The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha
Chapter 33 : The sh.e.l.lycoat lived in a house of plastered reeds and mud, with an underwater entra

The sh.e.l.lycoat lived in a house of plastered reeds and mud, with an underwater entrance, something like a beaver dam. The trolls had a lair in the mud under a rock outcropping close by, while her ogres had set up in the roots of a fallen forest giant reduced to stump and roots.

And of course, there were Summons in the area. Water Elementals… and Fey. Interesting.

She'd brought in a rusalka, who was probably quite uncomfortable in such an unnatural swamp, but perfectly complemented it with her ability to wield the waters and her hair-fronds. In addition, a team of quicklings had been brought in as scouts to find me, and were fronting for two svartalfar, in from Nightmare and now in possession of a contract.

They didn't know who they were killing, only my appearance at best. Appearances changed, and names were powerful.

I hadn't given any of them mine. Maybe they listened to Fey gossip, maybe not.

The quicklings were naturally invisible, but that affected neither Tremble nor me. Tremble was always scanning for the living nearby, and could rapidly narrow down the nature of the threat. quicklings were also incessantly in motion, finding it very, very hard to remain in one place more then a few seconds, and even if they were faster then I was… it actually wasn't by much.

And so, I picked them off. Despite themselves, they tended to cling to trails and open pathways, since they weren't immune to physics, and running into or tripping over something could be harmful.

So could a taut wire stretched out at the level of their neck.

I killed three of the six with the same trick in the same location. They literally guillotined themselves on an anch.o.r.ed wire coated black and basically invisible in the shadows. It was no threat to slow-moving or large creatures, but they cut their own heads off running into it at something like eighty mph. The run through the rocks was innocuous and not a place where you could be ambushed, so they thought they were safe running through it.

Oops on them.

One was running across the water at top speed, and I simply reached up and tripped him at an inopportune time. He yelped and went falling head over heels in a big splash, and before he could get out of the water, the giant snapper turtle he crashed into reached over with a wide fey-chomping mouth and bit the short little b.a.s.t.a.r.d in two.

The fifth I saw coming, tracked him with Tremble's ability to sense evil, and step-flipped my buried Sword up at the proper moment. The quickling actually saw my foot come down, looked up and saw me, and then cut himself in two across Tremble's blade.

The last one came zipping in at the screech of alarm, shrieking in his own temporally-accelerated way. Him I actually sprang my Null on, and he gawked as his temporal acceleration curse was actually shut down in my Null's Interdiction.

So was his speed. His squeal wasn't quite as high-pitched as I caught up to him in ten steps, and chopped him immediately in two.

I faded into the stones nearby, waiting, and the svartalfar weren't long in investigating.

Of course, two quicklings burning down to vivus didn't leave them much to go on… and I walked an inch above the ground, I didn't leave tracks, nor, with my Vajra, did I leave a scent trail.

The jet-black figures, noted a.s.sa.s.sins renowned for their skill and magic, stewed over the site of the deaths for a few minutes, barely speaking, more gestures then anything else, and then departed as quietly as they'd come.

A minute later, one slid into the shadows directly in front of me, not making a sound as he did so. It was a nice spot, the shadows natural and aligned so that they didn't seem like shadows at all.

His stoic appreciation for the spot ended when Tremble was quick-drawn and politely lopped off his head with a One Strike + SA. I think he managed to blink in surprise before he died.

I let him fall and start burning. I did notice the metal of his sword and was very happy. Adamant was not easy to come by, and they'd just given me most of a sword's worth of the stuff. The alloy of it wasn't quite pure enough, but I could work with it, and Tremble was naturally delighted.

That naturally meant I couldn't let the other one get away, I wanted that metal. And even with an extraplanar touch to it, it was going to be supremely useful.

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Scarletta Scabs heard the rusalka Teriyoniv's enrapturing song end rather abruptly not far away, and froze for a moment.

It was daytime, not night, when most of the killings had been done. Was the being stalking them so daring as to attack them in the daylight now?

The reeds of her hut unwove, and she strode through the opening instantly, letting them reweave behind her. Her water spider familiar, its body the size of a dog, scampered over the waters with her as they hurried to the shallow pool not far away, where the powerful Fey had chosen to stay.

Scarletta straightened from her habitual slump as she stepped onto the waters there, and stared at the scene in front of her.

Teriyoniv must have died incredibly fast. Her body had been cleanly crosscut into four pieces, carving right through all her ribs in the path of the wounds. They were blows a giant might be proud of delivering, and obviously delivered so fast she hadn't been able to avoid it.

Her meters-long tresses were all on fire, swathes of unwhite flames spreading across the inky-black waters of the pool. Her flesh was largely burned off of her ten-foot body, the fires turning the waters around them clear and pure where they flared, a truly disconcerting sight.

She let out an ear-splitting whistle that could carry for a couple hundred paces easily, and especially her troll and ogre subordinates, whose lairs were in the opposite direction of the rusalka's lair so they wouldn't succ.u.mb to stupidly gazing at her as she sang.

An answering set of bellows should have rung back within seconds. In the swirling mists, there was only silence.

She reached out for the elementals bound to guard her place, and shuddered, for there was only yawning emptiness where she should have sensed their bound presences.

How close had this killer come? And how quietly? She was in danger here, she had to move! Her hut, even enspelled as it was, could not possibly be safe. It was probably time to quit this area entirely, only by moving away could she maximize her chances of fleeing from this-urk!

There was no spray of water, no splas.h.i.+ng. The sword coming up between her feet, driving up between her legs, and thrusting itself deep into her heart as it tore through her insides. It was perfectly dry as it came up, as was the hand that held it. It punched through four different protective spells that should have deflected it, bounced it away, defied its strength… and, of course, it was three feet to the left of where she was visibly standing atop the water.

Contingency spells to heal and spirit her away from there went off. The healing magic swirled down onto the lethal wound inside her… and was beaten back by the power of the curse burning through the wound with the banefire that was ravaging her insides.

Her spider familiar Nibbler leapt forwards to defend her, lunging at the hand holding the blade.

The sword hummed as it twisted, and turned to flame. It burned through her pelvis as it came down in a flaming arc, tearing out her backside as it turned her inhumanly hard and strong flesh to ash, and only gained momentum as it came down and chopped Nibbler right in two, burning right through her. Her familiar's scream of pain ravaged through her and totally destroyed any semblance of mental discipline she had as it took a small piece of her soul with it.

The flames seemed to explode, devouring the dark energies waiting to spirit her soul off to safety, where she could claim another body eventually. Her legs wobbled, and she fell atop the water, her Water-Walking spell still unaffected at this time, and her crooked Staff left her hand, falling into the water.

No attempt was made to grab it, which would have ended poorly for the a.s.sa.s.sin. No, it was simply left to fall, as if it had no value at all.

Steam hissed from the water, the fire vanished. She couldn't even see the wielder in the blackness below her, only the hand that came out… a hand, with black nails.

Annis-blood…

She watched the sword coming up for her eyes, and then Scarletta Scab, the greatest purveyor of venereal disease in all of these lands, who had consigned countless lovers and their paramours to slow death and sterility, and destroyed countless families and marriages with the pox she spread with glee, went away forever.