Chapter 6-166: Genius Loci (1/2)

When his Brothers began to crackle with the purple and opalescent of Shapechanger Bane, they really took notice. They couldn’t see the Defiant/Shapechangers shimmering on his Armor, either, courtesy of those Artificing Levels he’d been so reluctant to take.

He jumped down to the ground, finding himself centered and focused like he had never been in his life. It was like all his lack of focus, his doubts, his fears, his desires, and his dreams all fell away.

There was only the now, and killing what was in front of him. If he didn’t give them his all, he was going to die.

He pushed over a mental Lever he’d been saving, as Senpai had told him to, just in case. He’d put in the Karma long ago... or rather, she had beat the Karma into him, as had all his opponents in the arenas.

“Melee Five,” he said to nobody in particular. “Purchase Feat, Sword Beats Fist. Purchase Mastery, Favored Enemy/2, Shapechangers.” Undead being the first, of course...

The light Armor under his clothes was basically weightless, but all he could afford to wear given his training so far... except for the new greaves he’d added from his go-bag, as his new Armor Mastery for Melee/5 turned medium Armor into light. His Crystal Ki hummed through them, giving him more protection than he’d ever had in a fight before, without slowing him in the slightest.

“Melee Combat Feat, Combat Vigor.” He didn’t know how long this fight was going to last, but he did know he was going to get hurt, and some Soak restoral was anything but unwelcome. It wouldn’t last long, merely two minutes or so. “Melee Training Feat, Archer Stands Thrust. Inspire, Improved Flanking, Steadfast, Hedged Stance.”

He could feel his whole mindset seem to ripple and sharpen, looking for opportunities to hit the bounding, loping, leering, blood-stained, and gore-wearing creatures that were coming his way, even as he and his fellow students, with Weapons trailing cold, fire, and lightning, were also coming for them.

His Brothers were with him, thrumming in readiness in his hands. The steps he could take, moves he could make, the flanking and teamwork attacks that they had worked on for hours and hours trying to take down Senpai, rose in front of him like lines of life and death.

These things do not move at all like Senpai...

The fight he had waited his whole life for was in front of him, and Edward Freundel went to meet his destiny.

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Sama hit the line of weres ravaging the trapped cars and panicked families who’d gone west with blood and Banefire. She couldn’t save the first dozen cars, and the skidding as families braked and tried to turn around caused more accidents, forcing cars off the roads and setting them up for the ravening werewolves to enjoy themselves.

They were out in the middle of the day, the dark cloud of the genius loci’s influence staining the Haze, following it, giving clear indication of where it was as violent green and yellow lightning slammed this way and that, no doubt targeting anything man-made and artificial on its approach to the small town.

Sama’s abrupt and merciless removal of the anthropes by separation of important primary body parts stopped the slaughter here, but didn’t clear the road. Strong as she was, she wasn’t going to be moving the multi-ton crisscrossed trees with any speed, and could only call out, “Road blocked, go the other way!”, waving the cars away quickly, pointing urgently behind them. Given the gore-strewn wreckage behind her, and panicked cars trying to outrun the lightning storm closing in on the town, the cars turned around and fled with all speed, some of them in shock as she zipped by in the other direction doing over fifty mph, her eyes to the south and the death coming there.

The ground was collapsing around the thing in broad swathes, rumbling through to her feet, as abandoned mine tunnels and excavations collapsed as its passing, forming crater after crater as they did so. Anything artificial, like homes or roads or vehicles or signs, was torn down by tentacles part tree-root and part earth coming out of the ground and ripping them apart like taffy.

Wakefield wasn’t going to survive this. Their only relief was that the creature was destroying everything man-made that it could sense, and so wasn’t hurrying to the town to try and catch the people who were abandoning it as fast as they could.

Other weres had snuck into town, ambushing the people attempting to flee, or those either too dumb or too brave not to do so. Guns were firing, with silver loads to them, so the price the werewolves were demanding of the people was requiring some collateral from them in return.

Tremble Singing, drawing their eyes with her glowing golden-edged Blade, sweeping golden hair, and Masked face, Sama got their attention, diverting them from easier prey... which was nice, because they died before considering that maybe killing a few innocents before they passed on would be worthwhile.

“Fey Cataclysm coming! Get out of here!” she called out, her Voice almost lost between the almost constant thunderclaps of falling lightning. Even the most thick-headed numbskull with a shotgun in his hands and a dead werewolf in front of him after eating two barrels of silvershot to the head got the idea he was out of his league when looking up at that massive column of lightning coming their way, and peeled out of there with his woman and his dog as fast as he could.

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The storm hit the town in descending thunderbolts and ripping earth. Houses exploded, propane tanks blew sky high, and the earth crumbled and creaked as all the pipes and cement and concrete and brick and cables and posts and pillars that sapients put down were rent and crushed and buried under a tide of incoming earth and wood.

It couldn’t sense her through the ground, as she was moving above it, so it didn’t target her with the lightning coming down: minor bolts every six seconds, major ones once a minute. It had hit on the propane tanks as being delightful sources of cleansing fire, and the smaller bolts were targeting them incessantly, resulting in continuous rising fireballs as it tore into the town.

Great writhing tentacles reached out with the power of wood and stone, and ripped houses right off their foundations, pounding in the brick, tearing them apart in a frenzy of blows emanating hatred and fury. Barns and sheds fairly exploded, pieces flying everywhere, as the moving circle of tentacles ripped and tore and destroyed everything of humanity in range. What the tentacles didn’t pull or slice or tear, the ground opened up and swallowed, sending the remnants of civilization deep into the ground where they would be buried forever.

That included any humans who weren’t smart enough to run, and while the werewolves were bloodthirsty, they weren’t here to confront this animated place spirit and its fury. They fled as rapidly as everyone else from its enraged reach, as it likely wouldn’t consider them any purer than the works of humanity upon its sacred soil.

A Genius Loci, a spirit of a place. She didn’t know how big the area was that had condensed it, but obviously this town was part of it. It was basically drawing all of its power and essence here, Animating the natural material of the land with its spirit and power to punish and destroy these desecrations to its ‘body’.

But whatever it Animated was, in effect, its body. This effectively made the Fey spirit a working Ooze, just a collection of material powered by life, very similar to an Elemental in many ways.