Nightmare war is still Hell...

“You hold them spears firm! Anyone who lowers that spear gets one up his ass to encourage them to do it right!”

The line of spears extended out, ready to meet the charge of the incoming Fey.

The loose mob of quicklings and redcaps had been unprepared to hit a phalanx, and the men were warned ahead of time that the quicklings might try to jump. They did, thinking to get into the middle of the mob and run around… and instead landed on ready spear and sword points as my Interdiction waited for them, they were reduced to normal speed, and died.

The redcaps were extremely strong, and wielded greataxes an ogre would be proud to use. That was fine, axes were loose formation weapons and secondary rank things, not very useful for a disciplined line of soldiers. Spears thrust, swords slashed when they got too close, and the bloodthirsty little bastards also died.

Then the spriggans inflated to giant-size. Normally, that would be about the height of the current soldiers, so it ended up being closer to their old size. That was very impressive... except it was a magical effect and could be Dispelled. The support Casters in the back, mostly loyal noblewomen, were happy to bring the magic down at an inopportune time, like right before that huge line of meat crashed into the spear line. Startled spriggans barely coming up to the chests of the spearmen suddenly found themselves running right onto layers of spears, and weren’t very happy about it.

The swordsmen flowed through the wall and gutted those stuck on the spears with swift, ruthless blows. The second line of oversized Fey crashed into the line, stomping their dying kin under their boots, and each of them inherited at least four spears to the chest and throat as they came in, sweeping with their heavy clubs and trying to break the line.

I didn’t have many cavalry, but what I had was strong enough. They slammed into the flank of the giants with a full charge, lances driving bloody and deep, while Shirley raced along the backside of the things and I hamstrung them in blurs of motion. They fell, the nightmares behind me happily ran over their heads in series, and the first fight was ours.

I didn’t give them any chance for necromancy, directly Banesharding all the dead, and urgently directing the soldiers to heap the corpses up on the unwhite fires. In counterpoint, the main force of satyrs, centaurs, werekin, and various sprites giggled loudly as they set fire to the city on the way to us.

Sparkie was humming eagerly above my shoulder, wanting to contribute. I was waiting for them to get there at the right flank, still riding Shirley. I pulled out the Autobow from Tremble’s hilt and began assembling it with the smooth clicks of much practice.

“If you want to snipe one of the little ones, or a bird that pops in too close, feel free,” I told the little ball of light. “As a matter of fact, we need to get the skull of one of them to make a proper Floating Skull for you.”

His hum throbbed with interest. “A Floating Skull is like a Weapon that a less substantial creature like you can wear. They were first designed for Lantern Archons. Basically, you infuse the Skull and fly around in it, shooting your Rays through its eye sockets. The Rays are enhanced by the power of the Skull, and so have a lot more punch than without them. Your Floating Skull is like your Sword.”

His hum changed pitch again, conveying excitement. “Yeah, I know that feeling. Need the Skull first, though. One of those pixies would be just about perfect…”

I snapped Fall up to my shoulder, and Banefires snapped to life as a quarrel made of solid force materialized on it, while the string snapped back on its own. I had a lot more range with this than my Sword, and shot smoothly, my Mask being up as good as having a scope, and my Archer Levels finally got to strut their stuff, Zen Archery adding to the stack.

One of those diving squads of pixies swooped this way and that, and suddenly a black bolt split the air, spitting three of them in a row at exactly the right moment, before dissipating in midair.

As it faded, it materialized back on Fall, ready to shoot out again, while my legs tensed as the equivalent of a +9 Strength bonus racked back the bowstring, using my legs to supply the force.

Streaks of black hurtled out at near 600 fps, and I just held the trigger down as they leapt out, reached their targets, the string snapped back into place, and the bolt rematerialized to be launched again. About one a second, maybe a little faster, as fire-carrying pixies and sprites went tumbling from the air with bloody holes in them… natural invisibility notwithstanding.

“Fido! I need one pixie corpse!” I called out, and the hellpoodle burst into a run eagerly. I nudged Shirley up slowly after him to cover him, autobolts smoothly streaking past him to give any Fey who might think of harassing him a bad day. The main army had to obey the two-minute rule, so it was closing at the speed of plot and not really in range of me or Fido as he darted out, grabbed one of the three-foot pixies in his jaws, spun agilely, and raced back to me with long strides.

A bunch of crows with ten-foot wingspans thought he might be worth harassing, and dove down from above.

I had been building Fall up for a long time by sacrificing giants’ jewelry to it, above and beyond crafting glass and bone and giants’ tendons together to make it. However, the damage I did with it was much less than with my Sword, because of my Sagedom, and the need for lots of Slots to compound the damage and give it the rate of fire to make it worth using.

Still, +Soulbound Bane/Fey Force Speed got a respectable amount of damage out there, especially with Power Draw yoking it to my working Strength for some extra punch. It was also a Profound Weapon, so I got Zen Archer Monk advances on the base of d8, so a functional 2-16, +4/+4 +2-12, +2/+2 Improved Crit and Threat for Spec, +9 for Strength. Yeah, 4-28 +11 was enough to one-shot an average soldier in the real world, but everything here was Olympian, with generally double normal Hit Dice and Health, and my poking them didn’t really amount to much individually.

But flicking it to Swarmbane meant it worked perfectly fine against flocks of crows. My Swarmbane Amulet enhanced it right alongside, spreading out the damage to trigger Banes on multiple crows, sending them tumbling from the air as their wings were shredded. Even if they didn’t die, dozens of the birds lost the ability to fly.

Shirley turned and raced back to the line with Fido, who held up the corpse proudly for me to see. I grabbed the pointed hair of the dead fey, who still had a wicked smile even in death, and lopped off its head smoothly. Fido and Shirley had themselves a quick snack, easily crunching the frail bones of the fly-winged wee Fey creature

---.

Ziiiip, and suddenly the Fey army was in range, with the Elementals running rampant tearing stuff down, the centaurs starting a firing line, and the satyrs forming a rough and undisciplined horde of spears.

The archery cavalcade was useless, as the soldiers turtled up with shields and the cavalry were out of the line of fire. The rain of arrows continued for four volleys before the impatient satyrs howled and charged.

Stand was limned by a force screen, easily dealing with all the arrows coming my way, protecting Shirley and Fido, too, who were hovering close by. Fall shrank down to hand crossbow size. It restricted the damage I could do, but I continued sending bolts flying out one-handed into the satyrs, even while the tinking of hundreds of arrows clattered down around me.

Heck, I even managed to down a couple of the bastards with repeated hits. As they charged in, the missile fire let up, I went back to two hands… and with the shorter range, my rate of fire picked up nicely.

Free Naming Karma for the Autobow!

I couldn’t auto-kill, but I could with a crit, and I was shooting fast enough for three archers all by myself. Screaming satyrs were closing in, ignoring those who tumbled down with quarrels in sensitive portions of their anatomy, and they charged the spear line… and me, anchoring it there on my white hellpoodle.

Who they forgot could breathe on them.

One, Two.

Fido cooked them, Shirley froze them. Sixty-foot cones of hellfire and hellrime devoured the front ranks of the satyrs. They were tough enough to survive one of those, but not both. Dozens of them died just like that. I finally shoulder-holstered Fall in hand crossbow form, Tremble slapped eagerly into my hand, and I raced into the middle of them.

At the same time, the line of soldiers surged at my command, stepping and forming Archer Stand Thrusts, and spit the startled satyrs like the goat-men they were, breaking the charge and beginning the real defense of remorseless spears plied from behind locked shields.

I hit the back line of werekin clawing and growling in their anthro forms, said noises turning to shrieking as Anathema turned the silver-coated edge of Tremble into not just a DR punch, but a magical allergy that burned them as their magical defense failed. I gave them no mercy, and Shirley wove through the press with Fido, focusing on grabbing limbs and presenting the owners to me for instant decapitation.

The Elementals came rolling in as the press of the Fey was held up by the solid butchery going on at the front line. The crows above swooped down, and the erlking had his bow in hand, as if he was going to join the fun.

Then they all hit my Interdiction, along with the sneaky sprite flyers who thought they would come in from behind and mess up the back line with a sneak attack.

Overweight Fey and birds plummeted awkwardly from the sky, including a very startled erlking. Even the air Elemental was forced down to the ground, because it was actually made of compressed air and had weight and mass. It was forced out of the tornado form it was using to smash through rows of houses on the way to hitting us from the side, and I shouted to the cavalry to cut it down.

Sure, the thing had DR 10/-. I had enjoyed receiving many, many lance attacks by my enemies, so let’s see how it liked One Strike Charges coming in on it!

The erlking fell from three hundred feet up and smashed through one of the few remaining intact roofs, hard. I was blatantly amused. Fido and Shirley caused some more havoc by breathing into the middle of the Fey press, cooking and cooling dozens of them, while I hacked us a path through the clustered mess of them and closed in on the earth Elemental before it could move in.

It wanted to merge into the ground, but my Interdiction didn’t let it earthglide, and it could only rise back up to fight me after it tried and failed to flee, rather amusingly bashing its head into the ground. This one had the form of a crude rocky lizard, its powerful attack looked like a bite as I smashed it aside with Stand, and then hit it with a Null Strike that undid the Summoning magic that had brought it here, instantly sending it back to whatever the Dream equivalent of its home plane was. Tons of rock and stone crumbled down as it de-animated, dropping right into the ground below like water into a pond.

No, these weren’t a real threat to me, either. The water Elemental boar over there was trying to roll past me and get in contact with the river bank a bit behind us, possibly to bring up floodwaters or a great wave. It didn’t make it, as I chased it down and sent its spirit to the depths and its body of tons of water down the drains.

The fire Elemental monkey started hurling flames at me, rather clever of it. Fido dashingly intercepted them, which got Shirley all happy and defensive of her mate, so she ran up and breathed on the thing point-blank.

Yeah, Elemental vulnerability there, guy. Now, taking double damage from a 12d6 blast of cold wasn’t going to kill it, but it really didn’t like it, and Shirley fearlessly charged in so I could chop the rude burning monkey apart.

I glanced back at the battle line, which was slowly and methodically cleaning up the Fey infantry. I turned to look at the centaur archers, who had hung back and tried sniping at me, uselessly as Stand blithely intercepted and deflected everything.

There was no reason for me to stay where I was. I grinned, turned Shirley, and headed for the horse-men, Tremble blaring out some very specific kinds of death that were coming for them in Fey.

I was waiting as the first arrow came whistling down from the bow of the erlking. I batted it away, not even glancing at him, as dozens of frantic centaur arrows bounced off Stand, and then the centaurs were grabbing for their greatclubs and spears as I was on them.

Fido was very quick to keep me between him and any arrow fire, busying himself dragging at hooves and arms before a One-Two blew down the centaur lines, letting them feel the satyrs’ pain.

I deflected two more arrows from the erlking into his own troops, Tremble mocked his archery Very Loudly, and the Fey warlord cursed, smashed through a second-story window, and landed not too hard with help from his wings, although his inability to fly was plainly annoying him.

He drew the great wooden sword at his side, and charged at me.