The familiar curtain of red-gold descended over Sixty-eight’s vision.
Hammer and stab.
Kick and knee.
Bite.
“The kid’s a barb! She’s raging!”
“Kregolas!”
“Leave the shrimp to me. Siphon Rage. Rrraaaargh!”
“Get her, Big K! Fuck her shit up!”
Take her rage?
Ha!
Impossible!
A Skill was nothing compared to the true essence of anger that suffused every part of her being courtesy of her father, a God.
Thrice her size and generating his own rage.
She didn’t know how she did it. When her pot boiled over she was all instinct. But, she made his her own.
“Nooo! Big K!”
“Run, fuckers! Run for your lives!”
She didn’t stop hammering and stabbing until only a mangled pile of pink and red wetness remained on the floor.
Thundercrash brought an entire wall down with his mace-chain.
Gangers had made it outside.
He whipped his weapon around the top of street light, retracting it to shoot him out and up.
The terrified gangers skidded to a stop, some falling in their haste to avoid running into him as he landed with an acrobatic flip.
“Criminals are a cowardly lot. You use the darkness, but fear it. Unlike me, who is the darkness. Face justice. Face punishment. Face the thunder.”
The spiked ball on its chain struck like a serpent, retracting and extending in response to his will.
Each strike, each lash ended a ganger’s life.
A swing to the top of the three-level building brought him to the roof and over to the other side.
He swept low, crushing into a knot of gangers with his combat-grade boots.
Broken bones and ruptured organs.
“Criminals—”
“Sting Lights!”
The spell blinded and stung, if only in the way a drop of lemon to the eye did rather than, say, a wasp’s stinger.
“Three Punch Combo!”
“Jaw-cracker Strike!”
“Steal Weapon— he’s too strong!”
Too strong indeed.
He barely moved.
“Stone Wall!”
“Threefold Stride!”
“Wait for me!”
One, two, three.
Three swings.
Three judgments rendered.
The conjured stone wall exploded with a light punch.
“Criminals have no honor.” He grabbed the back of the mage’s neck. “See how quickly you abandon each other.” He flicked his wrist, sending his spiked ball into the back of the other thief’s head.
Three times the speed wasn’t nearly enough.
He squeezed, ending it with a crack.
More gangers fled from the building.
More gangers died at the end of his mace-chain.
He reentered the slaughterhouse with a grin of an easy and very lucrative ten minutes of work.
Sixty-eight saw him through a haze of red and gold, though he didn’t know that specifically.
He did see a blood-covered child covered in cuts and bruises that were slowly healing searching for her next victim.
There were still a few gangers moaning and groaning in various states of dying, so he decided to step back outside and patrol the perimeter to make sure none could escape while the demigod daughter of Suiteonem made her father proud.
…
Sixty-eight woke up covered in red liquid and pink bits.
She stood wrapped in chains with a spiked ball gently dangling like a pendulum hear her boot.
“Great and mighty work! Your rage made me think for a moment that I had the honor to fight side by side with Suiteonem himself, may his rage grant us strength.” Thundercrash approached and took his weapon back, releasing her and cleaning her with a wave of a white wand.
“How long?”
“Eh? A few hours. It’s not even midnight yet. I had time for a meal and some light reading. I meant what I said. You made quick work of those cowardly criminals.”
She regarded the Thundercrash’s tower top secret base.
More butlers appeared to be sorting and cataloging a pile of stolen items.
She saw everything from coins in gold and silver, to jewelry and gems, to that weird paper currency the larger cities in the World Tree used.
That lesson had annoyed her.
Why did they make paper currency when they already had coins and Universal Points?
And why did different cities have their own different paper currency?
It seemed simpler and less confusing to her child’s mind to just have one universal paper currency if they really wanted to add an extra layer to their economy.
She almost stumbled.
Her head swam and her body felt like she had just entered an enraged state to brutally kill— she checked the Quest notification— twenty-three criminals.
Thundercrash signaled the scantily-clad butler hovering nearby and she helped Sixty-eight to the nearby chair next to a table with a pile of paper currency.
“Your agreed upon percentage in the requested denomination. Relzian Marks as used by all cities, towns and villages in the Relzia Alliance, which Sirrah’s Ranch is part of.”
Sixty-eight shrugged.
She had done the negotiations with Thundercrash over Mage Messenger, but she had been following the instructions Thirty-two had written down for her.
“That sounds right.”
“Good, well, if there are issues don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll happily correct them to your satisfaction.” Thundercrash snapped his fingers, which sounded like a combustion-powered shot. Another scantily-clad butler appeared as if from thin air to begin transferring the stack of paper money from table to a bag of holding. “Please keep the bag, freely given with nothing expected in return.”
“Thank you.”
She remembered her manners.
“I’d give you something for the headache and body pains, but an eidolon expressly forbade it.” Thundercrash sighed. “Tough treatment, but that creates the mightiest warriors, doesn’t it?”
She grunted.
It did, but it still wasn’t fair.
Not that she’d complain out loud.
Complainers got punished.
That had been drilled into their heads from the beginning.
“I had to estimate the value of my— our haul. Hard to predict how much I’ll get from all this.” He gestured at the stolen goods. “Naturally, if the haul is greater than the estimate, I shall send you more. If it is less, well, I won’t ask for the difference to be returned.”
Once the bag of holding was filled she grabbed it and staggered off to the elevator.
“Honored demigod, please accept my assistance.” He snapped his fingers and yet another butler appeared.
This one wasn’t scantily dressed.
She bowed and extended an arm.
Sixty-eight brushed it aside.
She did need nor want help.
“She shall take you to the portal house. May your father’s rage strengthen you unto eternity.”
Sixty-eight mumbled a customary response and begrudgingly followed the muscular butler.
Suiteonem Prime, Port Joy, Mapulondas, 213197
There was no joy in the port.
Only death.
It was a small port.
Just a few docks to handle small boats and ships and one large one that could take the typical medium-sized trading or pleasure vessel.
Ragay ran through carnage-filled streets searching homes and business for any survivors that might have made it into basements or bunkers before the insects got them.
The sound of millions, if not tens of millions of the damn things filled the air with a buzzing sound that pained his sensitive ears and palpable vibrations that rattled him to the core.
High above, giant swarms formed into into a pair of clawed hands the size of ancient trees as they swiped at Miss Karagatan, who flew inside a translucent, deep blue bubble while swatting at the insects with an even larger pair of translucent hands.
Ragay rounded a corner and came face to face with a huge mound of buzzing insects.
The black and red things looked like wasps the size of his longest finger with a stinger much longer than his pointed finger nail.
They noticed him and swarmed from the wet pile of pink and ivory.
“Get away!”
He lashed out with a wall of hard water from the orb dangling from his hooked staff.
High speed met high speed.
The wasps went splat all the way to the building at the end of the street.
Miss Karagatan had given him a gem enchanted with life detection.
The problem was that it also picked up the insects as living things.
One landed on the back of his neck and bit hard, piercing through scales.
He slapped it, bursting it like an overripe fruit, but the spines on its back pierced the skin on his palm.
His head swam instantly.
Venom.
Powerful to be able to affect him.
Mundane venom and poisons affected his kind less than they did the average drylander.
A deadly bite for them was just a painful experience for him.
He shoved a small vial into his mouth and bit through the glass.
Head cleared as he spat the shards out.
Port Joy belonged to a drylander nation, but its population was a fifty-fifty split between drylanders and Sinaya’s people.
He struggled to follow the tangled web of political allegiances.
To him it didn’t matter all that much because everyone owed their ultimate allegiance to Suiteonem.
He had learned in recent months that fact didn’t mean much. If the Empyreals decided they wanted you dead they sent an executioner.
This time it was an empyreal guard that controlled insects or made insects or was made of insects.
It wasn’t clear to him and Miss Karagatan hadn’t said.
All he knew was what he had seen at the beginning.
A person-sized figure hidden by a tattered black cloak with gold stitching on the ragged edges.
Walls and bubbles.
Ragay constructed them out of imagination and will liberally as he ran through the port.
The barracks seemed a likely place to find survivors.
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His heart sank as it came into view.
The squat, fortress-like building looked like a great beast after every scavenger had their fill.
Its walls had been ripped open leaving support pillars sticking out like picked over ribs.
Black shapes moved inside.
He didn’t need to go closer to understand.
Where to next?
The homes he had searched had been stripped of their skin like the barracks. Their basements laid bare with only piles of pink and white wetness swarming with buzzing insects.
The port itself?
His people would have already swam as far and deep as they dared. The insects couldn’t reach them there.
He had seen the wrecked boats and ships as Miss Karagatan flew the two of them into the town.
The shops?
The bank!
Those had vaults with strong doors.
He ran and leapt, keeping the insects off him with his trusty bubble construct.
Hope died the moment he landed in front of the bank.
Its windows and doors were laid open.
The inside was covered with a thick, moving carpet.
A sudden crash drew his attention.
The empyreal guard person— thing— crashed into the street less than a stone’s throw from him.
The cloaked figure tried to stand, but many things appeared broken.
“Ragay, stay back.”
Miss Karagatan descended with one hand stretched to the downed foe.
A massive hand of hard water larger than a building appeared and slapped down like Ragay had done to the insect on his neck.
…
“Why? What could they have done to deserve this?”
Ragay regarded the carnage as Miss Karagatan carried him in a bubble for one last search for survivors.
Without the empyreal guard the rest of the insects had died.
His life-sensing gem remained dark.
“It is unlikely that you will ever know,” Miss Karagatan said. “They carry out the will of the Empyreals, who in turn carry out Suiteonem’s will. Thus, we learned to expect random, pointless violence. There can be no other way with a God of anger and rage at their worst. Quick, irrational and without restraint.”
“But, they’ve been doing this regularly since the Sea of Shattered Teeth.” He eyed the patches of Sinaya’s waters over the wounds on her arm from her previous duel with an empyreal guard.
“Yes. One incident every four to six weeks.”
“Does the Calamity draw closer?”
“Unknown.”
“Sinaya—”
“Enough,” she said flatly. “Such knowledge is not for you at this time.”
They completed a pass over the massacred town.
“What’ll happen next?”
“This is not our place. We only intervened because there was enough of our people here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the nation this town belongs to blames this on me. The drylanders ever seek ammunition against me.”
“No! There are witnesses. Our people that escaped to the ocean.”
Miss Karagatan shook her head.
“We must search for them to be certain and our kind living in this nation make up a very small number, like a handful of sand on the beach. Witnesses? The drylanders would silence them first. Whether by coercion or force, it matters not in the end. Our people will be imprisoned or made dead unless we take them from this place.”
Suiteonem Prime, Halcyon Pines, December 2057
Cal watched.
The town sat on the edge of the Empire of Man’s northern boundary.
Adwird Trovas felt like a man… revenant out of time.
His empire of merely about three hundred years ago wasn’t anything like the present day one.
For one thing, his blue-skinned people had been the dominant ones.
All the other races had filled in the lesser ranks of society.
The dark brown-skinned race now in charge had been firmly in the second tier.
In his time the empire’s northern boundary lay a weeks walk north from the Inner Sea.
Everything from there to the ice seas beyond the White Mountains— which were no longer the White Mountains. Instead named after the general that got them that far north— was monster country.
Not anymore.
He had seen a network of road and rail— which was new to him— connecting so many villages, towns and cities on the flight north.
The world had a way of looking small when viewed from high above.
Oh, that was new too.
Back in his day one only flew if they had powerful spells, Skills, artifacts or managed to tame a winged beast.
He supposed the desiccated corpses of pegasi counted as part of the latter.
Halcyon Pines.
A bit too grand for a frontier town.
Granted it was a sprawling one and built with materials and architecture to match the best places in the imperial core.
At least it was adjacent to a pine forest.
There was river running near the town from the snow-capped mountain to a lake a few kilometers to the south.
Everything, including said lake was walled.
Fancy town or not it was located in the middle of nowhere, which meant monsters.
It made sense why the town had a high proportion of combat types at all times.
Especially in the cold season when its usual population remained in their mansions and estates in the cities around the Inner Sea.
Halcyon Pines.
The name made Adwird scratch his head.
It didn’t fit.
Not even close.
What was great about a town where the rich and powerful could act out their most depraved fantasies on innocent people? On children even?
A part of him took satisfaction in the fact that it wasn’t his race that brought the empire into such hellish depths.
Level 27 Footman, Level 9 Drawer and Level 1 Revenant.
He had a lot of work to do.
The helpful revenants back at the Frozen Eternities had helpfully provided him with a leveling plan that aligned with his interests.
Total consolidation wasn’t going to be easy, but what he could do was merge one of his original ones in to revenant.
One class was best, but two was better than three.
He had decided to focus on combat. His heart lay in his art, but he figured he owed the Lord and Lady Cross for sparing his life when they had first appeared out of the spire. He just wanted to be useful.
The strike team was made up of revenants like him. Low level volunteers. And higher level warbands from the mountainholds.
Oh, boy.
That had been another mind-breaking revelation.
They were blue-skinned like him, but that was were the resemblance ended.
He was built like the humans in the current day empire. The only difference was his skin color.
The blue-skinned giants had been more of a legend to him when he had been alive.
But, he supposed the Empress of the Frozen Eternities had to have gotten her giant skeletons from somewhere.
In fact, thanks to the memory-retrieving crown he remembered how a giant skeleton had been the one to end his life centuries ago. Yup. Snapped his neck like a twig.
Even their smaller women had a head’s height and a child’s weight on him.
Well, it was good that they were allies.
The plan was simple.
Kill most everyone in Halcyon Pines.
The Lord Cross had given the order after somehow determining there weren’t many innocents.
Adwird wondered about that briefly, but decided one had to be a bad person to draw pay knowing what the rich and powerful used the place for.
He checked his shield and weapons.
Mundane steel.
To help with leveling.
Revenant would bridge the gap.
The class made him stronger, tougher, faster and more enduring.
Pain was a distant suggestion.
As long as he had death-aspected mana to eat he could go for an eternity.
It wasn’t all good things.
He was more vulnerable to fire and faith unless he picked up Skills to counter them. Those were a ways off though.
They descended on the town cloaked in the night as their spellcasters concealed each group’s presence with mist, shadows or invisibility.
Adwird saw a group of warriors swaying on their feet as they strolled the dimly lit street.
From a tavern?
To another tavern?
He didn’t know.
What he did know was that he could see their life.
Apparently it was different for individual revenants.
Some could smell the living as an alluring scent. The higher the lifeform the stronger the scent.
Some could feel them as wind brushing across their cheeks. An insect was like a faint caress, while a human was like a storm.
He saw red pulsing from beneath their clothing.
The undead pegasus responded to his will, tucking its leathery wings into a dive.
The warriors turned too late.
Wings snapped out as he plunged his spear into one warrior’s neck.
The other’s scattered, fumbling for their sidearms.
Pistols powered by magic.
Another thing his empire hadn’t had.
Those were the days of bolts and arrows.
They didn’t get a single shot off.
The rest of Adwird’s team fell on them from behind.
He signaled them before leaping off.
He didn’t want to level anything other than the classes he already had.
That meant he had to fight on foot.
The fall broke his ankles, but the death mana in the many gems hidden on and in his body healed them in a few seconds.
Alarms blared.
Lights in windows turned on.
There were vastly more dark windows from where he stood.
A dark shadow flashed overhead.
The terrifying undead dragon off to drop their stronger fighters on the barracks to face the enemy’s strongest.
It was a fair thing, this battle.
For the levels.
…
“Charge!” Adwird busted through the thick, wooden door behind his steel shield. Smaller and rounder than he was used to, but easier to wield indoors. “Thrust!”
Parry!
Counter cut!
A half-naked swordsman, Level 35, sent his thrust aside and sliced deep into the inside of his spear arm on the downward sweep.
The saber was good steel, enchanted to the equivalent of a monomolecular edge.
Mail and padded cloth parted.
Flesh parted.
Bone would’ve parted had he not had a revenant’s durability.
He released his spear to grasp the swordsman’s wrist, pulling hard while thrusting his solid steel shield harder.
The swordsman reeled back, mouth bloody.
Adwird crushed him into the wall, drew his dagger and ended the swordsman’s life with the fifth stab to the gut.
Higher levels died hard.
That hadn’t changed.
The death energy flowed into him.
He imagined he could see vibrant red flow from the graying corpse into his mouth.
He left his spear on the floor and kept his dagger in hand to search the rest of the small home.
Sensing life through walls was a Level 10 thing.
…
Halycon Pine’s defenders were caught drunk and with their pants around their ankles.
They were used to monster attacks, which they always had plenty of warning time for so that they could drink sober potions.
It didn’t help that Cal had added an extra layer of murkiness to their thoughts.
Mercenaries, adventurers and the dead lord and retired senator’s personal guard.
Each properly vetted for viciousness and a complete lack of empathy to those they considered weak.
They had been paid well.
A year’s pay for a month’s work.
And all they had to do was ignore the depravity around them.
Hell, most of them took part when the rich and powerful felt generous.
The highest leveled fighter in the town was a Level 51 Warrior of Renown.
He alone could’ve stopped the attack in its tracks by killing too quick for the revenants and Blues to bring their numbers to bear.
Of course, he was no match for the higher leveled revenants.
Sslamako or Falliana would’ve made quick work of him.
Arsenalian would’ve lost, but been a close fight.
The warrior of renown died shitting himself in his bed.
A prolific rapist of children deserved nothing less.
…
Unlike the revenants, who hunted in ones and twos, the Blues moved in coordinated warbands of five or more.
Though the shortest were over two meters tall, they moved like the hunters they were. Swift and silent.
Bows sang.
Their short bows were akin to warbows for smaller men.
Arrows crashed through the tavern’s windows.
A shaman chanted.
Mist and ice crept out of the broken windows and through the gaps in the front door.
The warband entered cautiously to grant their enemies swift release from painfully frozen flesh fixing them to the floor and chairs.
…
A snow bear changer, already two and a half meters tall grew even larger as she activated the white-furred pelt she wore like a cloak.
A four meter tall snow bear with fur like armor knocked a guard tower down with a single swipe of her paw.
The unfortunate guards didn’t have time to attempt to run or fight before she turned them into red smears in the snow.
…
Halycon Pines even had an official House of Pleasure.
Ironically, it was only open in the heart of winter when the town didn’t host its usual clientele and events.
The House of Pleasure was a legitimate business and they didn’t want any of their employees exposed to that level of depravity.
Not that they weren’t willing to sell depravity, just not the kinds that ended in torture, death and worse.
Revenants swept through the house.
Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. No.
Thoughts in between seconds told them who lived and who died.
Yes to the dead lord and retired senator’s fighters.
No to the employees of the house.
…
Falliana and Bellicosiaxtramondagron flew north to the snow-capped mountains.
There were darker things and spawn zones that needed clearing before the Blues could begin their expeditions to establish new mountainholds.
They weren’t needed in the town anyways.
…
A young shaman plunged her hand-carved totem into the frozen ground. It looked like toy in her hands, but that was deceptive.
Frozen ground gave way to her strength.
“Ancestors, hear my plea. Cleanse this land of its foul taint.”
The wooden totem in the shape of a winter owl shuddered as it released a pulse of faint blue light.
If a watcher managed to not blink they could see the faint, spectral owls flying at the leading edge of the pulse.
Across the entire town, shamans planted totems.
It wasn’t enough to liberate the town from its former owners.
Decades of evil had seeped into the very soil.
An elderly shaman, the highest-leveled one on the Quest, regarded the gold-gilded mansion of the town’s founder.
“Tch,” she spat at the feet of a revenant.
Arsenalian scowled up at her.
It bothered him that a hunched, wizened old shaman was still taller and broader of shoulder than him.
He waved toward the mansion.
“Well, go do… whatever it is that you do. Unless you need me to check inside… again.”
The place was empty.
He had killed the guards and spared most of the servants as Lord Cross had commanded.
Light and easy work for his blade.
Level 40 in the present day wasn’t quite to the standard of the Level 40 he remembered.
Granted, that had been on his homeworld.
He hadn’t been on this one long before he fell to the Empress of the Frozen Eternities.
“Tch.”
“Yes, let’s make vague noises. It’s not like there are other mansions to deal with.” He shook his head.
“Evil.”
“Well, obviously.”
He was a revenant spellsword, but even he could tell that dark deeds were committed in the mansions.
There was a scent in the cold air, a palpable feeling that tickled the back of his neck.
The old shaman grunted.
“Burn them all. Destroy the foundations. Leave nothing behind. Salt the earth. Then I can begin cleansing.” She hobbled away with her bodyguards.
Arsenalian cursed.
Unless high level, Revenants didn’t tend to do well with fire.
The Blues tended toward cold and ice.
While he pondered how he was going to do as the shaman had ordered the mansion suddenly burst into flames.
“Oh, good…”
