The Power of Ten

Okay, Prestidigitation wove me up a suit of magecraft simple clothes, which would last until Renewal, basically a plain set of undergarments, t-shirt, and thigh-length shorts, taking four separate castings. It at least made them black...

I looked around, and saw a pile of stuff over to the side, walked over carefully on the cement floor.

A pair of flats that looked exactly my shoe size, and a stylish woman’s purse.

I put the slipper-like shoes on, and yes, they did indeed fit perfectly. I picked up the purse, and slung it across my chest, as I couldn’t have it dragging at my side right now.

Okay, here I was, the 1/1 glass cannon, ready to take on the world... ability damage and everything.

I padded over towards the door as quietly as I could while tottering and trying not to feel as if my guts were going to rip open, and heard somebody hustling this way.

I flicked up an Elemental Dart, once again noticing how different and much more smoothly the magic felt now. I picked lightning damage randomly, as a guy burst into the room, looking at the table, and seemed surprised to find there was nobody on it.

He also had black eyes with purple irises.

I drove the crackling, vivic-encircled, human blood-red BanefiredDart into the side of his head without hesitation.

He went tumbling over to the side, twitching and convulsing, his skin ripping open and vivic energy gnawing at the edges of his Sinbound Pact. He clawed for the gun at his side, managing to half-draw it as he tried to scream... and the second Dart followed the first one into his cranium, and down he went.

He seemed to be in a hurry...

“<Pedro! Hurry up, the undead are out and coming!>” someone called nervously from down the hall. I had no idea what he was saying...

Pistol. Sneakers. Jeans with tight seams. A leather jacket and belt. T-shirt underneath.

I waved at him once, twice, thrice, four times, and his clothes leapt off him and off to the side. It was okay, because he was already starting to disintegrate.

Purple-black flames burned through his skin from the Runes of the Pact within him. I could see his spirit held inside them as the lines started to congeal into claws. He was looking at me in hate and rising panic, and started to writhe and silently scream, struggling against the spectral claws that were dragging him Down, Down, Down...

His body was burning away to a smear of ash and slime, along with the remainder of his other clothes. I watched him writhe and struggle as his Pact dragged him away through the floor, and he was gone.

“<Pedro, you asshole! What are you doing?>” the guy at the end of the hallway outside called out.

I spent full power, summoned a full flight of four Shards, and swung out into the dark hall.

The Hell. My Shards look like this?...

These sort of looked like obsidian teardrops, surrounded by silvery light and a faint nimbus of the proper hues. Shards

were supposed to display in a predictable ROYGBIV color scheme...

Whatever...

The hallway was totally dark, but the guy down there had Devilsight from his Pact, and I had Darkvision. He met my eyes, his jaw dropped in shock, and I let the Shards go.

Pure force damage, four streaks of silver slamming into him for 7d6+18 damage or so. He didn’t have a chance before the Shards tore into him and ruptured everything inside his chest cavity.

I turned around and looked the other way, at the end of the hall, and was pretty sure I saw something moving down there.

Wonderful... When it raineth, it fuckingith pours...

I tottered my way down the hallway, the dead guy’s clothes adjusting to fit me as I moved, including the sneakers. His wallet I dumped into the purse, and I’d scooped up the rings, bracelet, and golden necklace and earring he’d been wearing automatically when they were left behind after he was dead.

I followed suit with this dead guy, his wallet and precious metals. He had a silver belt buckle, of all things, and didn’t seem too happy to see me looting him as his spirit screamed and writhed and was taken Down.

I looked back, and there were definitely lurching forms in the hallway down there. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my Renewal was looming in front of me...

Wonderful, wonderful. The shadows meant more than half a dozen, and I could not risk being caught in a room, given the shape I was in. If there were a bunch of them...

I gingerly made my way down the hallway at the bend he was standing in, hearing a... motor? It had been another person’s years since I’d heard such a thing...

There was an open door there, looked like a real old design of a fire door; wow, so classical here, and I moved towards it, pulling up four more Shards with a grim expression on my face.

I stepped out into the doorway, and took in everything at a glance.

The sky made me falter, but I couldn’t dwell on it right now.

Parking lot, old, weathered, very cracked... but not a single weed growing through it. Low buildings of cement or wood in all directions, looked very much like an old city area or suburbs, but decaying, rotting, extremely weathered, windows shattered, faded signs.

But no overgrowth or plants in odd places.

Directly in front of me was a beaten panel van, with side seats, and another purple-black eyed bastard standing in it, complete with leather jacket and polo shirt. His jaw dropped to see me, and the driver behind him, looking in the mirror there, squealed and instantly slammed the gas pedal down.

The guy in the passenger seat was handling something wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Smart guy in the back was lunging to close the door as two Shards took him in the chest for 5d6+12, and the driver received the other two in the back of his head, spraying his face and brains all over the windshield.

The van drove straight across the cracked asphalt, hit the chain-link fence on the far side, and broke off two of the poles as it rode up it and sideways, the hit getting the man’s foot off the gas.

The lights of the van looked queerly bright, and I glanced up at the unnatural haze above, swearing to myself as I flicked up more burning Shards around my arm and made for the van.

I hated being a One. No firepower, no toughness... but, you know, four jetsilver Shards

burning white and crimson as they spun around my arm can look plenty ominous on their own, especially after just two of them wasted the other two Warlocks.

I saw the swirl of shadowy magic, made an educated guess, and turned my eyes to the rooftop of a building next door, possibly an old warehouse or storefront.

He was standing atop it, having Ridden the Shadow up there, quite beyond my ability to follow. I could see his grin from over here, and the baby he was holding in his arms. He drew his pistol confidently, and it swirled with the purple-black flames of his Scorn.

A Warlock’s Gun.

I paused behind an old electric light post, losing one of my Shards as I glared at him. He seemed pretty cocksure that I wouldn’t fire as he brought his gun up, but I did indeed let go.

Pure instinct made him move the baby in front of the incoming Shards, but if he thought I could call them off, he was wrong, and the baby was in no danger. The three auto-targeting Shards diverted around the child and punched into the asshole for a comfortable 6d6+15. His pistol discharged wildly sideways as he convulsed at the new holes in his gut, leg, and shoulder, and I could clearly see the shock on his face.

He was at least a Five if he could Ride the Shadow that far. One more shot had a pretty good chance of killing him, and his chances of hitting me behind cover at this range were not good... and his chance of a kill shot was even lower.

He realized it too, stumbling, and then ducking and rolling down out of my line of sight. A couple seconds later, shadows converged, evaporated, and he was gone.

I really, really wanted to stand there and glare after him, knowing there was no way I could catch a Warlock who could move fifty yards in any direction basically constantly. Instead, I turned around, certain I wasn’t going to like what was coming out of the door behind me.

The light seemed to falter and ebb, the rays lifting away from me, shadows growing, lengthening... and I gamed the system and juiced my Arcane Bond, renewing one of my Spell Slots.

I had a Dusk Renewal, Aethra’s Own, rising as the Light faded and the Shadow stirred. Things of the night could now move freely about, even if the sun was painting the sky oddly hazy hues in the distance...

The Renewal surged through me, and the Valences I’d expended relaxed in their tension, ready to receive more mana... but I still wouldn’t be able to Cast from them for eight hours from the moment of expending a spell. It was a wonderfully refreshing feeling, and most pointedly, actualized my magic to relieve me of exactly one point of ability damage per Stat.

Which left me feeling mildly horrible and nauseated, instead of totally horrible.

More importantly, I could take another Level!

Ding!

The fuck? Did my Karma just auto-invest?!

The first zombie was stumbling through the door thirty feet away. Without another thought, I spun up a Disrupting Dart, and drove it into the thing. Banefire and vivus combined for a nice 4d6 impact, and the zombie promptly fell down, dead flesh on fire... and revealing the rest of the undead behind it.

I had two Valences left. I had to work this chokepoint if at all possible, as long as possible. I could insta-pop four at a time, twice, but then I’d be dry of everything but Cantrips.

I grit my teeth, steadied myself, and concentrated on trying to obstruct that door with more falling corpses who didn’t have the greatest agility.

Their clothes were extremely ragged and weathered, but give me a sense of age from decades ago in their cut and material. The corpses themselves were pretty weathered and dry, with an emaciated look to them that reminded me of the soul-sucked, and yawning black eyes full of negative energy.

They caught on fire and burned unwhite nicely, which started a proper burning barricade for me.

Seeing me there, the zombies started to press past, obviously very hungry and trying to reach me. The second was probably a woman once, judging by the remnants of her skirt, and I dropped her like I had the stumbling man in front of her. The bodies began to stack up, and burn thicker as the zombies tried to get around and past them; I moved over to get a better view straight into the hallway beyond.

They wouldn’t run into the vivus any more than they’d charge into a burning house, but me right in front of them meant they didn’t want to move away, either, and they didn’t really have any kind of strategic brains...

I glanced over to the side, and winced. There was another door there next to what looked like a loading dock, and it was open. They could always mosey over that way if they knew it was there... and something intelligent certainly would, if it didn’t just go find some exit out of my line of sight and try to sneak up on me.

With that in mind, the safest place was actually moving forward, into the vivus!