Chapter 1-5: Double Trouble (1/2)

I recast the Assay, and it updated as power flowed through me. My Death Curse tingled as it felt the closer link, and I could feel a power connecting me to the death in the sky... linked to me through my Ring.

Ringbound Jinx Witch. I went over the array of abilities: unlimited use of a scaling Hex effect, pre-chosen as Evil Eye; the spells Weaken Gunpowder and Ill Omen; and the spells of a Ringbound Witch, which was basically a Domain effect. Its Valence I spell was Force Armor.

AND my Ring was my Item Familiar, and would serve as a Spellbook... and due to Arcane Bond, hooked to both Sorcerer and Wizard Spells!

Like playing cards being shuffled, all the active Wizard spells in my head flowed down my Arcane Bond into the Ring, and encoded themselves into the matrix of Einz, glowing and ready to be scribed and Slotted into my memory.

Whose Valences were currently suffering mana burn and couldn’t be Cast from for eight hours...

Regardless, I still Slotted Run and Vanish, and another Faith Healing, while also adding FaithHealing to Einz via the Write Cantrip. It would allow me to bring one out as an emergency. I still had one Faith Healing in reserve...

But I had Shardcaster/1 active. I could take Masteries sooner than I would normally be allowed to... I guess the same effect that was juicing me to Six Ranks, despite being a fragile little One.

I flicked up my Dart, and there was a stereo hum as the missiles flicked up... two of them, both with white and black fires swirling around them.

I dismissed the Darts, and brought up my Shards spell.

It defaulted to three now, not two. As I concentrated, a fourth and fifth built up and swirled into existence, jetsilver razor teardrops girt with white and black flames, and faint nimbuses of the proper hues.

Wrathflames, the combo had been called when wiping the Marches from the world. Black banefire, the color of undead ichor; unwhite, the color of necrus-eating vivus.

8d6+25 base Death to the Undead!

I had to be secure to get a place to Meditate and refill my Valences... and I wouldn’t be able to Cast from them, anyways.

But with the Renewal, I had the ability to bring a spell out of my spellbook... and the ability to renew a Spell Slot again, which I didn’t do because I might need it, and spending it now, when I could potentially Meditate to open the Slot in a few hours, was not the smart play.

I looked at my Sorcerer spells, and copied them into Einz via Writing, too.

This meant I now had three potential Shards to use... or I could grab any spell in the book that I needed.

Threat Level at least partially reduced...

And I had this Evil Eye thing to soften up an enemy if I had to, even if the range was ridiculously short for how I liked to do things. Curse magic... I was sensing a theme I didn’t want to get into. Yes, Curses could be horrible to inflict on people, but by their nature they were slow, slow, slow... and battles weren’t something I liked to drag out. I could do attrition play, but it was an option, not a necessity. Cursecasting was something you did outside of combat, if at all possible.

Nonetheless, it was now night-time, not that it was making much difference to my eyes. I looked across the parking lot at the van there, still running, lights still out... and bound to attract something.

I pulled up two Darts; they revolved slowly around my clenched fist.

Darts were definitely Cantrips. A Disrupting Dart was a poor-man’s Shard, doing d6 of damage to undead only. Normal Elemental Darts did a d4 of the chosen Element. Range was short, so 25 feet, +5 feet/2 Caster Levels. Right now, that was 4th, so 35 feet.

It wasn’t auto-target, it was a Ranged Touch Attack, bypassing natural and artificial armor to administer energy damage. That was important, because it meant it had to be aimed, and it could crit if it hit a weak spot.

It could also miss. Damage type, range, no auto-lock, no scaling... all inferior to the real Shards spell.

The extra +3d6 damage of Vivic and Bane were considered Boosts to a spell, and would only apply once per Casting per target on a normal spell. So even if I hit a zombie with two Darts, the damage from the two Metas would not stack up.

The Favored Enemy boosts from my Foe Hunter and Undead Killer attributes were independent buffs. That meant the damage boosts would normally only apply once per spell, just like Boosts... unless the Shards were fully Weaponized. Then they were per hit!

Each successive attack against the same target if Weaponized was a -2 to hit, cumulative, just like chain-firing arrows, but the stacking damage was quite impressive... as was the threat range going from a base 5% to 10%...

Zombies weren’t that hard to hit, with a base AC of 12. With the +4 Favored Enemy bonus, on top of my +6 from Intellect, my miss chance would be literally 5%, while keeping it as a touch attack... would have the exact same miss on a Nat 1, always a 5% chance without the right Feats.

The Darts crystallized as I walked a bit more quickly, not aching so much down below, towards the van.

I looked down the side alley the van was facing, and grimaced.

Two zombies were already shambling this way... no, there was a third, drawn by the headlights.

I tried the door with one hand, swore at it being locked, glanced at the back, and moved as quickly as could to the swinging door still open there.

The Warlock and his brains were now burnt oily smears, but his watch, earrings, and rings were gleaming there, ready to be scavenged by an opportunistic One who had no assets to her name.