The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

Kiev had also been its own Shroudzone. While the greater Shroudzone hadn’t had any Dark Clergy, there were those tied to Kiev itself, and as it withdrew, a ‘blob’ now extended off the Russian Shroud, centered over that city.

Kiev’s Shroud ended less than a mile away. They were still in its Deadzone, but they were pretty sure no undead would be spawning here come dusk, because they’d come into it while it was still Shrouded and cleared the area of anything and everything unliving.

The city itself would wait, sitting over there on the horizon, its Dark Buryar and minions stewing and waiting for the living sitting there vulnerable at the edge of its domain, but unable to do anything about them.

Half the radius of the city’s Shroud had dissipated, too. The forces coming in had been very dangerous indeed in their attacks, although nothing like the main assault drive to the north of the Opening of the Sky.

Amaretta had seen her family here. Sometimes twice. The corpses of the servants and lower classes that had served her family had naturally enough attacked them. So had their chained and writhing spirits, cursed into becoming incorporeal energy-sucking wraiths and spectres, while the ghost of the chamberlain of the manor had been particularly nasty as far as such things went.

And then the Blooded, transformed into full starving vampires, had been here as well.

The undead hadn’t expected to see Tomb Clanners, especially ones who actually knew Blood Magic and were ready for the powerful undead, unafraid and totally willing to show the vampires that magic for fighting undead applied to vampires, too. The undead Blooded who had followed their ancestors to undeath had not died to staking, but to vivus and cutting blades trailing black and white fires.

Some were even Blessed by Holy magic, imagine that!

-They be restoring the graveyard, and carving the names of those they saw and finally laid to rest,- The Mick /replied to Lady Traveler’s calm voice, watching them work. -Ye’d think the bastards’d be fine with raiding the crypts, but nae. There were six Tombstone Elementals here, Grave Elementals guarding the manor, Cairnguards, and four Bone Golems. The place were defiled six ways to Sunday, and then ten more on the Lord’s Day, just to shit upon His name.-

Amaretta had let him have his time and sorrow, and he would let her have hers.

-How many did she have to put down?- Traveler /asked quietly.

-All of them. Some had tried to destroy themselves, and were near hard to recognize. Her mam and papa, uncles, older brothers and sister, childhood friends, her stepfather’s extended family, the folk who worked the fields, an’ they pulled the grandparents and more out of the ground...- He turned his eyes towards Kiev, crimson gleaming in the dark of them. -They be whispering that the Dark Buryar of Kiev be the Ancestor of the Family, waiting for them.-

- A Vampire Dark Bishop. You know the drill. You can’t kill it while it is connected to its Congregation. Wipe the minions, and the Dark Clergy falls in power and loses a great deal of their might. Kill them, even with vivus, and they jump bodies to a minion and return to full strength.-

He watched dwarves, humans, and Tomb Clanners placing the gravestones that had been jumbled together to form the Tombstone Elementals back into the ground, and they spent Scrolls and magic preserved from combat to restore shattered cairns and tombs, bring back shattered statuary and cryptwork, and dig out and reverently place new stones upon the churned ground.

The carving on the stones was fresh, and done by hands sharp enough, strong enough, and hard enough to work on the stone with no tools. He saw the red streaks down the pale cheeks of his girl as she slowly and carefully worked on a tombstone for her sister. He watched her carve the date of her sister’s birth, two decades before her own, and the date of death on that cold October 11 in 1941, so long ago, with a second date of undeath-ended below it, a tradition that all the Tomb Clans recognized, prone as their dead were to getting up and walking around even before the Shroud came.

December 21, 2019. The Winter Solstice, the longest and darkest night of the year, lit up by vivic fire as the wheel of the seasons turned, and now every day would be longer and brighter, for a time.

Next to her sat Hank Blakhamar, dark beard wet with his own tears as he carved a tombstone for his brother. A mound of fifteen slabs more waited next to him, Shaped up by Amaretta herself for him to carve with the fingers of a master of the Crystal Dragon, no need for a hammer and chisel there.

Once Hank Blakhamar had been a mere servant here, and arguably was now a greater lord than ever his Blooded master had once been. But he’d come all this way for one reason alone, and that was to lay his kin to rest.

Staring the nightmares of seven decades and more in the eye and spitting in them, that were just a bonus.

Those kin had been undead, and once human, aye, for they’d died before the changes had taken place across that horrible and dread year. Still, they’d recognized Hank, as they had Amaretta, calling out their names in hate and rage that the two of them still dared to live, and were so arrogant as to come with family to fight them!

Tears in their eyes, shouting curses and greetings in the old tongue with the same breath, the two had led their living family against their undead kin, and put the fallen down permanently.

There was no thought of saving them or succoring them. The undead were tied to the Shroud, and as long as Shroud-bound remained, the Shroud remained. Lock away the dead for some necromantic purpose and Ritual, take control of them as he surely could figure out a way to, aye, and the Shroud would be around forever... or, at least, until Traveler came looking for the anchors left upon this world, and dealt them a proper traitor’s fate.

Well, morelike Shvaughn would, as she’d quite the touch for it. That fucking fool who thought he’d be more clever than the others and wrap up some Cultivators to milk for their blood, aye, he’d been milked himself, kept alive by Revenance as his blood vessels were filled with acid and melted him away from inside. He’d felt it all, unable to die until the Revenance finally gave way when his whole body was reduced to hissing sludge all at once.

The whole world wanted out from under the Shroud. They wanted to see that blue sky gaping open over the horizon to the north, which he could behold even now through Traveler’s eyes with just a thought, the warm sunlight beating down even in the chill of December in this winter-plagued land.

Demented and depraved greed or insane necroic love of the dead, vs. the world. He weighed the options in his hands and clucked to himself.

If they’d chosen such a mad course, he’d have been happy to kill them himself. His love for his girl and respect for her stepfather would have vanished like blood in the sea, and the sharks would have come out.

She was going to get to do something he’d not yet, though, and that was to face her Ancestor.

-Ye think we could beat him?- he /asked archly, both a sly challenge worthy of Helix’s catchphrase (subbing in some really hard vodka instead of beer, of course) and a professional opinion.

His Visual File beeped at him and filled up with a Stat Block she sent over to him. It wasn’t ‘real’, as in something that had been directly Assayed, but it was based on things seen in the past.

-Pentara was something of an eye-opener for us, as we ran into truly advanced undead who’d had time to refine their own powers. The key thing for the Dark Clergy is that they really delve into the Evil of their own existence. Thanatopic negative energy that bypasses immunity to same, and Vile Cursed damage that couldn’t be healed outside holy ground were standard tools of all the Dark Clergy from that Tombworld of the Shroud.

-That being said, you’ve done everything right, and you are Geared to kill him. If he was alone, you might be able to; it depends on his Health Qi and if he can chip you down faster than you can Blooding him. You’ve got the Sun Saves, Evasion, and Mettle, so the Thanatopic attacks shouldn’t be that dangerous.

-But the Sun Saves only go off once a round each, which means you’d be vulnerable to Fastcasting, and if there’s any other Dark Clergy present, even a Dark Minister, you’re dead. Let’s not even go into the fact he’s going to have Grave Knights, Skeleton Warriors, Slaughtergheists, and Headless Horsemen as guards, among other things.

-It doesn’t know what you can do, and you might be the most powerful Blooded who has ever walked the planet. But that still doesn’t mean you can kill it.-

He eyed the Stat Block, clearly synthesized off something that had existed on the luckless world that had died before the Shroud came here. It felt damn weird to compare reality to math, but the process worked, and could be as detailed as you cared to get on it.

Aye, once you started figuring in reality and its limitations, things got really dicey, really quick.

Traveler’s Sun Saves were in the 80+ range, but she still heaped tons of attention on her ability to avoid or endure through all sorts of threats, her ‘Saves’. Why? Because the Sun Saves required you to Refocus them to expend them again, which you could only do with time... or a Meditation check, of all things, recentering yourself and coming back into balance.

If you were hit with a spell, expended your Sun Save to beat it, and then were hit with a Fastcast Spell requiring the same Save as a follow-up, you were hosed.

-Yer point is taken.- Save-or-Dies. She’d given him plenty of examples. Death spells. Petrification. Chain Stunning. Total sensory loss. Poison. Mind Control. Binding. Illusions. Transpositional attacks. Possession. Forced form change. Paralysis. Loss of ability to think. Abject terror. Insanity. Overwhelming physical force or weight, like being buried under a castle. Forced to unconsciousness...

They were all things that avoided trying to kill by violent disassembly of medically required essential body parts, and skipped right to victory. If you missed the Save, you were likely dead or going to die very quickly, and couldn’t do anything about it. Building up a plethora of resistances or immunities to such things was one of the objectives of getting stronger, simply so they couldn’t be sprung on you.

Indeed, it could be said the whole existence of Sun Saves was to overcome single-attack Save-or-Die effects predictably, every time. They just had that one damn limit on them...

The expatriates were totally down on being the ones chosen to reduce the Kiev Shroudzone. They often had lots of kids and grandkids with them, eager to help. Not all of them were dwarves, of course, but if they were Powered, they’d regained their youth and could fight, singing old songs about the Motherland as they put down their countrymen once and for all.

The fervor with which they went after any units identified as Nazis was worthy of berserkers, too. Germany might have paid the ultimate price for the sins of the Nazis, but in some places, the old hate was still there. The fact that the Buddhists used the swastika as one of their symbols only made it even more a symbol of uncaring conquest over others. Conflating Naziism and Buddhism was one of those intellectual philosophical questions pandered about by theologians of the Churches, and duly resolved by shooting proponents of either when they were seen.

The Mick had to admit that, even though there were raging philosophical debates between the Churches by insightful bastards with Ranks to waste and too much time on their hands, they also tended to be of massive practical mindsets about certain things. The gods generally didn’t want you to be building a better bureaucracy; they wanted you spreading and encouraging Faith.

Long-winded arguments about Good and Right and What’s Best tended not to do that for the common person. Making Bad Things Go Away got lots more attention, opening the door for Doing Good Things Over Time and all that.

The Blood of the Irish had taken up the task of clearing the surrounding areas of any more Constructs. He didn’t like sitting there doing naught, but he was monitoring them regardless, cursing them for being slow, stupid, and feckless sots as he kept them coordinated in their deeds and made damn sure everyone knew where to support everyone else.

They knew he’d get his hands dirty, but his lady had done this for him, and he’d do the same for her.