217 Chapter Two Hundred and Seventeen – Up the Walls (1/2)
AA and I were still shooting up towards the walls, tossed up like softballs, when Briggs shot right on by; last to jump, first to get there. His broad shoulders rotated Endure back to his right as he came over the edge of the parapet just as the Queen Xeno was looming forward to get a look over the edge.
His right foot hit the ground, anchored him as if he weighed ten tons with Crystal Dragon heavyfoot, and Endure came around.
Well, that's what it looked like, at least, because Endure was on his right side, then it was on his left, and the head of the Queen was spraying out in a burning cloud of acid over everything to his left. It was literally just an eyeblink. Mixed in that spray was a shattered and pulped cerebrovore the size of a small pig that had just been enlightened on what it meant to be a Hammer Grandmaster first-hand.
Briggs' left foot descended, a step forward and down. His shoulder hit the Queen's headless carcass, sent it flying back off the curved and gnurled stone of the walk she was latched onto with her immense lower claws, and away she fell, wheee...
She didn't get much of anywhere before AA and I alighted.
There was a horde of the things on the walk, on the walls, down in the courtyard, and the psionic backlash of their Queen dying was reverberating through their hivemind. They were at once directionless and going territorially berserk. The cerebrovore in charge dying had also disrupted the telepathic network of the little neo-peabrains, and now they had to work out a new hierarchy of command. Given their Evil nature, exactly how seamless a transition was there going to be with that?
Maybe in the future I could advise them that they might not want to put the commander of both themselves and their rides in the same place. Why it had risked itself out here was another bizarre mystery I'd just chalk up to sheer arrogant overconfidence of someone riding a 15 HD giant xenosym...
Briggs and I saw the subtle motions of the horde dividing between competing factions instantly, picked out the three warrior-class drones being piloted by the second-rank 'vores clamoring for authority on their tele-bands, doubtless making their cases for I Be Da Boss with great urgency while also trying to direct this horde of dispirited and woe-is-us Queen-less xenosyms.
There just might have been a little bit of a multi-tasking problem we took advantage of.
Welp, change of plans. AA went left, I went right, and Briggs dropped down after the Queen. Battleplans surviving first contact and all...
I let go with pretty much everything.
They had carapaces as hard as good steel, which might have impressed me if I wasn't currently wielding a set of +VIII Weapons made of adamant, which meant very, very sharp, i.e. tracing lines of spatial cuts behind them, and also very, very hard.
The normal xenosyms had eight or so hit dice, giving them a high end of about eighty Health, freakishly tough, with DR 5/- or so. Their claws were psionically empowered by the same phrenic forces that allowed their unnatural physiologies to exist, doing improbable amounts of damage, very similar to having ki-boosted weapons and fighting skills. When cut, poked, or getting their carapaces broken, their acidic blood sprayed out under high pressure, powerful enough to eat through steel like cheese, but strangely not so effective on the greasy basalt underneath my feet.
It also sloughed off my Vajra like rainwater, as my Swords began to trace arcs of it in flowering sprays of death.
Quaver and Tremble were Singing with me, transcendent music pounding at the ears of the xenosyms with awful angelic rhythms in Aklo, letting them know that the wrath of the Heavens was upon them in Cerulean words.
Trust me, to the 'syms, the words Definitely had Color.
Intimidate check at +50, swift action if you kill an opponent. -5 to apply it to everyone in sight. Sneak Attack damage applying to all frightened opponents...
Stand slammed into a thrusting jaw hard enough to snap it closed on the extended teeth, cutting them off and spraying acid at me, which I ignored. Sparky turned the Steel Manticore Tail and drove two spikes into its skull, Anathema blowing it apart, and exposing the cerebrove riding it. A third spike punched into the turkey-sized thing, and then two rays of Soul Light hit that spike of force, punched into its innards, and blew the supernaturally tough little brain-eater into spraying pulp.
Sparky really loved the Tail!
Fall's trigger was pulled, the Arm holding it able to rotate unnaturally and keep impossibly steady as it pumped out a steady and endless stream of Force quarrels at whatever was beyond my shoto and convenient as I moved along the walk surrounded by flowering sprays of phosphorescent yellow-green blood, hissing stone, and xenosym carcasses igniting like tinder.
Vivic fire loved to feed phrenics to the Land, too, even if it didn't do any extra damage to them.
Two seconds after our slaughter commenced, Errant had completed his somersault, shifted to full Angel Walk, reduced gravity to one-sixth of normal, leapt after us, shot up a full hundred feet, and landed on the parapet behind AA. Boy had springs!...
Now Grace and Purity came singing out. He flowed off the battlement to the walkway, and Grace hissed through the heads and necks of two xenosyms crawling over the edge there in an arc of decapitating Wrath. He swung onto the flank of Brother Ancientaxe, who was plying Zeitgeist like a reaping scythe of death as fear shot through the screeching, writhing horde of xenosyms on Cerulean words from Reality and Heaven come calling.
Hey, Cutting Life operates off base Sneak Attack damage dice. You mean the Brother got both Cutting Life and ALL his SA dice on these Intimidated Aberrations, too? Man, what dumb Hagchild thought up that combo?
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Behind us, the rest of our forces were charging down that OSHA-noncompliant arch and onto the broken ground behind us, led by Corgun and his riders, lining up even as they charged forwards into the breaching formations they needed, under strict finger-wagging from Warlord Sama's Mark-glare of Tyranny.
Corgun reached the proper point first, turned and put his shoulders down, and his tail up into the air.
Pursuing elven Casters cast their spells rat-tat-tat, and a line of Mass Disks winked into existence above him, extending from the end of his tail all the way up to the edge of the parapets above.
His two Riders were the first ones up that slope, running up his broad back, up the extended tail, and onto the Disks.