Chapter 10-304: An Introduction to Killing (1/2)
We shimmered into place at the end of my Lived-Line in northern India. I dumped my Eldritch Tapestry Buffs on all of us, which among other things made Azaia pretty much invulnerable to ranged Qi attacks.
She was the one behind Legion on Sleipner now, while I was atop the Old Steed, whose flaming skeletal horn and fanged maw not-a-horse appearance definitely made Azaia’s eyebrows climb when he erupted out of the ground underneath me and lifted me proudly into the air.
She was also holding onto a fully infused blued-crysteel Staff with a Wand Chamber, into which was inserted a plain old Wand of Shards, topped with a humanish Baneskull burning red-gold. Not too impressive, until you also saw the bracer on her left arm, which had previously been gracing mine.
Sure, she didn’t have unlimited firepower, and it wasn’t very strong, with her being at a Two right now. But when Legion could toss over +11d6 to help out, that would more than do the job on single targets, and that was all I wanted out of her now.
She also had twenty of the Wands stuffed into a Quiver on her back, like so many arrows loaded with death. Since the Infusions were on the Wand Chamber in her Staff instead of the Wand, she could consume them with impunity, and they were cheap. I charged them up almost as easily as Master Fred did Cure Wands.
I set up our own Chat Box, as it were, Cast a Dawnstopped Widened Commune with Nature, and ignored her stunned expression as the sleeping awareness of the Land let me know what was going on for ninety miles around.
Lots of Qi sources, several small Shroudzones.
“Clean off the small sites, I’ll handle the Shrines still pumping Qi,” I said calmly. “I can Teleport to reach you at any time in this range, but with Legion there, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem as long as you stick to the outskirts. There are no major holdings of Cultivators, and don’t approach them. Learn to fight, get your Levels back, and build yourself up again.”
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Azaia could only look at the hundreds of locations on the mental map, names and places filled in after the fact by some of the Marked and Blessed, or old maps.
Straight from the Land, they felt like rot on the skin, leprosy, a spreading infection that itched and scratched and the Land couldn’t wake up enough to do anything about.
Azaia had ridden through the empty villages and towns in China, now being covered unnaturally fast with greenery, total and eerie silence where once millions of people had lived and been sacrificed to form a new Shroudzone that, instead of demoralizing and stopping the Chinese, was now empowering them to fight back.
But seeing the after-effects of that slaughter, feeling that Qi on the landscape like it was a part of her, and sensing the massacres here and there that had blossomed into Shroudzones, that was something very different.
She liked being a Healer, and this was like the most invasive, corruptive disease she had ever felt.
Legion looked back at her. “We’re going to the Shroudzone nearby,” their manifold voices said together, each one somehow conveying distinct emotions despite the overlap. Eagerness, resignation, anger, resolve, determination, sadness, antipathy... they were all there in the overlapping words. “It is a more controlled situation, and we can use it to learn how to work together. Each of us gets some surface time to Level and work on our techniques, too.” They both turned to wave at Traveler as the Old Steed headed off, clawed hooves not quite touching the ground and searing it as they headed off towards a Shrine pumping out Qi about five miles away.
“We aren’t necessary here,” they said to Azaia, quite calm about it. “It should be obvious to you that Traveler is totally capable of killing everything here without us.”
Azaia could only nod. Cultivators couldn’t hide from Traveler because of the Commune, and Azaia couldn’t picture them putting up much of a fight. Legion went on, “She is not in a hurry here, but she is going to be thorough. She’ll shut down or reverse all the Qi-making Shrines, and cut down all the Cultivators in her way, but she wants us or others to wipe the small clusters, because it makes us stronger. The big ones she’ll slaughter en masse.”
Sleipner rolled into motion and headed for the Shroudzone, a compact, dense area probably formed by herded locals brought there and cut down. Dying close together, they would presumably be a greater threat when it came time to fight them, while at the same time being more easily avoided than if they’d been killed over a larger area and would be scattered when reborn. Their Dead Zone would only be twenty miles in radius maximum, too.
“How many of you are there?” Azaia asked, having gotten a quick word from Traveler on Master Fred’s situation. She didn’t know whether to be scandalized or impressed by the situation.
“Fourteen. We all need some practice time,” was the many-layered reply.
Azaia could only agree with that, and then consider the fact she was going to get fourteen times more practice than any of them, so she should catch up pretty quickly...
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“Hah, haaaa...” Azaia breathed, lowering her new Staff, which she had decided to name Nimbus, on account of the way it glowed when channeling magic through it.
It had taken only one shot each to kill the Buddhist Cultivators, with Legion’s help. The swirling arrowheads of her Shards had been festooned with Wrath, pulled in through the Bracer. They had been coming at her with their own staves upraised, smiling serenely and chanting as they did, and run right into her Shards and a downright wall of burning lead from Legion... or Mei, who was their best shooter, and whose face was out right now.
“Are you alright?” the former Amazon asked, looking at Azaia’s face.
“Yes. No.” She winced and forced herself to look at the burning bodies. “I-I have a Talent, Empathic. It’s... I can feel their souls when they die, and the vivus takes them.” She shuddered slightly. “They are so relieved...”
Mei’s dark eyes flickered as she looked at the dead. “Oh. So, deep down, they know what was done to them, even if it doesn’t show on the surface.”
“Yes. And if they die without the vivus, they stay enslaved...”
They had run into this small batch of Cultivators hiding in a small village... one perhaps unsurprisingly emptied of human life otherwise. The lama leading them had managed to bat away Mei’s first two shots, and then Azaia’s Shards had driven into his chest, detonated rather badly, and her next two bullets had put craters where his eyes used to be.
“As opposed to me, who jumped right into it,” Mei murmured, holstering the two Grits, one underarm and the other at her hip. “So, you can feel why we have to do this.”