Do you understand how big a deal this is? Can't have a winner of the Atolu be a mere student, right?" He rubbed his hands, smiling gleefully. "I wonder if they'll make me a senior professor right away or start me at associate? I know there's a seat open at—"
Sergeant Carpenter turned away to look at my friends. "And who are you lot?"
"Eugene de Maliyé, citizen of Ozurdati. I ran the caravan that brought Athos here a week ago. These are my operator and one of our security guards, Marcus and Estelle."
Marcus's lips tightened at the introduction but he said nothing. Estelle's face didn't change at all.
"Based on the greeting, I take it you all know Athos," the sergeant said, grinning.
"A little bit, yes," Marcus said, wiping his face on his elbow.
"Why are you guys here?" I asked, ceasing to lean on Estelle so that I could look at her properly.
She straightened up, patting me on the shoulder affectionately. "Not sure you've noticed, but there's a demon invasion of the city. We were worried."
"And that's how I found you!" Deimos said. "I followed the social accord between them and you!"
"Followed it to most of the dogs in the city," Eugene said.
The bird on Deimos's head squawked.
"Yes, yes, it worked better after I added in a thread to the accord of spiritual energy and yes, you're a very clever bird. Now hush!"
"Excuse me," the Professor said. "Could I prevail on someone to delay this reunion long enough to carry our research subject to the labs?"
Everyone looked at the delimbed balor lying quiescent on the floor of the hallway. Whether from ichorloss or something else, it wasn't complaining around its gag or struggling to escape.
"Wow," Eugene said. "What the hell happened there?"
"We were told that the Magisterium needed a live demon," I said. "So we captured one."
"You did a little more than just capture it," Estelle noted.
"You got a problem with that?" Corporal Belker demanded, frowning. "It's a fucking demon."
She looked at him steadily. "No problem." The words were calm but I could smell the acidic bile in her throat and see the pounding of the vein on her throat.
"Hey, hang on," I said. The excitement of seeing them had finally worn off and I could take the time to look my friends over properly and wuffle at them a bit to see what I could smell. All three of them had wet hair and were wearing clothes I didn't recognize. They reeked of soap but there were traces of demon ichor under it. And I could smell traces of the orichalcum but they weren't carrying backpacks and their pockets weren't bulging.
"What have you been doing?" I asked suspiciously.
"Nothing important," Marcus said. "We ran into a couple issues on the way here but we dealt with it."
Eugene snorted. "If by 'we dealt with it' you mean that I had to save your fool ass then yes, we dealt with it."
"Yes," Estelle said. "You fisted those big scary demons very well, Eugene. Good job."
He glared at her but didn't say anything.
"This way, if you please?" the Professor said, gesturing down the hallway.
We got the balor loaded back on me and continued down to a room the size of a basketball court. The center of the room was taken up by a massive table covered in a scale model of the city, individual buildings carved from stone or bone or other materials. Multiple other black-robed professors swarmed around it, with grey-robed students rushing back and forth with pots of ink, furiousy whittling new buildings, and bringing messages to and from from several doors.
"Ah, excellent!" one of the professors said, his dried-apple face lighting up. "Just plop it over here, please."
We dropped the balor next to the table; students promptly descended on it with knives and needles, slicing bits of flesh off and sucking up the leaking ichor before hurrying over to the table. My stomach did a flip as the demon moaned and whimpered.
"Don't worry, boss, it's cool," Murray said, patting me on the head. "Demons don't really feel pain. It's all simulated as a way ah manipulatin' mortals. Most ah youse guys are all soft an' squishy inside. A few little wimpahs, maybe even a scream ah agony, we can get ya ta do any'ting. Dey teach classes." He paused, and then hurried to add. "Imps is different. Totally different taxonomic ordah, despite some surface similarities. Us imps, we do feel pain."
Eugene nudged me. When I looked over he tipped his head in a 'come with me quietly' gesture.
I followed along quietly; everyone else was distracted by the table and the demon's protestations and it seemed impolite to bother them.
Eugene led me into the hall and around the nearest corner before turning to me with a big smile.
"It's great to see you again, bro."
I slurped him happily; he tensed up as I leaned in and then let it happen. When I dropped my chin on his shoulder he braced himself against my weight and patted my neck.
"We've got to get out of here," he said. "We need to get to Simon's shop and get into the next Realm."
"What?" I stepped back so I could see him again. "Why? We still need to save the city."
Eugene shook his head. "No, we need to get you out of here. You're what they're looking for, not the orichalcum."
"Huh? Why?"
He glanced at Murray and then back at me. "I mean, I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure. It's that Dyadic Unity skill of yours, the one with all the stat boosts and the 'body and spirit are one' thing—"
"Actually, the stat boosts are from Supreme Exemplar, the Epic Skill," I said. "Dyadic Unity is only Legendary. "Dyadic Unity makes my body and spirit one, but Supreme Exemplar is the one that makes me big and smart and gives me all the stat boosts."
"Interesting. So it's a big package deal..." He thought about that for a minute, then shrugged. "Anyway, you are this giant well of Spirit and you regenerate it super fast."
"Even faster now that I have Enhanced Rapid Recovery!" I said proudly. "I can only use it five times a day but it restores all my mana and heals me and restores a whole bunch of Spirit and removes status effects so if I get hit with, um, another of those attacks with the, you know, the things, then I can get rid of it."
"Right. Okay, well, that just makes it worse. Demons are all about gathering Spirit, right? You're this giant well of it and you regenerate it really fast. They can mine you for the stuff forever. Plus, you broke into Gliv's weapons factory and killed all his guards and blew up all his stuff so he needs to capture you to save his rep. They want the orichalcum back, but they're going to want you even more. We need to get you out of this Realm, and we can't afford to wait. Remember, you're on a short clock to get home. We need to plow through those different Realms if we want to get you out. Come on, let's go."
"...Okay. Let me just grab the others." I started to turn around but he caught me by the snoot.
"Leave them," he said. "They'll be a lot safer here."
"But...I made a deal with them. They wanted to come."
"They wanted to come so that they could get Attunement, not so they could help you. There's plenty of demons running around the city for them to farm. This place is a richer hunting ground than anything we're likely to meet, and they've got the City Guard backing them up. They'll be fine."
"But—"
"Damnit, Athos, just trust me on this one, okay? You're terrible with understanding people, so just take my word for it. They don't care about you, they're just in it for the points." He studied me for a moment. "I'm sorry, buddy. I know they seemed nice, and maybe I could have said that a little more gently, but you're tough. You can take it. Now, let's get moving."
"But—we were friends. They got the Spirit I needed to get healed."
"They scammed a whole bunch of homeless people."
"They did set up the shelter, though. And they were going to use their share of the orichalcum to follow through on their promise..."
"Athos," he said, putting his hands on either side of my face so that he could make me look him in the eyes, "why do you always have to be this way? I love you, man, but you're so stubborn. I was your first friend in this world and I've known those two a lot longer than you have. They're street rats. They grew up together and they don't care about anyone else. Not really. Sure, they'll work together if it helps them, but they'd abandon you—"
"Everything okay here?" Marcus said from the corner, a few feet behind me.
Eugene grimaced, then let go of my face and smiled as he stepped into view. "Everything's cool. I was just reminding Athos that we're short on time to get him home and the four of us should get out of the city as soon as possible. Plus, you know, demons."
"Oh, right," I said. "For a second I forgot about those. I need to go kill the hazdahem."
"What?!" Eugene said. "Dude, you can't—"
"Pretty sure I can. I'm big and strong and my teeth are spiritual weapons, remember? Besides, I promised." I pushed my chest out to make the City Guard badge move. "I'm a guardsman now! Well, a deputy. I promised Commander Selb that I would kill the demons and apparently if I don't then it's treason. I'm pretty sure that treason is bad."
Eugene facepalmed. "Look—"
"He's not wrong about the short timer," Marcus said slowly. "And the demons are hunting us for the orichalcum we're carrying. They got the bulk of it but they want the rest."
"Also, we caused this mess," Estelle said. "We brought the orichalcum here. People are dying because of us. We need to fix it."
Eugene rubbed his face and sighed. "Fine. Let's talk to those guards and the eggheads, see what we can get for backup."
Chapter 32 - Hazdahem
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 32
| You do not have the 46,656 Attunement necessary to unlock this Rare Skill. |
Harumph. Okay, how about that Advanced node that I wasn't able to unlock yesterday? I had 5,467 Attunement, that should be enough. Right? It was a very big number.
| You do not have the 7,776 Attunement necessary to unlock this Advanced Skill. |
Pah. Fine, I would save up. These demons were worth a lot and there were plenty of them running around. 'Attunement cookies', Eugene had called them yesterday. When I asked him why he called them that he laughed and said "Because you can't stop after just one."
"Sleep okay?" Marcus asked, giving me an ear scritch.
I leaned in, forcing him to brace himself and scritch harder. "Yup." A yawn snuck up on me. "Still waking up, though."
"Well, best get to that," he said with a smile. "We need to head out soon."
"You're coming with me?"
"Of course. I'm not sure how much good we'll be against the hazdahem, but we can help with the smaller stuff. One of the professors here gave me an unlock for Force Spike and I had enough to buy it, so I'll have some range."
"We need to get Eugene to give us the unlock on Rapid Restoration," Estelle noted.
"Oh, I can do that," I said, feeling guilty. I'd done it for Eugene but hadn't been able to afford it for the other two, and then we all got separated. "Hang on, let me just buy it back and—"
She put a hand on my neck and I stopped talking.
"Thanks," she said. "But not now. You should keep your Attunement handy. You've got a lot of strong nodes in your section, right?"
"Yeah?"
She nodded. "Good. You build up until you can afford some of those. We'll get Rapid Restoration eventually, and thank you for it. Right now it makes more sense to get you the more impressive stuff as opposed to have you jack up your prices by unlocking for us."
My heart got all fuzzy-warm and I snoot-bumped her in gratitude. "Thank you."
She laughed. "Hey, don't be too impressed. I'm expecting you to be keeping my butt unchewed. It just makes sense to power you up. In fact, as soon as I have enough I'm going to give you Weapon of Peace. It'll make your paw swipes not do any damage but they'll have massive knockback. Good way to get an enemy out of the fight temporarily. I'm going to try to talk the others into giving you some of their Skills. Spirits know that we'll be earning enough on this mission to buy some things back."
I opened my mouth to say something, I'm not entirely sure what, but was interrupted.
"Good oh-dear-gods-it's-barely morning," Corporal Belker said, coming into the map room while rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "The others will be here in just a second. How are you guys doing?"
"Pretty well," Marcus said. "I talked to Baratos about whether they had anything to help us find the target but he said no, we need to talk to Deimos."
One of the students bustled up to us with a pair of normal-sized mugs hanging off each of the fingers on his left hand. In his right hand he carried a carafe the size of a plum. "Coffee?" he asked.
"Thanks," Estelle said, taking one of the mugs. The student filled it from the carafe, served Estelle and Corporal Belker likewise, and then bustled off in response to a bellowed demand from one of the professors clustered around the map table.
Eugene came through the door and spotted us. "Hey," he said, wandering over. "You guys ready?"
"The others will be here in a minute," Corporal Belker said. Estelle and Marcus sipped at their coffee without replying.
"Tell them to snap it, eh?" Marcus said. "I've got three Advanced nodes on my Skillweb and I'm hoping to get them unlocked today."
"Speaking of that," Estelle said, "we should figure out what unlocks to give Athos. He's got mana for days and he's our primary combatant. I'm going to give him Weapon of Peace as soon as I can afford to."
Marcus's eyebrows went up and he nodded. "That's a good—"
Deimos came in, stretching and yawning. "God, I hate short sleep," he said. "Ooh, coffee!" He hurried off to where the student and his teeny carafe were busily dispensing hot beverage to the professors.
"That smells really good," I remarked, eyeing Estelle's mug significantly. The scent was amazing, rich and deep like a hollow in the forest loam where a rabbit had died.
"You wouldn't like it," she said, taking a sip.
"Are you sure? I might."
She shrugged with a knowing smile and extended the mug to me. "Careful, it's hot."
Excited, I lapped up a tongueful and immediately gagged.
"How can you drink that?!" I demanded, the words only clear because Murray was kind enough not to mangle them the way I would have since I was in the middle of trying to spit my tongue out of my mouth. "It tastes like asphalt with skunk-butt skidmarks!"
The humans, uncaring traitors all, laughed at my misery.
"It's an acquired taste," Marcus said, patting me on the neck.
I whimpered. "Why would you want to acquire a taste for something so utterly disgusting?" Oh Family, I couldn't get rid of it. Enhanced Senses came with some major downsides. If only it had been a little bit hotter it might have burned my tongue enough that I wouldn't be able to taste it. I started frantically licking my nose and snoot in the hope that I could get enough hair and maybe even boogers to drown out the grossness.
Eugene rejoined us, a mug in his hand, and looked from the laughing humans to me and my desperate nose-licking.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
o-o-o-o
It took another two hours for us to get on our way, mostly because that's how long it took for Deimos to wake up, get showered, and make the various magical preparations necessary to let us track down demons. The professors were not able to help us, since apparently sympathetic magic dealt only with relations between things that had at one point been part of a whole. Deimos's magic was the exact opposite; it was, as he put it 'the art of interactions between multiple reifications of a conceptual entity based on the number of axes of accordance as expressed by...' I put it down to "how similar things are" and called it a day.
His preparations were a bit gruesome; he wrenched the balor's fangs out of its head with a pair of pliers and put them in a palm-sized net of fine threads. He held it up in front of himself and mumbled over it for forty minutes, periodically waving his arms and occasionally putting it on the ground to draw chalk marks around it. The rest of us watched, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. Finally it was ready and our not-so-little hunting party set out.
On our side: Six guardsmen, Annette, Master Hethok, Aerith, Eugene, Marcus, Estelle, and me. The guardsmen had almost no Skills, their weapons would be useless if Annette wasn't able to empower them, Estelle had a limited number of arrows, and there was only so much mana among us.
On the other side: A small army of demons wielding extradimensional magic and incredible physical force.
It wasn't even close to a fair fight, but it wasn't my fault that the bad guys didn't bring enough monsters.
Estelle and Marcus had seemed dubious about Deimos's talisman, but it worked well. We found and dispatched four balor within five blocks of the Magisterium. Our group was large enough and strong enough that I wasn't getting all that much Attunement for each of them, but it was better than nothing. At Eugene's suggestion I didn't use any of my Skills, choosing instead to conserve the limited uses of each.
Three blocks over, we lucked into a group of four balor led by a malazaheen. Aerith walled the malazaheen in with three glowing walls stacked together in a pyramid while Estelle shot one of the balor in the face and the guardsmen stabbed them with tridents that, thanks to Annette's blessing, went through their scales like a knife through uncooked steak. Once they were all dead, Aerith dropped one of the walls from his pyramid and Master Hethok torched the demon before it could move. Attunement dropped into all of our General Funds.
"They're going to figure out to avoid us at some point," Estelle said, her head snapping up towards a suspicious movement on the roof of the building to our left. I had already noticed it and dismissed it as nothing more than an upset pigeon, but I said nothing.
"Nah," Eugene said. "They like the fire too much."
It was true. It was dark out and we were traveling by the treacle light of Melos's power that clung to Annette and, to a greater degree, the flames that Master Hethok wrapped around himself like a comfy bathrobe. The balor seemed fascinated by this; the moment they saw us they would charge forward, usually aiming for Master Hethok. The malazaheen had been smarter, taking its time to scope things out before moving to the attack and getting trapped by Aerith's walls.
"Why are they so fascinated by the fire, Murray?" I asked.
"It's homey, boss. Dis place sucks. Too cold, too dahk. No clients ta look aftah and the squishies here break if ya try anyt'ing wid 'em. A little fiyah is a little bit ah home, yeah?"
"Makes sense," Estelle said, smiling. She nudged Marcus. "Remember the pigeon coop?"
He laughed. "Ugh, don't remind me."
"What about a pigeon coop?" Aerith demanded, grumpy at being left out of the joke.
"It's nothing," Marcus said. "Growing up, we lived in an abandoned pigeon coop for a couple months. At first it was gross but after a while we started liking it."
"Why would you—"
With a shriek, a malazaheen leapt out of a third-floor window and landed on Annette. Its scythes stabbed into her chest, slamming her to the ground so hard that the cobbles cracked and chips of stone sprayed out fast enough to cut at my ankles.
The golden aura around Annette bent inwards at the impact, pooling up beneath the scythe tips until finally it popped like a soap bubble. It slowed the attack enough that the scythes pricked her in the shoulders but only barely drew blood before Master Hethok slapped the demon in the ankles with their tail. The demon dropped on its back and we descended on it with a flurry of stabs, thrusts, and a paw smash that shattered its pelvis and lower right shoulder, eliciting a steamwhistle gasp. We hurried to pin it down and Sergeant Carpenter raised his trident for the killing blow.
"Hold up," Eugene said. "Murray, can these things talk?"
"Yeah, but dey ain't real communicative."
"I can talk, fleshbag."
"Okay, I flap corrected. Dey usually ain't real communicative."
"We're looking for your boss," Eugene said. "The hazdahem. Where is it?"
The creature laughed, the sound filled with wormy writhing. "Little soul wrapped in a bag of meat, why do you seek your death?"
I had shattered the lower right shoulder and was standing on the scythe of the upper right arm, pinning it to the ground. Marcus had laid his spear across the malazaheen's left two arms and frozen it in place with his Spatial Lock power, immobilizing those arms. His knife was stabbed into the crumpled wreckage of the shoulder I had ruined, cutting the muscles and tendons so that the limb hung limp. When it asked its question, he twisted the knife and got another of those steamwhistle cries.
"Ooh, yes," the malazaheen laughed. "So like home, except no subtlety. The entrapment, this is a good start. Feelings of confinement a good foundation make. The pain...clumsy. Obvious. To be expected from flicker-life of a fleshbag."
I shouldered the humans out of the way so that I could smash the malazaheen's upper right shoulder to muck with my paw, removing the need for me to stand on it. I stepped forward, placing one paw and about half my weight on the demon's chest, leaning close so I could growl right in its face, my nose barely out of reach of its eyeworms. Its teeth were foul, in desperate need of a good brushing, the spaces between jammed with half-rotted meat the source of which I tried not to think about.
"I've been told that my teeth are spiritual weapons," I said. "I think that means they can kill you permanently. Right?" I breathed out, letting the warm wetness of my breath wash over it. Hopefully I smelled as awful to it as it did to me. Just thinking about the stench, about the filthy things this monster had undoubtedly done...I could barely keep myself from biting through its face.
The beast went still.
"What are you?" it asked, cocking its head in curiosity. "Not flesh around soul...you are flesh and soul. How—"
"We're the ones asking the questions," Sergeant Carpenter interrupted. "Now, where is the hazdahem?"
The demon laughed. "To battle my Strike Leader wish you, tiny soul? The most luck. The place of the upwelling fish, therein he waits. Go. Not alone of his rank. Of the 517th I am, but elements of the 1131st and 719th here also are, each with their Strike Leader. Not kill you my Leader shall. Strip your skin from your flesh and defile—
I bit its face off and stomped through its chest.
"Damnit, Athos," Eugene said with a sigh. "Not so quick on the thrust there." He shook his head. "Anyone know what this 'place of the upswelling fish' is?"
"Yes," Aerith said. "It's probably the Academy of Biomancy. The light fish circulate through a fountain on the square outside their front gate."
Estelle raised an eyebrow. "'The light fish'?"
"Sure. What, you haven't—" He paused. "Right, I forgot. You're a weed, you'll have never been to the decent parts of the city."
Her face didn't change but for one moment she became very still.
"Excuse me," I said to Aerith. "That sounded rude. I don't like it when people are rude to my friends."
He met my eyes for only a moment before looking away; it might have had something to do with the steady flow of demonic ichor dripping from my jaws. "Right. Most of the city has street lighting of some kind or another. About three miles from here, up on Scarf Knob, the lights are in the form of a loop of transparent piping elevated above the streets. The water is full of plankton and fish that have been biomantically engineered to glow. The loop starts and ends in front of the Academy, in a pair of vertical pipes. The pipe comes in from the east and goes down into a service area underground where it gets cleaned and fed, then it fountains up on the west side and goes out into the loop. It's a public square with several main boulevards coming into it, so an easy place to set up a command post."
"Cool," Sergeant Carpenter said. "Sounds like we know where to go hunting."
o-o-o-o
"This is not the kind of hunting I had in mind," Sergeant Carpenter whispered.
We were split up, pairs and trios huddled in the wreckage of ruined buildings on both sides of the street while demons traipsed to and fro at unpredictable intervals.
We stood near the top of Scarf Knob, until now one of the wealthiest districts in the city. The streets had been freshly paved, the buildings had once been nicer than anywhere else we had been, and we had passed two separate disaster shelters on the way in. Both of them had been cracked open and I could smell dead humans inside. I wanted to go in and check for survivors but my teammates insisted that we keep moving.
The shelters were not unusual in their destruction. Half of the buildings around us were poorly-balanced stacks of rubble, parts of one or two walls standing but the rest lying in chunks. The buildings that were still standing were heavily damaged, usually in the form of massive holes kicked through black- or gold- or red crystal walls a foot thick. Bodies and chunks of bodies were everywhere, along with more of the revolting human sculpture. We found another group of people posed on iron rods, followed by a heap of bodies that had been carefully eviscerated in order to extract enough human intestine to form a spiderweb across the street with a man, a woman, and a child dangling from the center. Murals had been painted on walls in shades of red, grey, brown, and black that had been made by careful admixtures of blood, brain, and feces.
We had little time to study the desecration and no time to clean it up. The enemy had been in greater force the closer we got, lending credence to the idea that we would find a hazdahem on the square at the very top of the Knob. Unfortunately, the makeup of the enemy had started to change.
Balors were in plenty, but still manageable as long as we were careful to husband our resources. The first and third groups, the guardsmen and I feinted and snapped in order to herd the balor into one tightly-packed group so that Master Hethok could ash them all with one narrow blast, thereby conserving his strength. The second and fourth group, the fighters dealt with while the mages stood back and Annette did nothing except empower the humans' weapons. After each fight, Annette and Aerith performed some minor healing on those of us who had been dinged up, although I declined since I could manage it myself with Enhanced Rapid Recovery.
The first time I used the Skill was an unpleasant surprise. I was down three hundred hit points and almost as much mana; it restored all of that but I only received Attunement for the healing it actually did, not for the full amount I had expected. After that I resolved to wait until I was hurt enough to be able to get proper use out of it; in the meantime, me not accepting healing left more for the squishy humans.
Still, the accumulating scrapes and stabs and bites sure weren't comfortable.
The fifth enemy patrol was different, and the reason we were hiding. Murray had been scouting ahead (much to his disgruntlement) and he rejoined us as fast as his wings would flap, making frantic gestures with both arms to say that we should be quiet and get to cover. We obeyed, splitting up to dive into whichever rubble pile was closest and waiting for the bad guys to tromp by.
They were human...mostly. There were nine of them, they all carried guns, and none of them had skin. The first had long green worms writhing across her body. The rest had a net of shiny silver threads woven into their flesh from top to bottom, as well as parts entirely covered in the stuff. For some it was only a small part—left arm, both legs, part of their skull—but for most of them the replacements were nigh-ubiquitous. On their heads, every one of them wore a circlet of barbed vines pressed tight into their skulls so that rivulets of blood ran in steady flows down their faces.
"Shit," Corporal Belker murmured from my right. "They're Patched."
I looked over at him, head cocked in question.
"The metal," he whispered. "It's—"
Murray frantically waved for silence and the corporal obeyed.
The modified humans paused in front of our hideout, looked at one another...and then one of them tossed us a casual salute and the whole group kept moving. It was enough to send a chill down my spine.
We waited until after they had turned the corner out of sight, then waited another minute before Sergeant Carpenter stood up and waved for everyone to gather up.
"They were Patched," Corporal Belker explained to me once we were all inside a semi-ruined building that still had two walls standing and would mostly keep us out of sight. "From one of the high-tech Realms. The weapons? Those are called..." He paused, frowning as he tried to remember.
"Guns," I said. "Submachine guns, I think? I used to see those things all the time on Dad's noisybox shows. The woman with the worms had a weird-looking one that I didn't recognize. I'm not sure it was a regular gun."
Corporal Belker nodded. "Guns, sure. Anyway, all that metal in their bodies? Some kind of weaponized technology, probably makes them stronger and faster. This Realm won't support it and the stuff will stop working in a few weeks or months, but for now there's no telling what they can do."
"Dey ain't Patched," Murray said. "Dey're levies. Clients from one ah da Upper Pits dat have been given da chance to leave dere hospitality suite in exchange fah doin' some support woik fah one of da Legions. Da skin removal and dah control crowns was us, but da metal and some ah dah uddah stuff was original parts from when dey came ta us. Da guns woulda been traded for. Whatevah powahs all da modifications gave 'em, dat's why dey was chosen." He smiled. "Guess da choice wasn't too good, since dey knew we was heah but dey just fucked off."
I digested that for a moment.
"I think I'm ready to kill all of these demons," I said.
The rest of the team nodded grimly.
Deimos held up his little mesh bag of demon teeth. "There's a huge amount of primary accord in the air right now, on multiple consangual—"
"Speak normal," Private Smith growled.
"...Right. Sorry." He paused, thinking. "As best I can tell, there are a lot of balors in this area, along with some other demons that are not balor, but they're all spread out. There's something similar but more..." He grimaced, face scrunching up as he tried to figure out the words. Finally he gave up and shrugged. "There's something that might be the hazdahem two blocks that way." He pointed northeast.
"Murray, wait here," I said, turning and loping off before anyone could object. Sergeant Carpenter hissed for me to stop but I decided that temporary deafness wasn't only for fetching frisbees.
I loped up two blocks to the north and peeked around the corner. There were piles of rubble and dead bodies up and down the block, with half a dozen balor standing around watching one of their number slowly pull a child's corpse apart. At the other end of the block the street opened up into a large public square. A pair of balor hurried across my field of view, one going left to right and the other right to left. I waited to see if anything else would happen, and a few seconds later there was a basso profundo howl so loud it hurt my ears. The demon that had crossed from left to right was thrown back across my sightline without touching the ground.
Yup, I was in the right spot.
I checked my character sheet, just to see if there was anything useful I could buy. I was up to 8,155 Attunement, which was enough to unlock that Advanced Skill. I hesitated, wondering if I wanted to go for that or keep piling it up to get the Rare, since that one would get a lot more expensive if I had already unlocked something today. In the end I decided to wait.
With the decision made, I took a deep breath, braced myself, and moved.
Rounding the corner was the slowest part. Once my nose was pointed in the right direction I launched myself forward, blowing past the balors before they could react and continuing to speed up. I stretched out low to the ground, pushing the speed until the wind of my passage made my eyes water and my ears stream out behind me.
I got to the end of the block and cornered as hard as I could, feet scrabbling on the roughened crystal paving stones as I struggled to redirect my enormous mass.
The square was large, easily the size of a football field, with edges defined by towering buildings in every style. The one I had blown past on my way in looked like a gingerbread house, the walls overlapping scales of robin egg blue and a swooping roofline. Beside it was a six-story box of frosted glass, and beyond that a miniature castle carved from a single emerald with a blackened and smashed-open ivory door that rotated around an axis instead of swinging.
All of that was peripheral impressions as I turned, my main attention on the demon and his throne.
The throne was raised up on a three-step dais made of carefully-stacked human bodies supporting platforms of bone. The demon was seated, but would probably be thirty feet tall when he stood up. He looked like the traditional pictures of the Devil from the movies: A muscular human male with red skin covered in tiny scales, deeply sunken eyes, impractically enormous horns that swooped out of his temples and angled forward in sharp points, hooves the size of manhole covers, and fingernails that stuck out into claws. The claws and fangs were black like soot and the stench of brimstone rolled off of him, reaching all the way to where I had entered the square a hundred feet away. A leather harness held a steel plate on his chest and he wore a kilt that looked like steel but moved like fabric. A sword bigger than me leaned against the arm of the throne.
There were two malazaheen flanking him, their lower scythes curved in front of them and the upper ones raised and ready to strike. A balor knelt in front of the dais, head bowed and speaking in a language I didn't understand as it made report to its commander.
The hazdahem's head jerked up as he saw me coming. The malazaheen reacted immediately, leaping off the dais and splitting up to the left and right as they raced towards me in that disorienting zig-zag fashion. Their scythes clashed together in a tickertack of promise. The hazdahem rose from his throne and stepped forward to the edge of the dias.
I waited until the malazaheen were almost on me and then used a quick burst of Mystic Acceleration to zip between them before they could respond. The extra speed carried me the last distance to the base of the dias, where the balor's head was only just starting to rise and turn to see what was happening. I stepped on it in passing and used it as a platform to launch myself at the hazdahem.
The monster's arm moved so fast I could barely see it, backhanding me out of the air and sending me flying.
I hit the ground with a yelp and rolled back to my feet.
"And what might you be, little thing?" the beast asked. The malazaheen hissed and started towards me but their master absently waved them back. They spread out to the sides, scythes tickertacking angrily.
"You are not a fleshsack like those who dwell in this place," the hazdahem mused. His sniffed, his nose flaring. "You have a taint of the Glowing Ones but you are not one of them...very strange."
I growled.
He laughed, deep and loud. "Ah, a protector. Are you angry at how we dealt with your city?"
I said nothing and started stalking forward and to the side, spiraling closer and forcing him to turn to face me. I wanted the malazaheen and their boss all in front of me so that I could keep track of them.
The hazdahem's nose wrinkled again, pulling in so much air that his chest puffed out. "Hmmm...is that a whiff of orichalculm I smell on you, little thing? What might you know about that?"
I growled again and stepped forward.
"Remove his legs," the monster said, waving idly to his flunkies.
The malazaheen charged.
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Looks like a sentence got dropped talking about what Weapon of Peace does.
Other than that, definitely looking forward to the boss battle coming up.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The second 'damage' should have said 'knockback'. Fixed, thanks.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
I feel this in my soul.
Oh crap, so Deimos' research is actually really impressive? I figured he just thought it was more important than it actually was, but that sounds different enough to be a pretty big finding for what I assume is basically a grad student.
Chapter 33: Think Heavy Thoughts
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 33
The malazaheen shrieked and charged, and I went to meet them.
They swayed drunkenly back and forth in their unpredictable, swooping attack pattern. The two of them crossed halfway in front of me to add to the confusion. They crossed and began to spread out again, obviously expecting one of them to be able to cut me off whichever way I jumped since surely I wasn't going to be dumb enough to run straight into their scythes.
Which is why I ran straight into their scythes.
I ran to meet them, holding back only a little so that when they crossed paths I had that little burst of speed ready to hit them before they could spread out again. I leaped forward and slammed into the nearest one.
My experience with them told me that all malazaheen were dangerous. These two had been chosen as the personal bodyguards of a field commander. Turns out, they didn't get that by collecting nifty-smelling sticks. I hit the first one before it thought I could but it still stabbed a foot of ripsaw scythe into my side and almost twisted out of the way of my attack. More than six hundred hit points vanished from my total in the twitch of a nose. I accepted the damage and pivoted along with the malazaheen's spin, got my teeth into its head and ripped it off, yanking its scythe out of my side in the process.
As breathtakingly painful as that had been, it was eclipsed by the multiple wells of agony that suddenly lanced through me as the surviving malazaheen jumped on me. It got its upper right scythe deep into my side, stabbing vertically between two ribs and just behind my shoulderblade. The upper left cut a line down over my left shoulder but I was turning too fast and the blade didn't dig in. The lower scythes stabbed through my thighs from one side to the other. It was heavy for a human and would have broken Marcus or Sergeant Carpenter solely with the impact. Unfortunately for the demon, I was no puny human, I was a mighty heckin' war dog. I shrugged off the impact long enough to trample across the one that I'd bitten. I had seen horror movies and the first rule was to be very sure that it was dead. Once I had beercanned its chest and head I spun sideways and rolled. Things happened very fast.
At the start of the roll, still in midair, I dumped eight points of Spirit into the demon. I shrank, my body tearing open and sealing up again as flesh was dragged through demonic blades and then reverted to my undamaged hyperidealized self-image.
We hit the ground, me on top. I was lighter now than a moment before but still hundreds of pounds of mighty wardog moving at the speed of a car on city streets. The malazaheen's unearthly bones crunched beneath me.
My feet touched the ground just as the monster shrieked. Fire burned across my back, scorching my freshly-reformed fur as the demon's shattered bones melted and its flesh burned away.
I came back to my feet and tapped Enhanced Rapid Recovery.
|
Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 1250 HP! Your Essence is currently at 105/113. Max HP 1050, current HP 118. 932 HP recovered. Hit points at max. No current physical status effects. 3 points of Essence recovered. Hit point max has increased to 1080. 18 HP recovered. Essence: 108/113 HP: 1068/1080 1250 Attunement gained. |
I looked to the side and saw the melting pile of smoking ash that had been the malazaheen.
"Well, well, well," the hazdahem rumbled. "How very interesting. Spiritual poison? ...No. No, it was from the inside." He set the point of his sword on the crystal flagstones and twirled it around idly, spinning it like a top with his hand on the coconut-sized pommel knob to hold it upright.
"Why did you shrink, little soul?" he asked, his voice thoughtful. "You gave up something for that attack, didn't you? And then promptly recovered some it, but only some of it."
I growled and started forward, my head low and ruff bristled. The hazdahem didn't react, continuing to fiddle with his sword. The point was scraping a hole into the crystal it balanced on and the soft whining sound it made tore at my ears.
"How many more times can you do that, I wonder? If you did it too often, would you simply shrivel away?"
I moved closer, spiralling around so that he had to shift his feet and turn to keep facing me, giving me a chance to study how those backward-facing goat legs moved. He was thirty feet tall and as of right now I didn't even come up to his weird-looking knee. I was going to have to deal with that, but at least I had a new weapon to paw.
I had only transferred the Spirit to the malazaheen because I needed to shrink in order to escape from its claws and there was no other target available. I definitely had not expected the transfer to burn the creature up from the inside, and now I was thinking that I had plenty of Spirit left and the hazdahem might not like the feel of my Spirit any more than its minion had.
I prowled closer and closer, still growling and showing my fangs. I wasn't going to make the mistake of leaping at him again—one backhand had been enough, thank you. No, this was going to be a different fight. A fight where I brought him down and bled him out slowly, taking no risks in the process.
The problem bipeds had when fighting dogs was that they couldn't use their arms on us without kneeling (which cost them all their mobility) or bending down (which cost them most of their balance). Sure, they could kick at us, but their legs were usually clumsy in comparison to their arms and when they kicked they were standing on only one, making them easy to knock over. And the backs of their legs had all those lovely tendons and blood vessels and oh-so-necessary muscles. Once you took those out, they came crashing down and started bleeding to death.
Yes, I had put some thought into how to most effectively defend the adorable little baby who had stolen my heart from the moment she came home. There were two sides to being a good dog: Playmate and protector.
"I think I shall keep you alive, little soul. If I rip your legs off and cauterize the wounds, you'll probably survive. Then all I need to do is pull your teeth out and you'll be much more manageable. I can take you back to one of the labs and see if they can't figure out how to use that trick of yours...my Commander will be quite grateful to me for bringing him such a weapon. It will likely be worth a promotion."
I ignored him and prowled closer. I needed to be near enough to dart behind him before he could react. Just outside the length of his leg should do nicely.
He sighed and picked the sword up, swinging it over his shoulder and somehow adhering it to his back so that the hilt stuck up over his left shoulder and the point stuck out diagonally from behind his right hip.
While he was distracted I lunged, Mystic Acceleration granting me speed. I ducked behind him, ripped his ankle open with my fangs to take out the tendons, and darted out of reach before he could react.
That was the plan.
The reality was that he spun towards me and flicked his hoof up as I attacked, cracking it into my chest and punting me up into the air. His hand blurred across to grab me but I managed to twist enough that it turned into a slap instead.
I flew through the air and bounced off the ground fifty feet away. He was on me even before I finished rolling, grabbing me by the tail and swinging me up and over to smash into the ground. He overestimated my durability; my tail was yanked straight out of my back along with a huge chunk of flesh and multiple vertebrae. I flew free, not landing where he expected, but he still managed to lash out with one hoof, punting me across the square and crushing my ribs in the process. In midair I hit Enhanced Rapid Recovery.
|
Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 1239 HP! Your Essence is currently at 108/113, HP at 17/1080. Active status effects: Paralyzed. Bleeding to death. 600 points applied to status effects. Status effects removed. 639 HP recovered. Essence: 108/113 HP: 656/1080 MP: 770/1130 1239 Attunement gained. |
I rolled to a stop and stood up, shaking off the impact and healing myself again.
|
Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 1238 HP! Your Essence is currently at 108/113, HP at 656/1080, MP at 620/1130. No status effects active. 424 HP recovered. HP at max. 1 point of Essence recovered. HP max has increased to 1090. 10 HP recovered. 50/100 Essence recovered. Essence: 109/113 (+50/100) HP: 1090/1090 MP: 620/1130 1238 Attunement gained. |
Good news: I was back to full health, my tail and spine were restored, and I was slightly larger and stronger than I'd been before he hit me. I still had plenty of mana to work with, seven more uses of Mystic Acceleration for today, and two more uses of Enhanced Rapid Recovery. Also, my opponent was standing over there laughing at me instead of attacking.
Bad news: This thing was insanely strong, a trained fighter, and faster than I was when it came to turning or striking. If he managed to get a grip on me again, I was done.
Okay, bipeds did have a better turning radius than quadrupeds, true. I should have thought about that.
I needed an edge, so I pulled up my character sheet. I'd been gaining a lot of Attunement, both from killing the monsters on the way here and the two elite malazaheen once I arrived, and also from the various Skills I'd been using. I was up to 20,154 which wasn't enough for that Rare node, but maybe...
I clicked on the Advanced node that I hadn't been able to unlock yesterday and confirmed when Mr. FloatyBox asked. The node flowered into view on my Skillweb; I metaphorically crossed my toes for luck and read the description as quickly as I could while keeping one eye on my enemy.
|
Surface-defined Gravitic Frame Bending
|
| Rank: Advanced |
| Cost: 75 MP |
| Duration: 10 x (Level) seconds |
| Max Level: 10 |
|
So long as some part of your body is in contact with a Type I surface then gravity in your personal reference frame points in whatever direction you like and may be altered at will. This allows you to run on walls or ceilings and, with sufficient practice, enhance your speed or make incredible jumps by 'falling' away from or along the surface in question. Does not affect anything except your own body. When the duration expires or you spend more than 10 seconds out of contact with a Type I surface, your gravitational reference frame will revert to the dominant surrounding field |
It wasn't the 'make demons explode by looking at them' Skill that I'd been hoping for, but it was definitely better than nothing. I decided to buy it now and be disturbed about the crossed-out part later.
I confirmed the purchase and a shiver washed across my skin. Suddenly I could feel the crystal paving stones below my pads in a whole new way. There was a stickiness, and it had a direction, and I could mold that stickiness like Cassie molded Play-Doh.
A stab of grief and loneliness went through me at the memory of lying on the floor, my head on my paws as I watched her playing with squishy stuff while the heating vent that I had carefully positioned myself next to shot warm air across my stretched-out hind legs.
I pushed the image aside to focus on my current situation. Out of curiosity, I tapped on the Rare node again to see how much it cost now that I had already unlocked one thing today.
| You do not have the 69,984 Attunement necessary to unlock this Rare Skill. |
Ugh, these prices were killing me. Perhaps literally.
"I'm waiting, little soul," the demon called, gesturing 'come' with one hand. I growled. "Come now, don't you want to try again? My minions are enjoying the show."
I cocked my head in surprise and looked around at the empty square.
The hazdahem saw my confusion and tutted at me disapprovingly. "Really, little soul?" He raised one hand and gave a loud, "Hup!"
All around the square, thousands of demons stood up. They had been hiding on rooftops, in windows, or outright invisible, and I hadn't noticed them because I wasn't looking. That had been a mistake.
The vast majority were those little spawnlings that we had so casually destroyed on the way in. They didn't all look like the murder babies from earlier; some were rolling balls of arms with eyeballs in their hands, others were multi-headed snakes, and others were weirder yet. Still, the murder babies were the most common. Of the demons that were likely to be actual threats the majority were balor, but there were dozens of malazaheen and a sprinkling of other types including five of those snake demons that we'd fought in Lord Gliv's weapons factory. Mixed in among them were twenty or thirty of the demonic levies, human souls of unknown power drafted into the service of the Infernal.
There were a lot of them and the most important part was that they completely ringed the square and hemmed me in. The two main thoroughfares out had a half dozen malazaheen blocking the way and the six smaller roads ran between buildings with dozens of balor and other demons that could easily jump down if I tried to pass that way. The hazdahem had turned this public square into an arena, just like the Champion's Court I had fought a few days ago. The only difference was that this time I didn't have the option to surrender.
"I find it wise to occasionally remind these lesser ones of precisely who it is they serve," the hazdahem said, his voice irritatingly casual. "Demons respect power, you see. It's especially important with spawnlings—they need a firm hand right from the beginning or they may try to strike off on their own instead of obeying orders. You should not have allowed those levies to report your presence, little soul. They saw the destruction your group had caused and thus I allowed you in so that I could make this demonstration. I must say, so far I am underwhelmed. I shall have to find a better opponent if I wish to give them a proper show."
My jaw dropped open in doggy laughter.
The hazdahem completely missed the point of who and what I was and why I was here. I didn't come here to challenge him, or even to kill him. I didn't need to kill him, I simply needed to protect the city. Killing him would make it easier for the City Guard and others to deal with his troops. The other demons would be uncoordinated and probably fighting among themselves, making it easier to hunt them all down.
Of course, if he was going to be polite enough to gather them all in one place then I didn't need to do much hunting, now did I?
I turned around and raced for the nearest building. A few yards away I burned mana and leaped. The stickiness below my paws shifted, and suddenly the building was below me and I was falling towards it. I landed clumsily, my eyes and balance struggling to adapt to the change. I tried to get my feet under me but I was already sliding down what seemed like a steep slope towards the roof of the building. I changed the stickiness again, easing the angle of the slope to be only slightly downhill, and raced forward. Skillup messages flew by and I blinked them away even as I hurled myself over the cliff that was the edge of the roof.
I was slow to reorient and all four paws were in the air already, my body flying off into thin air, but I managed to whip my tail back and slap it against the edge of the roof/cliff long enough to change gravity so that the roof was once more 'down'. In the process I slammed into a startled balor, knocking it flat. Its body cushioned my fall quite nicely and I expressed my gratitude by biting its throat out as I ran forward.
Two months before getting Patched I had been sprawled in Dad's lap getting a relaxed ear-ruffling as he watched a show on the noisybox about someone named Louis. The building was bright white bricks, the walls defined by indented arched windows and the roof surrounded by regularly-spaced sprays of stone gilded in gold. What I mostly cared about was that there was good traction and thirty-ish balor up here and none of them had weapons. There was also a ten-foot gap separating this roof from the ones on either side.
I went low, taking the legs out from one of the balor and smashing it to the ground. I hit the next, bouncing it off my shoulder to send it sprawling. I pivoted, shifting the stickiness of the ground to help me make the turn. It was awkward and I stumbled, falling on the balor instead of stepping on it, but that was fine. I bit its thigh out as I rolled across it, taking some claw swipes to the neck in passing, but they didn't penetrate the thick floofiness of my ruff. Then I was on my feet again and attacking.
Biting slowed me down too much, so I focused on knocking the balors over, trampling them, and throwing them off the roof. It was eight stories so the fall might or might not kill them but that was okay. My gravity skill ran out after a few more seconds so I activated it again, causing more skillup messages to fly by.
The immensely deep voice of the hazdahem howled in anger from the ground off to my left and another balor charged from my front as I went to meet him and—
"Behind you!"
Marcus? What was he doing here?
I didn't take time to question, I leaped to the side and let gravity help me out of the path of the balor pouncing from behind while his ally distracted me from the front. If it had caught me it would have pulled me into a bear hug and pinned me for its friends to finish.
One of Estelle's arrows skewered the balor's head from ear to ear just as three darts of blue energy stitched through its side. The thing grunted and died.
A column of golden light smashed down on the nearest edge of the building to the east, incinerating a half dozen balors and a malazaheen that had been about to leap across. The hazdahem howled again, closer this time. A distant cry of "<Multishot>!" presaged a rain of arrows that metaphorically darkened the sky and left every demon on the roof to my west with at least one extra hole.
The roof I was on was suddenly empty of demons—no, wait, there was one. I jumped on its chest with all four feet, killing it instantly.
The roof I was on was suddenly empty of demons and I had a chance to look around. My friends were waving from the building opposite me, fifty feet to the north across the main thoroughfare of Gratlan's Boulevard. The buildings to my left and right on this block had more demons on them, but all of them were hunching down behind the battlements, peeking up over the edge to see where the source of the attacks had come from.
There was a crash and the sound of exploding stone from the south wall of my building, the side that faced the square. A moment later there was another crash, and then another. I hurried over to the edge and peered down.
The hazdahem was climbing the building. He was halfway up and as I watched he punched his fist into the wall to make a handhold, kicked a foothold into existence, and hoisted himself up another storey.
Hrmph. How rude.
I'd been holding it since before getting to Biomancy Square and this seemed like a good time. I backed up to the edge of the roof and hunched my butt over so I could poop on his head. Then I ran and leaped to the next roof, cackling madly at his howls of outrage.
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This could have gone any number of ways but I'm loving the surprise dog logic.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
@eaglejarl Chapters 34 and 35 aren't posted here yet?