So, it was just the three of us crashing our way forwards, working on the assumption that having nine hundred miles of ground to cover, losing most of the leadership, and most of those who fought being dead put a severe crimp in the ability of dear Hagmom to actually tell what was coming. All those Nulls totally effing up the scrying and divinations would be giving them some nosebleeds.

Really, all we had to do was show some Helices, and all them stories about the glorious slaughter of the Void Brothers from a few relative years ago resurfaced urgently, and well, hey, they could see us coming. We were like, Right There. Took down two major Obelisks with overwhelming force, annihilated two Hag Empresses, and treated Mu Spores like our personal gold mines. What was not to believe? We were just that awesome, and we were coming for them.

There were a lot of dragons in the skies as we started killing our way forwards, and needless to say they started gathering in on us as we worked our way through the startled hill and swamp giants forces that were in this area. Yeah, yeah, there were ogres, and we breezed on by, and then there weren’t any ogres.

There were a lot of drac-blooded dinos, drakes, crocs, lizards, and whatnot, and man, my heart was bleeding sooooo much watching all that good fine leather and scale and blood and hearts and brains and teeth and fundamentallums going up en vivus. It, it was like gold getting dumped down a white hole, and I had to grit my teeth at the sheer waste of it all.

After all, we had better than four hundred miles to cover, so dilly-dallying to loot properly just wasn’t something we could afford. I waaaaaaahed silently as I hacked through one black-scaled and very overconfident mire dragon’s head. I mean, it would only take me minutes... and there was a squirming pack of giant black-scaled and winged crocodiles coming our way, and I just couldn’t...

It didn’t make me numb, it made me angry. I started pounding out cash totals as I started to really get into the slaughter, to the endless amusement of Briggs and Brother AA, who pretended to have stern expressions and not appreciate the volumes of numbers I was running up as we killed.

Every single one of these drak-bloods was worth at least a goldweight, usually two to four. The actual dragons, at least ten!

AAAAGH...

Damn, the Land is greedy. I needed an army of telekinetic gnomes following me with adamantine butchering tools and Infinite Jars of Blood Accumulation to reap our rewards properly. Mama Land could have the rest, it would still be most of the thing... though even dragon guts were in demand for acid-resistant ropes and ties and stuff...

Still, it was carnage, a lot of it, and we got to see surprised drakes and dragons and drac-bloods falling down out of the sky so often I began to wonder if it was their default state of mind. Naturally, King Gravity was proud to lend his mighty hand to our endeavors, and The Land was right there holding steady against the vertical charges, never failing to stop them cold as The King sent them on their way.

The Wake in the sky grew bigger, and we slaughtered our way forwards, giving the Hags time to arrange a really big welcome party for us, and try to figure out what to do with us.

Naturally, I could see everything that was going on with the rest of the company. They were keeping their heads down, illusions overhead making it difficult to spot them from above, and quickly slaughtering anything down low that might raise an alarm. The area I was in was the Empire of the Hag, which meant giant-dominated, with a strong dragon presence. The area they were heading into was the reverse, with even more dragon-blooded things spread around, and the dragons were also bigger and older.

However, there was no alarm going on over there, both because of the Zone Barrier not encouraging easy exchange of information, and because the things in the sky tended to be the drakes, not the dragons, and so were of much lower intelligence, scarcely above the living-to-fill-the-belly stage.

Since they were trying to keep a low profile, it just meant watching out for fliers, avoiding large groups of stuff on the ground, and leaving any surprise encounters either dead or confused behind them. Druidic magic by Barus had Pass Without Trace going to full effect, and they weren’t even leaving a scent trail.

So, we were of the opinion they’d get to their objective way before we got to ours, which was totally okay.

We were still coming. We were still killing everything in our way. Horns were blowing, giants died. Dragons were bellowing and roaring, and going ominously silent. Those leather-winged forms in the air behind us were seeing a long line of unwhite devouring the dead behind us, and we were moving forwards at rather ridiculous speeds for things on foot.

We were old hands at this by now, used to working with one another, able to divide and come together, attack across one another, anticipate one another’s moves, and idly chat about the scenery, point out fashion deficiencies in our opponents, comment on the sour disposition of the swamp we were running through, try our hands at some new stanzas with wild variance between amusing hyperbole, outright boasting, dire solemnity, and aghast complaining at the waste going on.

Some members of the Company in the distance /overheard my running totals of foregone earnings, and hastily demanded that I add the value of their kills to the total. The elves and gnomes pounced on this, the dwarves began to double-check my math with some shock, and wow, did a bunch of new, deeply lamenting verses get spun up quick... even as they tallied the kills and somehow made accounting for slaughter and organ salvage a deeply amusing, instead of a dry, morbid, and horrible, subject.

It also really passed the time. All the good marching songs do.

(Oh woe, oh woe, another goldweight gone,

That drak done died by Jungbo’s side, and our bonus is burning whiter.

Oh weep, there be four more now lost,

Two drac-bloods flew at the Valor, too, and couldn’t even fight her.)

Was I amused that they took over my raging tally of lost mountains of goldweight-equivalents and turned it into a satire? Maaaaaybe. The only reason they didn’t actually start pulling out instruments is they didn’t want to give the enemy any warnings...

After all, Hagmom was at the top, and she’d be spouting at least a 28 Intellect if she was truly an Exemplar Hag. She’d tune to something funny going on pretty quick once she got any warnings at all, but that was fine. We expected it.

And yet, the Wake was Right There, and what it meant was really, really ominous. Did she even have a chance to fix it? Could she snip away the crushing force of Reality coming in to turn this whole Temporal Shard back to normal time within another three hundred relative days?

Maybe if her Formation was working, they could accelerate things and finish what they were trying to do...

Huh.

Odds are that the Warp Gods knew what the Hags were doing. They’d put that Rift right there just to fuck with them. There’s no way the Hags wanted that Rift right next to their base of operations, that was the height of stupidity. The Hags had helped them bring it in, and then it had popped up in the one place on the continent they didn’t want it to.

No wonder they’d been pulling all that crazy shit down south. If nothing else, they wanted to offset the pull of the Warp Gods, who might be angling to suck in this entire Zone-ring for free when the time was right.

Yeah, totally a jRaztl move. Make a deal, complete it, and screw them over anyway. What were they going to do about it?...

Except make things even more fun and interesting!

Gah. Dealing with gods was bad enough, but they just had to try it with the Warp Gods, of all entities...

-------

-So, Sama, how many Levels do you have left to gain now?-

I didn’t know if Fuzzy meant to sound smug or not, but he did have that gloating tone in his voice. He didn’t have multiple outstanding Racial Levels to take, so he could get the Exemplar Lite Template and focus on other things, like all the Brothers were doing.

-Well, the psionic shit really threw me for a loop,- I had to /confess. -Since I’m the one breaking the ground, naturally I’m going to go in whole hog on it. Unfortunately, psionic Classes were only spoken of in the game, and never seen, because nobody was psionic, and we hadn’t run into any psionic-using cultures. So I’m going in totally blind, especially as a Forsaken. I don’t even really know the benefits that I can gain.-

-So, you’re assuming the primary Classes are Tens, and work just like Casters?-

-There’s some weird shit on the psionic side I didn’t dip into, according to the Knowledge (Psionics) and Psicraft stuff I’ve been taking. The wizard and sorc equivalents are the Psion and the Psyker, very different flavors. There are two primary combat classes, the Psychic Warrior and the Mindblade: one is a Jedi knight, and the other one gets a built-in lightsaber.-

He made a mental face for me as Endure cracked into the side of a swamp draco-giant with scales and horns on its head, and let the fellow’s enhanced brains out to breathe. It had probably been a chief, now it was vivic food. Not even Gauntlet or Girdle salvage... weep, I tell you, weep!

-Getting to Ten in each of those requires four Theurgies, in addition to the max of six Levels for a Secondary Class. Happily, there’s no Arch-classes to worry about, only some super-specialized Prestige Classes I don’t really care about. The Psionic Theurge is called a Mentat, the warrior side is called a Vanguard Knight. The Psyker/Mindblade combo is called a Glorysword, while the Psion/Psy-Warrior is called a Cerebral Master. I believe if they switch off they are called a Harmonic Blade and an Ardent Mind, but, eh.-

-Sooo... forty levels in main Classes, and twenty in Theurgies, and that’s without dipping PrC’s, eh? All on top of your Racials and figuring out the Forsaken Caster Classes?-

-I wasn’t exactly planning on leaving the Zone-ring until I had to, Briggs. I have so much Karma I have to earn... and that’s not even counting the post-Ten Racial Levels. I’ve got sixteen of them to earn, too...-

-Well, I have to say you’re going to be the deepest damn Ten I’ve ever heard of, especially with all those impossible Racial Levels. I mean, seriously?-

I had to grin as a trio of ogres fell down around me, losing their balance, probably because their heads weren’t connected any more.

-Well, the Racial Levels pre-Ten aren’t individually all that expensive. As a matter of fact, I’m buying off a lot of the Stat increases with my Nog Slots, since I really don’t have a reason to hold onto them. Sure, sure, some Caster would love to Bind with me, but he can make do with my Pool, since I can’t spend that.-

-Oh, so you can do that, too?- Another fact catching him sideways. After all, with both Engrams and Slots to spend, there was a lot of room for Nogging all those away, using the advancing of the Class as the excuse to do so without violating any rules. It naturally reduced the actual cost of the Racial Class massively... but I could still only take one Level a day...

-Yeah, tried it out. There’s a rule about swapping Slots for Stats exceeding racial maxes, not to exceed 18... like gender swaps. Well, Racial Levels are about essentially raising racial Stats and upping them, so slide in those for the purchase, and yeah, swapping Slots you paid Karma for in one Class for Stat upgrades in the other really reduced the total costs down.

-So, I’m just slogging through them, one day at a time. There’s a lot to do, as you noted. But the Stat buffs are pretty nice...-

-How much do you have left?- He could technically take his Primordial Racial Levels all the way up to Twenty-One if he wanted to. He wouldn’t get the mental side of things that I had, but his brute force wasn’t going to be any worse, that was certain, especially if his size picked up.

-Pre-Ten Racial Levels I’ve got over thirty. Caster Levels, ugh, the Arches and the Theurgies plus Levels, I’ve got like twenty to dispose of. Then you add in the post-Tens and the Psion stuff for another sixty, seventy-five...-

-One hundred and ten-ish Levels in Classes nobody even knew a Forsaken could take. Damn, Sama!-

-You better swear. One hundred and twenty of them are accessible by you, too, and you’ve got another dozen Racials to go still, no?-

-Quit making me feel bad over how far I have to go while I’m gloating over how much you have to do.-

-Sorry.-

-Much better.-