The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

The zombies were quick to help me out. I cycled a new Dart in every three seconds, instead of two every six, leaving me one in reserve all the time.

The corpses of the zombies built up pretty quickly, and as they burned and fed one another, I soon had a vivic bonfire going on down there. A couple zombies tried to climb over it as it started to rage, and didn’t get past the turn at the foot of the stairs before they joined the misting flames of the vivic fire.

I naturally wasn’t going to wait up there for something to happen, and moved slowly down the steps until I could see more of them. Bereft of strategy and most senses of self-preservation, they were more excited to see me and try to eat my brains than to flee or duck for cover.

I walked right up on the vivic flames of their buddies and proceeded to start head-shotting them, one every three seconds, alternating sides, and spreading out the love as they naturally overbalanced forward, spreading a line of vivic fire backwards towards their entry points.

When I had ten feet of space in both directions, I actually moved out into the entry hall, backing away towards the kitchens, while I blocked the main door with a few burning corpses after they’d trashed it, and filled up the front room with burning dead.

I didn’t shoot any outside, as I didn’t want the vivic fire to be seen from a distance, and really wanted to get those curtains back up as fast as possible.

It actually didn’t take too awful long for the undead outside to clamber inside, and the front room to become a heavily burning white mistfire of vivus. I hauled a couple corpses back into the main pile, unblocked the front door, and the remaining three outside kind of stumbled in.

I headshot the first two, and the last one followed me right onto the major mound of them and burned out trying to cross it, collapsing as the negative energy on it was consumed and it began to quickly fall apart like the others.

Ignoring the ones in the back held up by the stacked dead in the connecting room there, I salvaged the curtains, fixed them with Prestidigitation, and quickly hung them back up to disguise the light of the vivus from the front.

There was a moan from all the zombies at once, and I froze for just a second, then snapped up Detect Undead, scanning quickly.

Something stronger than the zombies was approaching from the back. I watched it come right through the wall in the back of the house, and pause as it saw the vivus and burning corpses. It started to rise through the ceiling, and there was a sepulchral moan as it ran into the burning wight directly above it and got burned there.

It got out of the house sideways, moved up, and looked in a window to the bedroom there. Seeing nothing, it came inside, poked its head through the open doorway, and saw the burning zombies and the open trapdoor to the attic.

Instead of taking the open hole, it went straight up, and naturally found nothing up there.

The moans of the zombies below must have attracted it. It moved out into the upper hall, staying high to avoid the corpses, and hovered at the edge of the stairs, clearly not eager to try the burning unwhite bonfire below...

I tracked it as it moved to the side, down, out, and came flowing through the wall... and materialized right in front of me.

Just a shadow, but I popped it with a full mess of no-miss Shards as it swung at me instinctively.

The searing not-cold spreading through my arm was not welcome, and it fell limp to my side, unable to sustain its own weight. I swore as an explosion of vivus blew it apart in front of my face, glaring at my limp arm, but I didn’t actually need to gesture much to cast my Shard spells.

Lucky freaking hit; I’d even put up the Force Armor from my Ring Domain, just in case!

I didn’t take the time to Assay. I grit my teeth, noted there were only ten zombies in back to kill, and started for them.

I basically walked my shots down them, headshotting them as they crowded into the kitchen, and turned them all into burning dry flesh.

I Detect 0’d for valuables on the undead; the wight actually had a golden necklace and cufflinks, plus a diamond ring. Minor jewelry like wedding bands was on the others, somehow clinging to them despite their bony fingers, maybe just for an intrepid adventurer to collect? Minor TK whisked them all to my hands, no bending over and working them off fingers for the spellcaster...

I dropped it all in my purse, cast Invisibility to Undead as I exited the back door, closed it behind me, and ran away awkwardly and stiffly.

My Strength was down to 5! I grimaced at the lucky hit that had basically half-paralyzed my right side. Ability damage sucked almost as bad as level drain, and I wasn’t in shape to take either of them!

I had ten minutes and ticking to find another place to hole up. At the speed I was moving, that was basically a half-mile...

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There were other undead moving around, just not many of them. The mostly-dead foliage didn’t really screen anything, although the bare trunks provided some cover, just in case.

This time I found a larger farmhouse off away from the main road more. I went all around it, scanning it for any occupants, found none, and went inside carefully, scanning again once inside, especially down through the floor to the basement.

I was clear.

I felt the Invisibility wear off, snarled at my useless arm, and could only wonder if this meant I wouldn’t be able to make it to the wall over there tomorrow.

Yeah, this was gonna suck, and right now, there was nothing I could do about it.

I eyed the Disk spell in my memory.

It would only last an hour, but even if it only moved three hundred feet a minute on its own, that was three miles in an hour, and it wouldn’t hurt my feet, and didn’t care about the terrain.

I should be able to cast it twice if need be, so even if I could only make it a few miles, that should be enough.

I closed my eyes and swore to myself, looking out the window, and hoping no trackers were coming after me in numbers. I’d done what I could to neutralize my scent trail, but I was the only living thing in a negative-energy rich landscape. There was only a chance, and all I could do is keep Detect Undead running to prevent a surprise attack, hope a demon didn’t come in at me, and wait in a fugue of awareness as the night ticked slowly by.

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I thought I was in the clear, with under an hour to go, when the hunting pack of ghouls, led by a ghast, came sniffing along my trail towards the house.

Floating above them was a wraith.

I definitely wasn’t going to wait inside to get surrounded by them. One of the windows was already open, with the screen off. I put my good hand in it, pulled up my Shards, and I let fly with four of the five at the wraith.

The floating blob of negative energy clearly wasn’t expecting to be sniped. 8d6+34 damage smacked into it, and blew it into vivus. One Shard hit the ghoul moving on all fours in the lead, and blew his head right off.

The undead all froze for a second, and then, screaming with joy, the dozen of them bounded for the house... the ghast decisively ordering its lessers ahead of it.

Five more Shards slid into place as I counted Valences, and that oversized ghast, definitely bigger than most of those I’d seen, ate all 9d6+ 25 touch attack damage, and was blown apart as well.

The charging ghouls faltered as their boss died, the reins of control slipping, and with it purpose and discipline. Then they remembered something living was in the house ahead of them, and resumed their charge, making for the windows.

With an undead’s lack of care for pain, they clambered up the sides of the house, and smashed in the biggest windows. The two in front of me promptly got Darts to the face, and were blown back down, but all the windows were getting mangled, and very hungry purple forms were crashing through them and the doors.

Ten to go... I backed up the stairs, and as the first one came into view, I promptly blew its head off. The next two, bits of glass sticking in them from the windows, leapt down the hallway, and I sniped one in midjump, sending it tumbling and burning as it lit off. Its companion smashed into the turn of the wall, and raced up the steps I was back-tracking up, just in time to receive the next Dart to the face and go crashing back down the stairs, forming a burning obstruction at the bottom.

The yips and shrieks and howls of the ghouls should have been frightening, but all they did was let me know where they were. I took three steps down, aimed, and when the first one poked around its head from the kitchen to observe the dead one in the hall, I blew its head off.

This time three of them charged me, and I held my shots until two got to the stairs, while one went clawing at the railing, trying to get up and over it. I shot both of the two at the bottom of the stairs, adding to the clump of dead there, and then just stood there and watched as the last one tore off the weakened railing, clawed itself up almost right next to me, and when its eyes met mine, they dropped to the black and silver Dart that popped up on my hand.

Its corpse went flying back without a head, neck stump blazing, as the last five forced their way into the house and observed the carnage in front of them, and that suspiciously vivid too-white fire.

They started calling back and forth in Necrus, coordinating what they were going to do, moving through the rooms to try to get closer to the stairs.

Very calmly, I moved back down the stairs, and stood behind the three corpses that were blazing white in front of me.

One of them yelled to charge, and bounced around the corner of the wall in the kitchen, taking the first Dart right in the face. Its companion behind crashed into it, bowling it right over, and naturally lost its momentum. I turned left for the first one coming from the living room, shot it, and as the two behind it came up, I was backing up the stairs, and they had to leap through a small bonfire of cheery vivus to get to me, or sit on top of a headless one to climb up the wall to my feet, and die where it had.

Three seconds, and both of them leapt through the fire, igniting themselves with a howl, but it was long enough for me to pull back up the stairs and turn the corner away from them, backing down the hallway towards the bathroom at the end.

Three more seconds as the two bounded up the stairs and turned towards me, the third one was right behind poking his head out...

I sighed and blew my last Slot, bring up the jetsilver Shards blazing bright, assigning one each to the two burning in front of me, and two to the smart one behind.

The impacts sent their bodies crashing against the walls, purple moving corpses blown right through, while the one back there had its head and arm blown off.

I had the emergency Slot from my Ring left, and my Wizard spells, and an emergency wizard spell.

My, didn’t I feel so equipped to face the big bad world...