The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

She watched several of her thoughtstreams consider dealing with such creatures. They would at least be at the level of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, the creatures that commanded the Deep Ones, in terms of their Evil, and it really wasn’t something she wanted to deal with.

Neutrals who over-extended themselves into dark ways were easier to Consume, after all. The only truly Evil Soulborn or equivalent she’d dared Consume had been her Hellpact Patron, and that was because the Pact itself took on the load of dealing with her, congratulations for her successful effort in turning the tables on her Patron.

Hell was nothing if not appreciative of the cunning brutality needed to do such a thing, after all. It lost nothing when it happened, as it were, and the deed certainly helped motivate other would-be Hellbound into thinking they could overcome the Pact...

Her position scrolled along in The Map, such an incredibly useful tool when paired with a Detect Location effect. She was now over the edge of the blind spot in Traveler’s Commune with Nature, and braked to a halt, hovering there in midair as wisps of power fluttered over the great black raven’s wings keeping her aloft.

A Felldeep cavern network twenty miles down went in one side of the Blindspot and came out the other, thirty miles away. There were faint impressions of sapient beings in the caves, scattered in clusters. A secondary objective was to see what was existing in those places, and what they were doing.

A Forsaken would have been ideal for this, but the Void Brothers called The Water and the Spear didn’t have the wherewithal to go so deep yet, although they definitely wanted to. Somewhere between Twelve and Fifteen their Vajras and Helices might be up to the challenge of the water at that level of pressure, at which point they’d start preying on the unnatural things in the deeper places.

Void Brothers could basically cancel out Pacts and Binder magic. Doing so to her would basically drop her Strength level to not much more than an average Powered melee combatant, a huge shift in her prowess.

Void Brothers were thus a huge threat to her, and The Bone and the Scythe Brothers particularly didn’t like soul-stealers like her.

But they weren’t all that Good of people, either, having a degree of pragmatism and ruthlessness in pursuit of the Land’s unconscious directives that heroic types tended to lack, even if they were constantly tempted by Traveler’s Higher Cause blandishments. They took one look at all the nasty, nasty Pacts tied up inside her on the shredded Damned souls burning on her Hellpact, and basically ignored her thereafter, as long as she didn’t go chasing multitudes of souls to Consume.

One of her thoughtstreams did constantly fantasize doing that... the self-destructive one where she let all her deadliest, darkest urges out to play and picture what she could do if she indulged in her imagination.

Those urges were mostly her very own, of course. She didn’t Consume such things from others without a very good reason, instead letting those Sins and Desires burn them on her Hellpact, which appreciated the entertainment. Still, she had expanded her mind in many directions, Consuming people and taking on personality traits and types of thinking, and the sheer expansion of her mind meant those dark desires had expanded, too.

They were pretty much a guideline for her on what not to do, all that raging id begging to cut loose and do whatever it pleased to whomever it pleased... and then get Consumed by Legion, who would stop her.

The thought of being inside those sweet lips made her shiver in delight. She pulled in her wings, and dropped into the choppy seas below. As she did, her Water Pact and the power of three Sirines she’d nabbed off the northern coast of Russia came to bear on the water, and she sliced through it like a falling rock, plummeting right on through it like it was more air than water.

Devilsight and Watersight meant everything was open and exposed around her, a second sky full of random fish, floating plankton and bubbles of air that hadn’t figured out which way was up, or were just wandering that way.

Silently and very patiently, she plummeted towards the depths of the ocean.

Having directly stolen the mindsets of the three Sirines, she had no more fear of the ocean than she did of flying through the sky. It was a second home, the Elemental power of it only more comforting the deeper she went. The natural marine life wouldn’t attack her, and she could charm all of the lesser species with but a thought.

Her Sirine power also meant she didn’t create a pressure wave or ripple to warn anything, while rendering her body as clear as the waters around her, basically a part of them in all ways that counted.

She was a mile down when she hit the Ward spread through this area, and The Map winked out. The Astral Ward from her Ring promptly kicked in, locking away all telepathic links for now as it reacted to the danger and the sudden old and alien Awareness she could feel reverberating through the waters.

Elder Evils, indeed. She was immediately pissed at them for cutting off the two thoughtstreams that were constantly engaged with Legion through their many emotional bonds, the many levels that they could interact on giving her constant empathic fulfillment that others simply couldn’t understand.

She was being cut off from her husband, wife, lover, mother, father, son, daughter, brother, (twin) sister, comrade in arms, mentor, student, grandmother, granddaughter, and very importantly when Legion had stepped out of that Crack with all those arms, her goddess.

She had Consumed more than a few people obsessed with one of her identities over the decades, and taken on more than a few identities other people were obsessed with. Getting to be the lover of your heart’s desire was such an incredible experience, especially at the superhuman level.

She very, very much resented this Ward and those who established it getting in the way of her bonds, and also removing the ability of Legion to reach her in case something happened... and for her to reach Legion.

But Legion had full faith in her being able to handle it, as did Traveler. She loved the one too deeply to disappoint them, and owed the other too much now to let them down so easily.

The fact she could use her bond with Legion to also indulge in Traveler’s touch and embrace was also a great delight she did not want to give up at all. Having even a partial touch on the heart of your liege was always an excellent position to be in, and that unbelievably focused young woman was as dangerous as anything she had ever met...

A minute later, she was at the bottom of the sea. There was no wave of water announcing her arrival there; she was just a random current slicing through the waves and leaving no trail behind as she did.

Without further ado, she headed for the center, surveying the area and measuring it against Pact and Fey awareness, sensing the subtle levels of corruption that came from very long-term exposure to unnatural forces.

She was a random current of water, moving through depths that had never seen more than the occasional bio-luminescence of deep-dwelling fish, or perhaps the bursting colors of cooling lava being vented from the newest stretches of the suboceanic rifts. Unless she actually ran into something deliberately, nothing would know she was coming or had passed by.

She ran into the psi-active krill about two miles from the edge of the rift proper.

She’d been warned to look for them, and was aware that a lot of Elder Evils preferred mutation of lesser life forms, using biomagic as their preferred tools. The risks that such things could rebel was generally ignored or looked past, right up until they evolved enough to realize they were slaves and rose up against their masters.

The Great Race and their peers’ idiotic use of the shoggoth only attested to how fixed in their ways the Elder Races could be. Despite rebelling countless times over the eons, they were so damn useful the Great Race repeatedly convinced themselves that this time it would be different, and made more of them. It would take millennia, but eventually the shoggoth would hit that spark of self-awareness, and then they would rise up against the decadent remnants of their makers, bringing them down.

After seeing a partial list of the things shoggoth could do, she had to admit that she’d probably use them, too. She’d simply put a mandatory destruction shelf-life on them before they could rebel.

Or, you know, maybe recruit them into a community as equals, like The Mick’s daft plan.

Well, no, that had been totally crazy. Doing so had totally flip-flopped everyone’s view of shoggoth. She still considered it an incredible risk over time, as the things were still psychically vulnerable to things that knew how to control them... but, those populations that had adopted a shoggoth were also doing silly things like giving them Astral Ward Rings to prevent mind-control and long-distance detonation.

The infectious madness of Hope and the Good...

Not like her. She hadn’t even told Master Fred she was his mother and little sister.

She had been there at the ceremony that had scarred him, hunting their Patron, who had shown up and inflicted those Hellscars as punishment for rebelling against his Pact. When Heavenbound Hall had attacked, she had escaped through the fire pit, exactly like their Patron Remarriu had, and several of the senior Cultists.

She had made a point of Consuming those latter when the erinyes got away, and so she had ended up with the souls of Fred’s mother and sister.

They were decent people, if fairly normal in almost all ways. In particular, she knew much more of Fred’s life than he did now, and since both women, sans the torture of the Hungry Kiss Cult and getting Consumed, had been reasonably mentally healthy women, she had kept over ninety percent of them intact when she had absorbed them.

She had fully expected him to die when he was dragged away by the Heavenbound. She had been startled by the maternal and sisterly delight when she ran into him in Chicago the first time, and their relationship had slowly evolved over time from wariness to at least some level of trust.

She had been astounded that he’d held off Consuming anyone for so long, and despite the fact they could touch and she definitely knew how to flirt and seduce a man, he had never displayed any interest in her, going about his job the hard way... but it kept him Heavenbound, and safe from being Consumed by her, although the reverse wasn’t true.

She still wondered how he could resist taking her. She was perfect for his Cohort; all she had would be his, and she would finally get to feel the benefits of a Heavenbound Pact...

She still might. Who knew what the future might bring?

Getting Legion to take up the job of Consuming Warlocks hadn’t been that hard, nor had it been difficult to start a physical relationship after that. The escapade with the Hu Hsaio had been the turning point, as their multiple family bonds hid the deeper bonds she had inherited from his family, and she could engage in maternal and sisterly love without any inhibitions, stacking it on top of all the others.

All those layers of desire and love and friendship and whatnot were a tremendous vulnerability to her... from a certain point of view. She knew that there was almost nothing she would not do for Legion, and she was certainly willing to give up her own life to become part of Legion if need be.

On the other hand, she knew what a truly massive hole this plugged in her psyche. The people she had Consumed had loved many, many people, but she had not dared to do the same, as things with awareness of such could have preyed on her that way.

Now that hole was plugged with someone she could absolutely trust, who believed in her in ways she didn’t believe in herself, layers of emotional bonds that would be Hell itself to try and turn against one another... and that someone was actually far more powerful than she was.

Mmmm, Legion hit ALL her buttons. That damn nereid attractiveness was like the airy topping on the perfect dessert and feast, too. At this rate, she might have to go off-planet to find one for herself. That Aura of being unable to be harmed by anything sexually attracted to you was just too sweet, and the electric things it did to the blood for one’s partners was just too useful.

She definitely had to get a nereid for herself. Sirines were nice and gave her perfect skin, but weren’t quite the same...

She hadn’t allowed herself to think these things in some time, because of those bonds to Legion. She smiled to herself, noted that some time out of contact was refreshing despite how addictive their emotional ties were, helping wrangle out some contradictions in her own psyche. She put it on the schedule as something to do on a regular basis, despite everything.