Chapter 426 - Far Future Ch. 136 – Oh, It Must have Been Just Some Bad Luck... (1/2)
What it all really meant is that the ones with white hair were the wimpiest, and the ones with off-white hair could be dangerous. They passed around Psychic Weapons like candy, and no true drow would handle something less then QL20 Masterwork if at all possible, thanks to their Obsession.
As for hereditary matriarchal status, that wasn't present, although there was relative equality between the genders considering how androgynous the males were. Women certainly weren't any worse in finesse combat then men were, and with their similar builds, the males couldn't get functionally higher strengths then the women. It was all about Dex and Attack Bonus, and gender was a non-issue since strength and size were hallmarks of the stupid and easily dominated.
They simply didn't believe that normal humans could get past them without using hefty science or psychic powers, which their better tech and psensitivity would alert them to. A Ten+ with all the bells and whistles coming in and getting past them while avoiding all their alternate senses with the Darkstalker Feat was simply too low a probability to even consider.
I slid past their few sentries without much effort, weaving between their Vat-born guards, waiting hovertanks and platform guns, past the holo-stalae masking the arriving forces from observation overhead, and closed in on the Portal.
The yawning gap in reality offended me as a Null, and it took some effort not to pop an Interdiction and just shut them down. No, no, we wanted this lesson to be expensive, we did.
I slid in along the hillside, hair keeping soft hold as I sidled away above the guards, watching the drow forces sliding and strolling through, unconcerned, arrogant, confident, and expectant of the fun to come.
Chalice slid out into my palm, and, still shielded by my hair, I stuck her point into the Portal.
-Resonance with the Underweb established,- she /told me after a few seconds. -Identifying planar coordinates. Extrapolating baseline... okay, let's go!-
I headed back along the way I'd come, and as I did so, I looked for a few likely recruits, and those snobbish jet-skinned supermodels in bikinis, half-armor, too much skin, long crescent knives, and pink hair indicating artistic appreciation of bloodlust and slaughter looked like just the things.
-Blow them Crowns anytime,- I /informed them, taking up position on a section of rock above the stripper queens with knives.
---
Up on the plateau and in the badlands, about thirty-ish miles apart, Percy and Chauncy Briggs gave one another thumbs-up, and triggered the two Crowns they'd brought along and placed on the ground. With a popping sound, their Hammers took them out of there, back along their lived-lines, even as the two brawny lads sighed about blowing thirty crystalweight of high-psitech gear.
Still, it was going to be quite the show.
The time delays went by quickly, and the Crowns triggered in unison... in inverted mode.
Dimensional resonance of distortions in the Veil accrued instantly, reached out with one another, extended back along the new rip in the Veil from the Underweb Portal, touched it, and I heard it surge and hum as it did so.
Dimension-breaking power flashed backwards along the weakpoints of the Vulnerability to Chaos effect, and a single tiny thread touched the outskirts of the Warp Zone.
There were a lot of eyes watching as the edge of the Warp Zone flared, harmonized to the new Crown effect so similar to its own, and bulged out, ripping open a new and unregulated rift to the Warp as it howled back along that weakness in the Veil.
---
The drow all felt the tremble, and turned to look in surprise. Of course, the side of the hill was in the way, so they couldn't see the warposcopic panoply of illuminated clouds devouring the landscape as it came surging this way, it wasn't quite visible yet... although the Portal starting to whine and emit some really unnerving lights in the thaumaspectrum had all their glowy eyes wider than usual, looking kind of funny, and then the panic hit.
There were shouts and screams, lunges for the Portal, calls to close the Portal... but it was way past that point now, as the weight of the Warp was coming down, flooding into it, forcing it open even if they cut the power –
The sky went all them unnatural shades of colors from three spectrums, and tough-as-nails dark elves screamed in horror at what was coming. I thought it pretty damn funny myself.
The sky came down, and reality with it.
Oh, and I jumped.
I landed right behind the four screaming strippers I'd picked out, my Tails wound around them and the stingers plunged into the back of their heads. Their screams of horror became gurgles of transcendent joy, and the daggers tickling the edges of my tails in flashes of reflex fell limp as they looked at the wonders of the skies and began to drool.
My Null extended out around me, locking down reality, as everything around me literally Went to Hell.
Drow died in artistic styles. Eroded by the wind, spontaneous explosions, liquefying, petrifying and crumbling, instant combustion, implosions, reality-breaking spirals of flesh-popping proportions, sucked into point singularities, grabbed by invisible jaws and devoured whole, hurtling by at speeds which eroded them to nothing, fading away as their screams lingered on, swarms of various kinds of things gathered to them and ate them away, specters gathered and dispersed leaving nothing behind...
Really, I didn't see any two die in quite the same way. Impressive.