“Whoooo!” Grym called out, swaying as the Wagon beneath him juked sideways. A tree, whirling end over end in their direction, crashed to the ground and tumbled and rolled right past them as they headed off on an angle, shattered branches flying everywhere.

An unnatural cry rolled over the landscape. Limned in a half-dozen shades of phosphorescent paint, the unnatural monstrosity thundering across the rolling hills after them let out an impossibly shrill scream for such a big creature, the cry pounding at their heads. Tentacles grabbed at a jutting boulder, heaving it off the ground as the creature keened from three mouths spaced unevenly about its mass, the gleaming of five scattered eyes seeming to be rather angry.

A shining Bolt plunged deep into one of those eyes, and the insectile legs propelling the elephantine bulk of the creature along seemed to shiver once in reaction. The keening tore at their minds again, but the only reply was two more Bolts streaking into the mass of the godless monstrosity pounding after them, punching right through the unnatural toughness of its hide and finding interesting things to rip apart in its impossible anatomy.

“Left!” Verd called back over her shoulder, and Tabi veered away as that rock was heaved in their direction. It had to weigh at least a ton, but it still cleared fifty yards in the air, smashing to the ground very loudly where they would have been if the Horse hadn’t shunted sideways at her command.

Tabi eyed the rock bouncing along the stony ground ahead of them, and shook his head as he kept his pace.

He actually wasn’t running very hard. After all, he wasn’t trying to outrun the thing.

Grym and Master Feist were up on the roof, the unnaturally smooth ride making it easy for them both to use heavyfoot to keep their balance. They were using the Autobows to send shining Quarrels back into the glowing target that was a Starspawn.

Why the Shadowknife hadn’t brought its lifeline to an end, they didn’t know, but that was fine. The Umbral Bolts Hazé had made up for just this situation were ignoring its thick natural armor, no different than they would a dragon, and punching deep and true. Wasn’t like they could miss something so damn big...

The starspawn had come crumping through the scattered hills while invisible, thinking that it had found some sort of easy snack in the Wagon. It had not been expecting to be sensed and run away from so adeptly, or have these glowing Quarrels of nebulous light stabbing deep into its innards.

It had tried to Teleport on top of them, and found that was impossible with the Wards around the Wagon up, which rather shut down its most effective ambush tactic. When the bulbed bolts loaded down with alchemical dyes splashed over it and took away its natural invisibility, that had shut down its other natural advantage.

Well, other than being over twenty feet tall, with six massive insectile legs that could propel it much faster than a man could run... but not faster than a Horse.

Given that it could regenerate, the Bolts slamming into it would normally be useless, just a waste of magic. However, the Interdiction radiating out from the Wagon in front of it was pressing down on its multi-dimensional existence, and preventing it from drawing energies from across the Veil to Heal itself. It had tried bringing down mighty Curses on its foes on the Wagon, and the little things had the temerity to dodge them all!

It had not noticed the Seal tossed off to the side almost a half-mile back, which suddenly lit up with a silvery light.

There was a crack of thunder, and something streaked past it, startling enough to center two of its remaining eyes on the source. A couple of its mouths commented on the event in babbling Aklo as something Linejumped past and ahead of it slightly, startling it enough to bring it to a splay-footed halt.

A human woman was standing on the air in front of it, thirty yards away, looking full into its madness-inspiring gaze. The abomination could easily see through her magical disguise, but that didn’t stop its caution, and it instinctively tried to retreat.

The Interdiction was still locking it down as the Wagon ahead abruptly slowed and turned around.

The disguised young human lifted the Staff in her hand, and it flared with a soft light that somehow dominated the harsher sunlight behind her.

Twin circles of twelve multi-colored crescents of force on her right hand... two more matching flaring up on her left.

The abomination had just about enough time to try and Dispel the basic magical spell that had been juiced to a degree it had never seen when the Shards converged into a softly streaming Ray that hit a prism in front of each of her hands, and promptly split apart into a pair of purifying streams of energy.

Four Rays of silvery, almost wind-like energy sliced into the creature, converging like lines on a target and meeting in its off-center of mass.

An anatomy highly dependent on a multi-dimensional existence had no resistance against the power of the Cerulean Seal within that attack, the Banefire, the anathema, and the pure raw amount of Sacred Force energy locking it down and ripping through it all at once.

It set up a great howl of pain and mad enlightenment as the force-rays shattered into a million fractal waves, and ripped it apart like it was made of paper.

Flaming, vivic-burning hybrid thing sired by something beyond the stars flew everywhere within thirty yards, not quite reaching where Hazé was watching it. She watched the remains fall rather too slowly to the ground, still not wanting to obey the laws of physics, but the streams of vivus were rapidly sucked into the Land, staining the grass and soil temporarily white.

Well, there are things you can make out of powerful Aberrants, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen here today, she considered wryly.

The Wagon trundled to a halt just below her, and she drifted down to land on the roof. She took note of Grym and Feist on the roof and Verd standing on the driver’s seat, where she had been looking back to play spotter. “Where are Veis and Amber?” she asked calmly.

“Oh, they decided to track the thing back to its lair, and see what interesting nonsense they might find there, big sister!” Verd smiled.

Hazé mused to herself that she should have expected such actions, and made a ‘lead the way’ gesture in resignation. Tabi knickered audibly, and pranced through the remains of the abomination proudly, cracking one of the ten-foot-long lower legs under his hooves with emphasis as they headed back in the direction they’d come.

-----------

“It seems creatures relying on telepathy to warn them and communicate don’t work well when Nulls surprise them,” Feist noted, admiring the dead tentacle-faced ape-thing that had had its throat smoothly cut and spine impaled. Two guardian creatures that looked like legged worms had been sliced expertly open, and whatever passed for innards were burning brightly.

“Kneal-vurms,” Grym murmured on seeing the things with insides that looked like squashed brains. “Third Herald?” he asked Hazé.

“Aye, the Worm of the Gibbous Moon.” Hazé followed the dwarf and hyn closely, Staff ready, but instead of finding things to fight, only found more bodies cleanly dispatched. “Those two are getting cocky in their old age, Verd,” she noted to the green-locked spear-carrier at her side.

“Aye, cranky and irascible as all get out,” Verd agreed without batting an eye. “It was such a nice day, scenic landscape, birds flying, and they just had to spoil it by putting that ugly thing in the middle of it. Veis was VERY pouty about it.”

“It probably drove all the birds away within a mile. I can see how that might upset her,” Hazé agreed blandly. “That is some good bolt-work I’m seeing.”

“They’ve been practicing. They love those hand-bows.”

“I prefer a good knife at that range,” Feist interjected quietly from ahead of them. “Crossbows are for sniping.”

“Hrn!” Grym grunted, and everybody smiled, knowing that was shorthand for That’s the proper distance for a Hammer to the skull, and you all know it.

More kneal-worm ‘hounds’ were found, gutted and burning like those before them, and an open door at the far end of a chamber covered in Runes that beat at the eyes and minds led to stairs leading upwards.

“I don’t recall a building above, Master Grym?” Hazé asked softly, running her hands over the stone after they hastened across the chamber. The Rockborn frowned and reached out to touch it himself.

“Jah,” he agreed, stroking it once. “Dwarf-work.”

“The races of the Third Herald are known for working with fallen Rockborn and Gnomes,” Hazé commented, and the Clanhammer of Dauer exhaled long and low. Slag at his side began to slowly rumble with the sound of a burning furnace.

“Dhen best ve abut killink dem, Lady,” he said softly, his glittering eyes showing understanding, but no mercy. The Dwarven clans of the mountains had suffered greatly at the hands of the Rosencrux Empire, and being mad enough to work with the Aberrants was certainly possible once a close-knit clansdwarf lost enough of their kin. If that meant bringing down a Borror from Beyond and breeding an abomination to ravage the lands of humans, that was perfectly all right to those crazy for revenge.

--------

The dwarves they’d run across were like caricatures of proper Rockborn: shriveled and hairless, with eyes like obsidian balls, almost the size of gnomes.

“Derro. Rockborn fallun tu de Aberrant.” Grym’s quiet rumble didn’t hide his loathing, his glittering eyes flashed. “Gut wurk dey mayd ov dem...”

Feist circled the three dead derro once, the smile of an approving teacher on his lips. “Aye. See this here? Amber led with a cut to the wrist, took off this one’s hand. The others looked over, and my little Veis poked this one’s inner ears. They all looked back, and Amber finished this one up with her Thorn to the base of his skull, and did a sliding lunge to the heart with this one.” He mimed all the motions, ending up behind the single mutate dwarf with a small bloody hole punched through the mail on its back.

“Smooth, quick, lethal,” Hazé agreed with a nod. She looked around the room, drifted over to a table strewn with papers. She glanced over them, turned her head away sharply, and gathered them up with a wave of her hands before stowing them away. “Moon Worm, sure enough. How they brought in an abomination, I don’t know...”

“They are only a few minutes ahead,” Feist judged, and the quartet ghosted down the hallway in the hillside lair of these mad once-dwarves.

------

They all heard a quiet gasp ahead, the stuttering sound of something trying to speak as its life leaked out its throat. Unnatural feet shifted awkwardly, and something hard wrenched into meat and bone with a grunt. Steel cut the air, meat was sliced through, and there was a grunt as small but wiry hands bent and pulled.

They turned the corner as Elan came whipping back, and as Veis levered the unnatural head backwards, the Rapier finished cutting the thick head of the larval spawn from its writhing chest.

Both girls hopped back as three different streams of not-quite-blood were vented into the air, and the corpse of the spawn seemed to shift and fall, as if it was too heavy to actually exist. It collapsed to the ground, something broke under the robes that hid its lower legs, and it seemed to deflate in place.

Veis pointed, Amber turned, and both of them waved at the new arrivals.

“Nice work,” Hazé said for all of them. “But you forgot about the Construct.” She pointed up, and the two girls snapped their eyes upwards as the mechanical, spidery-looking thing clinging to the ceiling above them began to move.

“Shit!” Amber spoke, and she and Veis dove in opposite directions as the creature dropped down on them, the two barely escaping the reach of splayed razor-sharp limbs. Without bothering to turn over, the seven legs of the mechanical Leng Spider inverted it, and lifted it from the Rune-carved floor to face the rest of them.

A burning Hammer roared past them, smashed into the spider-Construct, and seared and warped one of the seven legs at the impact, pushing the limb back a foot or so as it did so before spinning back to Grym’s hand.

Feist rose up underneath the creature from its own shadow, long knives plunging into two joints, ping ping, scrapping them and making it very hard for the thing to move with the agility it was normally capable of. It bounced toward Grym, Hazé, and Verd, only to drive a faceted, spinning eye well onto the glowing tip of Verd’s Spear, and then its massive body smashed into the Ward Wall that Hazé waved up.

The force barrier cracked, and then shattered as Grym stepped full into it, driving his burning, roaring Hammer down onto the delicate structures of its jaws, shattering them like glass and sending them spinning away. A plunging pedipalp drove for his skull and ran right into his raised Shield, gouging it, but failing to pierce through.

Verd shouted and drove forwards, actually lifting the head of the creature off the ground with her impaling Spear as it tried to scuttle away, and found its third leg on the left reduced to uselessness, overbalancing it to the side.

Grym stepped in towards the vulnerable thorax joint, and Slag came roaring in with a crash of a hammer on anvil, once, twice, and shattered the exposed gears there with a scream of melting metal. The spider shattered in two, and reverberations sent the gears and pistons within it flying in all directions, rendering its parts broken and useless.

Hazé cleared her throat and tapped her booted foot at Amber and Veis, who looked rather crestfallen.

“Um, the dead guy did manage to attract all our attention,” Amber managed to say, a little ashamed. She looked up, wrinkling her nose, and shook her blood-red hair. “Okay, okay, we didn’t look up like we should have...”