The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha
Chapter 27 : The Unseelie Nymph and her cohort of needlemen and minotaur love-slaves died first.Actu

Actually, it turned out she had a werewolf lover. The power of the moon easily healed away any damage her presence did to him, leaving him a besotted lycanthrope who wasn't reduced to a glittering idiot by her touch.

It didn't save him from a sword in the back of the skull when he came slinking out of the dead copse and I dropped down on him from thirty feet above. His skull smashed into the ground, Tremble pinned him there, and he began to burn away with vivus.

I noted with professional interest that the vivic flames were drifting in the direction of the dead trees. I smiled slightly as I flitted into the forest with a stealth modifier in the +30 range, not touching the ground.

There were fifteen needlemen remaining, scattered throughout the corpse of the copse. Fifteen minutes later, there were none left, and they hadn't even managed to shoot off any needles and alarm anyone.

My guess that there was a pool was spot on, a rivulet of a stream coming down from the canyon wall, and draining away through a crack in the rocks.

There was nothing living there, although skins of beasts and creatures were scattered here and there to lounge in, and the stink of minotaurs was definitely in the air.

Getting past the first guard was a function of getting his eyes to look in the wrong direction. Since all he wanted to do was look at the nymph and not be on guard, that wasn't hard. I flowed past him in silence, avoiding the second guard dozing off to one side, and circling around the pool.

She was truly lovely, if you liked skin whiter then milk and hair the color of blood. I could feel the impact of her beauty on my Null, which promptly diluted it into a rather horrifying kind of "oh G.o.ds, that is pure d.a.m.n poison" as I looked at her.

I could feel magic here and there, which meant she was a spellcaster, especially if she could keep her silks that clean while in the wild.

She disrobed casually, and the snorts of the minotaurs, so laden with l.u.s.t, brought a knowing look to her eyes. She walked towards the pool of water for her morning bath, and then paused.

White flames were flowing through the dead trees in the distance, silent as flowing mist, but as they ate away the wood that had been leached of life, the crackling of trunks and branches beginning to collapse started to echo down the pa.s.sage, and raised the alarm.

All their attention in that direction, I moved.

Tremble was whisper-quiet as I glided behind her and cut with Blooding up, and severed her spine below her neck. She barely felt it, starting to turn her head as she felt a moment of pain as a long red line cut across her neck… and then she fell down as her body refused to obey her.

The giant constrictor in the pool might have been a surprise if I hadn't found the remains of its meals over here, and recognized them as snake vomit. As it lunged out of the pool with gaping fangs… whisk, its head and neck parted ways.

The nymph wanted to scream, but she had fallen half into the pool with a splash, and made no noise. I circled the pool, going for the hapless minotaurs. Their eyes turned from the strangely quiet conflagration eating the copse-corpse, and the first one's neck was severed half-through.

The one supposed to be guarding hefted his axe, and his arms warped and swelled in size and reach. The ma.s.sive axe came down, but I juked and slid, crouching down, skating over the last ten feet between us before rising to drive Tremble up under his ribs and into his heart with enough force to send him stumbling back, a torrent of blood flowing out from the fatal wound.

He couldn't believe someone my size could punch a sword through all his hide and muscle, but it didn't matter, as his life poured out him as quickly as his friend staggering and gus.h.i.+ng out his gallons of red stuff behind me.

I left them to stumble about and fall. The vivic flames were coming this way, and would soon consume their corrupted bodies just like they were the dead trees.

I hauled the Unseelie up out of the water. She could breathe water, so she was in no danger, but the wound wouldn't heal even if she shape-s.h.i.+fted, so she'd be paralyzed regardless. I pa.s.sed my hand up and down her hair, and half a dozen charms that probably had some really nasty stuff worked into them fell off with the locks they were tied to.

"You, you dare touch me?" she spat out, unable to process what was happening. I turned her head around to look at my face, let her eyes rove over the side of my face, neck, and shoulder. I grinned to show my double canines to her, and she gawked despite herself.

"A Hagchild?! How…where...who is your mother?" she demanded of me imperiously.

I jammed an intestine baggie into her mouth and slammed her jaw shut. It didn't taste too good, but I just held her mouth shut, and the potion did its thing even if she didn't really swallow it.

And she began to shrink.

She wriggled in my grasp as I began to get a lot larger in her eyes, and I kept looking in her magnificently twisted eyes as she went from being almost six feet tall to about ten inches tall in under ten seconds. Naturally I could hold her in one hand now.

"I've been told that I'm guilty of killing a nymph out there," I said in perfect Fey, as my lips spread wide. Cue the double set of canines. "Killed her and her sylph friend, and ate them. Entirely possible, what a Hagborn will do as she's dying. Here, I thought I'd even out the balance, you know. Enjoy yourself."

My Vajra extended inside and out. Yeah, she was big to just swallow, but she went down as easily as an eel, hit my gut which was pumping out a level of acid you don't see this side of a dragon, and managed to scream for almost a full minute down in there before she died.

My Vajra whisked the solids away. I held my breath as the unneeded water ma.s.s of her came surging up my throat in gradual decompression, and puked it all over my Sword and down into the pool, which began to burn white, and feed on the cursed energy here that had kept her defilement hidden.

The meat and bones and stuff, well, my genetics had things to learn from them. We'd see how it went. Fey were creatures of magic, and magic made them tougher and stronger than mere humans.

What magic could do to a body, a Diamond Vajra could emulate, with a whole lot of Soul to help the process.

Tremble smashed those trinkets of hers one by one, drinking in the magic happily, storing it up to refine, purify, and help power it up with. The shadow of a familiar hymn began to caress the air, and I smiled despite myself.

What jewelry and tokens from admirers she had would be over in her s.e.x chamber over there, I'd use Tremble in Firephasing form to melt them down and bollox up any scryers. There were things I could do with them, of course, but no way I was going to take something from a spellcaster, especially a witch, without totally reforging it to f.u.c.k up scryers.

One witch down, probably not a member of the coven. What was even more fun is that the flames from the vivus were unwhite, not bright, and almost invisible in the mist and fog with any distance. They weren't going to know she was dead until something came up here to investigate and found the entire area and all the bodies burned down to pure white ash and dust.

It was time to be killing.

------

I went after the wolves.

They were joined by a couple of barghests, goblin-wolf demons from the Fires of Gehenna. Obviously Summoned in to provide some real intelligence and fun and joy to the proceedings. It was only a square mile of territory, most of it swamp, surely they could find anyone in it quickly enough.

My Null crushed their Summoning and sent them howling back home. All they saw was a blur of black in wolf fur.

The wolves with them were taken care of by more direct methods. They did manage to yelp and snarl a bit, and keen ears not too far away heard them.

By the time they got there, the wolves were already on vivic fire, skulls cracked open and half dusted.

There were no tracks. There was no scent. The wolves' jaws were clean, no blood. There was a splash of whiteness there and there, where the barghests had vanished abruptly. They'd been young ones, getting sent back to the Fires effectively doomed them as prey or slaves to stronger ones of their kind.

Within a day, there were no more wolves moving around the valley.

---

Naturally enough, my antics had all of them on edge. Quite sensible of them, as I planned to kill every d.a.m.n unclean thing living here.

I took out The Tent next.

The ogres could only cover so many angles around the thing, and anyways weren't exactly concerned about the thing. The undead skins would moan at the presence of any intruders, animate to attack and kill them, and so basically The Tent guarded itself.

However, normal intruders couldn't walk up to The Tent, and look the chained and tortured spirits in the eye, raising a Sword burning vivic, and state in Necrus, "Remain silent, look elsewhere, and I will set you free."

Phantasmal eyes stared at me in shackled mult.i.tudes, ready to cry warnings, to writhe and reach for me, and then they all turned around and looked in the opposite direction.

Vivic fire touched unliving skins, and unwhite fire burst into life. Two vials of alchemical fire joined in, and the two flames mixed and flared. In seconds, a thee-meter square of The Tent was on fire, yet not a sound was heard from the spirits as they vanished into the flames.

I walked into the back end of The Tent here, some sort of storage area for alcohol of the cheap and potent kind, and began to steal my way through the interior as red-white flames jumped from skin to skin, and trapped spirits finally began to scream in ecstasy as they were set free.

The ogres certainly weren't expecting their tent to be on fire, or someone to start killing them inside it. Two ogres sleeping received tonics to their spinal cortices via way of the throat, a third almost stepped on me, and I ran up his side and inserted Tremble into his ear. He crashed down as the first deep bellows of alarm rang out.

Ropes burned through, the support poles faltered and fell down, and the unliving tent began to collapse in sections, covering those beneath it in burning undead hides who might or might not have begun to throttle them in flaming flayed skin.

I hamstrung two more ogres, and left them to bake as the tent came down on them, and furs and crude wooden furniture added to the conflagration, as well as taking away any oxygen. I scooted out the side, right behind an ogre hurrying to the back side of the tent to see if anyone was there. I was out into the darkness and sliding into the swamp waters before anyone caught sight of me, and watched from the cover of a bunch of slimy algae as the ogres, including Dear Brother, stood around staring haplessly at the fire.

Well, I'd be d.a.m.n stupid not to take advantage of them being all spread out and staring at the fire stupidly, wouldn't I?

Dripping lots of dark slime, I exited cover and made my way to the most isolated of the remaining six ogres, who were laughing as one of the ones I'd hamstrung managed to crawl out of the burning tent, severely burned all over.

Their attention focused on the seared hide of their unfortunate a.s.sociate, ridiculing him mercilessly, I hopped up and drove Tremble through the backside of one of them at about forty kph, dumping all my momentum into my Sword with Spirited Charge, and took him down instantly.

He stumbled and fell forward, only feeling something punch in from behind and slide coldly through his heart before I kicked off him, flattened down into his shadow and sliding backwards out of sight as he fell down awkwardly.

It took the ogres a few breaths to notice he was down, as fire and entertainment had their attention. Hagbrother mine noticed first, being a wee bit smarter and more alert to his brethren, and shouted out to the fallen one aggressively. The ogres snapped all their heads around, staring at the one who wasn't moving.

I hit the one in back, just as one of the barrels of booze lit off and contributed more noise and blue flames to the sight of flames red and white leaking spirits like smoke. Tremble went into the back of his thick neck, making sure he didn't make any weird noises as I heaved back on his greasy hair. His knees went out, but I s.h.i.+fted his center of gravity back, and he didn't fall forwards, more straight down rather heavily, and I got off my ride smoothly, vectoring around as the ogres turned back to look around, and gawked at the sight of the one sitting there kneeling, his broad gut keeping him in place as blood gushed down from his throat. He was still alive, his bulging eyes moving frantically, but bleeding out like a sacrificed cow.

Four left, plus brother mine.

Number Four got it in the groin, severing the major arteries and driving up into his guts. He made a curious sound as I moved away from the things that began to pour down out of the hole reaching from his a.n.u.s to his b.a.l.l.s under his weight, and I slid past Three, crossing his back under his armor, and severing his spine. His instinctive attempt to turn instead sent him falling over into number Two awkwardly.

There was an instant and reflexive dust-up as Two caught Three and heaved him away, and I came up his back and opened his throat right under the eyes of the last two.

The fountain of blood jetted over three meters into the air as he gurgled, clutching at his throat instinctively as I dropped down behind him.

Hagbrother roared, spiked tetsubos rose, and I slid around the side of Two, ducking under the descending smash of One, and was suddenly right in front of him without actually taking a step.

I carved open his bulging gut from north to south, slicing through the thick hide, layers of fat, and bands of muscles with a whisper-smooth slash just under the edge of his patchwork breastplate. Huge bulges of intestines began to spill out almost instantly, but disemboweling wasn't going to kill this thing anytime soon. However, tripping over his own guts was definitely going to slow him down.

Hagbrother charged at me, but I kicked to the side, spun around One's legs as he tried to decide between grabbing his guts and swatting at me with his log-sized tetsubo. Hagbrother added to his woes by literally chopping off that monstrously thick leg with one swing of his great Halberd. Obviously, he was the ruthless and decisive sort who realized that One was going to die anyways, no need to be nice to him.

However, that delightfully put his Halberd down low with an ogre falling over on it. He had no choice to pull it back, and I was coming over his buddy's backside as he toppled, Tremble humming proudly as I lunged out for his face.

He jerked back, but not far enough, and my blade slid through his thick neck… and did absolutely nothing, as red energy spurted into the air behind the path of my sword, instantly closing the wound, and leaving naught but an angry red scar behind.

Health Qi. Wonderful, first time in this world. My feet met his chest, and he didn't budge, glaring at me with his yellow eyes, and then blinking in surprise as I smiled and revealed the same pairs of canines as he had, although much smaller. Then before he could grab me, I was kicking off him, launching myself back into a full layout somersault, hitting the ground and sliding another five meters backwards over the rough, stony ground like it was ice.

His yellow eyes narrowed. "Hag?" he asked, his voice way deeper than human, bringing that Glooms-Pattern Dire Halberd up.

"Your little half-sister," I replied in Jotun, staying low, Tremble raised to my shoulder with both hands.

He blinked again in shock, understanding what the words meant, but not what they implied. "You have come to kill Mother?" The ridicule in his voice didn't have to be feigned.

"And all my aunties and grannies, too," I replied evenly, keeping his eyes without effort. The unnatural steadiness of my Sword, locked in place with my Ki, started a flower of fear in his eyes. He had a lot of experience with dangerous females shorter than his three-some meters of armored self. "I'm also going to kill you, Hagbrother, so don't worry about being surprised. It's not going to matter long."

He growled, sounded like someone trying to start a car, and the Halberd spun with power and control. "You think it will be so easy?" he asked proudly.

I tilted my soles marginally, and slid to the left without moving my feet. He watched me drifting sideways, and ma.s.sive knuckles creaked on the haft of his poleaxe. Rather than watching me circle, his feet braced and readied to jump forwards.

I was absolutely sure he could reach me with one jump, and timed it perfectly as he pounced, whipping up his ma.s.sive Halberd for a ma.s.sive cross-cut.

Except I was already in mid-air, reaching him just as he brought his Halberd back to its power position. I dove past his raised arm, hit the ground behind him, sliding and turning as I did so.

His Halberd crashed down on nothing. His ma.s.sive left arm was shaken free from the haft and slammed down to the ground next to it, severed from his shoulder in pa.s.sing.

Jets of blood came out of the ma.s.sive wound. He gasped and staggered, lifting his Halberd back up as pure monstrous vitality cut off the bleeding slowly. He turned back to look at me, unable to keep the shock and fear off his face as he looked at my humming Sword.

"Got a name, Hagbrother? I'm going to put your death in a song," I said calmly.

He snarled despite himself. "I am Grotun, the Blue Boss, son of Tusk Annie, and I am not dead yet!" he bellowed, and then he choked, because I was coming in, and he was still hanging onto the Halberd he could not effectively wield.

He brought it over in front of himself, but my feet hit it between the haft-spikes, he didn't have the leverage to overcome my ki, and this time Tremble reached his throat, went in, and he didn't have any Health Qi left to instheal it.

I was half-standing on the Halberd he had a death-grip on, half-clinging to the Sword driven two-thirds into a neck a bull would be proud to own. He stared at me in disbelief and fear, and the knowledge that of all the horrible women who had dominated his life, he had lost to one half his height and maybe a tenth his weight, his own darling little sister.

"Hagsister," he managed to mumble somehow, and then his eyes began to roll as he overbalanced backwards, and I rode his corpse down to thunderous impact on the ground.

The force pushed Tremble back out, and I pulled it free of the ma.s.s of dense muscle and hide like it was melted b.u.t.ter.

Without preamble, I drove the point of my Sword down into that Halberd, Firephasing kicking in to sear and melt the blood-quenched steel, sundering the key Runes of the minor magic on it, and Tremble claiming the raw power by force of its Name from the inferior Weapon.

No, I wasn't going to drag away the heavy thing. I already had enough s.h.i.+t I wanted to take away from here, and I didn't have much time to do it all.

I took away the purse at his belt, emptied out the silver, and raced around to all the other ogres, liberating their gold. Then into the ruins of the tent, grabbing a couple sacks, and throwing in everything I could use and that was portable at speed, Tremble gloating as it led me to all the precious materials unerringly.

---

Less than five minutes after Hagbrother fell, a force of ogres, trolls, and nasty thorn golems came out of the swamp, accompanied by two Hags. They saw the last of The Tent burning away, and many of the contents within on fire, with scattered ogre corpses scattered around, also burning with the unwhite fire that would deny them being animated as undead.

They didn't really notice that many of the ogres were missing their hands, as their limbs were ablaze as their flesh and bone made the transition to useless white dust.

A few more minutes later, the obese greenhag and the pox-ridden sh.e.l.lycoat were joined by the looming ma.s.s of the Troll Hag Mother, looming over them with a nose as long as my forearm and glittering red eyes.

I didn't stay in the area long, just enough to confirm counts and numbers. There were three of them here, which formed a Coven and let them tap into deeper magic.

I'd seen the foul lights and flames through the swamp's mist when they Summoned the barghests, and presumed I'd see more such things soon.

However, there was going to be a small hammer thrown into the gears of their plans. Because I had the Hag Curse still on me, as far as most magical beings were concerned, Null or not, I was still a Hag, and logically that would make me a Hag's servant. Even if they found me, they'd hesitate, wondering if I was a servant that they hadn't met yet. After all, I was so small, I couldn't be the enemy they were hunting, right?

I noted the two Swamp Giants weren't there, smiled to myself, and withdrew. I'd come back for my harvest of hands. There was some tanning to do on them, and leatherworking, but that was fine.

My acc.u.mulation of Gear was beginning, and the Hags were starting it.

I considered the Swamp Giants and grinned to myself.

------

Home sweet home.

I could smell the place from a hundred paces away, as sanitation was definitely not something the Jotuns worried about. Even giving the deathly reek of the mists of this place, the smell of it stood out, and not in a good way. It would have watered my eyes if I let the mists get anywhere close to them.

My Vajra slid me through the mix of tainted waters and acc.u.mulated rot smoothly. Two over-sized eels and an over-sized crayfish had ideas of messing with me, got carved into pieces and became little points of whiteness in the polluted waters.

I came up through the filth into the shadow of the lean-tos that represented high sophistication in the architectural aspirations of Swamp Jotuns, and waited.

Home sweet home. A place of safety. A place where you could relax and drop your guard. Because Jotuns had to sleep.

Jotuns have large eyes, large ears, large noses. As a result, all three senses were far more acute than those of most humans. They could see as far as eagles, smell as well as a bear, hear even the faintest sounds. At the same time, their immense const.i.tutions allowed them to endure sensory stress that most smaller races with acute senses could not tolerate.

Sneaking up on a giant was much harder than most people expected. Primal creatures, giants don't truly doze off when they sleep, maintaining a level of feral awareness like many beasts… unless they are intoxicated or something, not that that happens all that often.

The swamp giants hadn't responded to the alarm, meaning they were on station somewhere else, or they were simply ignoring it… or asleep.

Even the Hags weren't going to put a Jotun out there as bait under normal circ.u.mstances. But in special circ.u.mstances… they'd sacrifice anything.

So, put something out there that was hard to kill, shadowed by something that could respond and kill swiftly.

Yeah, I'd seem the lights at the center of the swamp. Barghests weren't the only things out here.

I was d.a.m.n sensitive to the presence of undead and Fiends, too. Not to the level of a spell, but I could tell when they were in the area.

I could hear the first giant coming this way, wading through the waters with what looked like the remnants of a giant toad over its shoulder, the broad, warty head of the amphibian completely smashed.

There was a shadow in the mist behind it. Well, more accurately, a mist-shadow, the ever-changing darkness shades within fog and mist. The fog was swirling just a little bit unnaturally there, something moving through it, barely disturbing the suspended water, following the Jotun so stealthily that even its enhanced senses hadn't noticed it.

There were half a dozen mist-creatures that could be taking part in this, most of them of elemental origin, but a gaseous vampire was also a possibility, explaining the presence of undead. There was that breath-stealing thing, but it was normally pretty weak. Or… hah, a crimson death?

The power of Sama is coming for you… Tremble, she comes…

---

I didn't make the water ripple any more than it usually did. The water didn't cling to me, it ran off me as if I was frictionless, no splas.h.i.+ng or churning. The water pressure pushed on my feet and propelled me forwards much faster than me kicking or making a fuss. I read the pressure waves around me in my Trembling Domain, and wound myself sinuously towards the location of that creature in the mist.

The sense of undeath is spiritual, and while affected by water, the taint in the swamp here carried it, instead of muting it.

I basically came in below it, looking up into the darkness and the mist, while it slowly roiled above me, barely visible.

Definitely not a vampire, which were amorphous blobs in gaseous form. This was more like a legless humanoid, with misty fingers a good eighteen inches long, which could probably solidify into killing blades with a thought. The base damage of a Crimson Death was like 3-30, horrifyingly strong, and they could drain the 1.5 gallons of blood in a human out in six seconds, leaving behind a desiccated corpse.

But when I came up smoothly out of the water beneath it, cleaving it up and then down, severing the magical and spiritual forces that made up its body with Blooding, inflicting wounds that couldn't be healed by blood, well, it could only die hungry, dissipating into the mists that were meant to conceal its unlife, and now concealed its death.

The up and down motion stirred the Jotun where it was chomping on raw toad meat, and it looked over sharply in my direction. I was already underwater, and the splas.h.i.+ng was less then if a fish had leapt out to grab a fly.

Because I wasn't stupid enough to think that they wouldn't set a spotter to watch the spotter.

Something landed on the water's surface behind me, insectile feet striking the water's surface with magical silence. The quiet didn't extend underwater, and the ripples were small but as plain as a blaring horn to me.

Watcher#2 was present. Wondered if the same pairing was d.o.g.g.i.ng the other giant.

This one was Evilborn, could feel the sin incarnate giving the curse on my face a rush of hope and glee.

The Jotun hadn't noticed it despite line of sight, so it was functionally invisible, not that such a thing meant anything to me. It was also Summoned, so sticking a Null into it would make it go home.

So, that's exactly what I did.

Minuscule s.h.i.+fting in the insectile feet told me its head was moving back and forth through a shallow arc. That arc defined its range of vision, extremely broad. The pressure of its feet on the water, magic aside, wasn't much, so it didn't weigh much.

Fiendish a.s.sa.s.sins with high stealth and insectile feet meant a mantissari. Wow, wasn't the coven pulling out the stops to recruit one of the premier killers of the lower realms to deal with me.

It was invisible, but should have dark red skin, insectile eyes in a darkly handsome face, about five feet tall and among the nimblest and most agile of all demonkind.

He was really surprised when I came up out of his blind spot, the water falling silently off of me. He had excellent reflexes, and even as I was carving into him, he was moving… but too little, too late.

My Null carved through the magic that had brought him here and was keeping him here, even if I didn't quite manage to kill him as I carved into him.

His invisibility did go away, and I saw the glinting facets of his insectile eyes. The dagger in his hand came around to whip at my face with preternatural speed and accuracy… unfortunately, he was already headed back home painfully, in an explosion of demonfire and reeking clouds that totally hid me as I fell back into the waters quietly.

They didn't escape the notice of the giant, of course. He surged to his fat feet, letting the remains of the toad fall to the insect-thick ground of his hovel, his tetsubo coming to hand as he glared at the cloud of dark smoke suspiciously. With remarkable speed for his size, he waded out into the water, hardly slowed by the waist-high depth as he bulled his way over into the cloud.

He inhaled the smoke deeply, and a look of veneration came over his fishy eyes and head. So, he recognized the smell of the Glooms. He looked around, wondering what a daemon of Death was doing here.

Being in the water got him a lot closer to the edge of my blade.

I came out of the water fast enough to completely clear it, which got me into easy range of his neck.

Hack. I grabbed onto his shoulder with my free hand, drove my toenails into the blubber on his back, and had a grip on him.

Health Qi had spurted out heavily at the neck hack, I pulled out my Sword even faster than his flesh instregened, and hacked down once, twice, thrice, relentless as a hammer smas.h.i.+ng iron, or an axe splitting wood.

He only muttered some kind of curse before my sword was through his wind pipe, and the third strike lopped off his head entirely.

The geyser of blood jetted easily another twenty feet into the air, as thick as a good hose. I kicked off the corpse, and it slowly settled, as if only realizing belatedly how dead it was.

And then the butchery commenced. I needed hide, sinews, ligaments and tendons, and the amount of blood that soon drenched the surroundings as I ripped the swamp giant apart was truly impressive.

----

The other giant died about an hour before dawn. He didn't notice his companion, carved up and under eight feet of water, and the copious amounts of blood was covered by popping the toad skin with some energetic elements and filling the air with a clingy, rather poisonous reek.

The free snack cemented his attention, and I killed his mishruu vapor-killer stalker before he even reached his hut. The water weird that caught this act was nice enough to follow me nearly a hundred yards away, thinking it was being clever, before I turned on it and killed it beyond the range the giant would care about it.

Needless to say, the giant engaged in his meal didn't respond well to taking a Spirited Charge to the face, and the throat-ripping that followed. I disa.s.sembled him just like I had his buddy, and went away with my prizes.

Did they have any valuables? Yeah, some scattered coins, golden jewelry of inhuman make and style, and some crushed armor and broken weapons scattered here and there.

Everything that I took was melted down to slag within an hour, courtesy of Firephasing. In a small burrow in a dead tree over in the creva.s.se where the Unseelie Nymph had become lunch, I heard the screeches when the dead Jotuns burning vivic were discovered. Roving scrying magic went looking around for me, and murders of blood ravens swirled here and there. The ominous glow and distortions of Summoning magic arose again as the Hags brought in more stuff to deal with me, and I just laughed under my breath as I went about my Vajraccelerated tanning, cutting, and st.i.tchwork.

My biggest problem was the fact that I was young, skinny, and basically weak compared to most of the stuff that I fought. A Girdle and Gauntlets combination would do some serious work towards addressing that issue. Of course, it was going to take a b.l.o.o.d.y month to get the things empowered, but that was fine. The Hags were giving me all the raw materials and fuel I needed.

And gold and steel could also make Bracers, and there wasn't near as long a wait for that, especially if it was Spirit-bound and Named. Getting started on some force armor and my s.h.i.+eld sounded like a great thing to me.

Gear and Karma, the foundations of power for the wee Forsaken. I bent to my task as Hags wove spells and promised dark things darker things in return for hunting me down, and magic scoured the area for that which magic couldn't find.