“I’m afraid that my patience has a limit,” the flawlessly beautiful and undefeated Bladewitch Mistress of the drow replied as she continued towards me, weaving her way through four goblins, who all lost their heads in passing.

“Happily, this isn’t about you!” I smiled cheerfully, still facing her, my multiple limbs still firing in all directions and wreaking carnage around us... save for Chalice’s soulsword, glowing golden in my hands and idly slicing this way and that, sending Shards crashing through heavy weapons and into lucky hobgobs in carapace armor, shearing down a trio of them in one stroke. “You’re free to follow along; it’s a free world, after all!”

And I turned around and resumed pulling away from them.

I saw the net launcher go off, Faith caught it telekinetically as the micro-mesh unfolded, and instead of spreading out into a flesh-cutting web on a force-guided path towards me, it basically unfolded right in the path of the drow who launched it. The Bladewitch shouted as she dove right into it as it was held in place, and the metal collapsed tightly around her instantly, defying the daggers she tried to cut it with.

Faith politely hurled her thirty yards thataway, where a gob crawl-tank was raging in at forty mph, spraying us all with happy exploding gyro fire. She screamed as one of the gyros clipped her side, and then she rammed right into its left track. Her scream vanished under a few dozen tons of weight coming down upon her very happily, and while her Soak was actually enough to live through that, the urgobs in power armor running behind the tank promptly unloaded on her at point-blank range with streams of fusion fire that cooked her into charcoal rather quickly.

“How rude!” I mentioned, as I slid around a scooter full of goblins just in time for them to get in the way of the tank’s cannon and get blasted into squealing oblivion. “You might have noticed this is not the arena. I advise you not try anything stupid while I’m busy.”

They were wearing grav-gear, had enhanced kinetics, internal psi-boosting, and were still having major problems keeping up with me, despite the fact that I was the one clearing the way and deciding their course. They looked at one another, and Madame Lolith, who frowned sharply.

I wasn’t shooting at them. Logically speaking, the sheer volume of fire I was putting out should have quickly overwhelmed them, and forced even her back to find cover. She watched my Tails punching out Spikes, Paten and Host crackling with the lightning being fed from my hands and scything through everything with totally relentless precision, and slowly realized that the only reason they were still alive was because I wasn’t bothering to kill them.

“You are very confident in yourself!” she called out, and I watched her movements change, from a kind of hard-charging pursuit to something looser, more predatory, and instead of getting past all the goblins, she began to alter course to take them out in passing.

Her other two coven members noticed the change, and had no resistance to the change in priorities. Goblins were as worth the slaughter as anything else, and soon green blood was flying in lethal arcs as tumbling, gliding, racing drow Badewitches began to desport themselves in performance massacre.

They were melee specialists, and had scarcely anything ranged to speak of, which was just an eyeroller for me. Battlefield of the far future, if you didn’t have ranged combat options, what kind of an idiot were you? Sure, sure, melee attacks had their place, but life was not a series of duels, when it came down to it.

Ah, well, let them be fanatics about their path. It just made them easier to kill, in the end, to an all-arounder like me.

They went about their carnage with the fearlessness of those who knew they’d just be decanted out of a Vat by their Necrochemysts if they died.

-----

I suppose you could call it a hag’s night out. It was kind of entertaining watching some adept finesse fighters cut swathes through hapless goblin runties, occasionally a black-armored set of hobgoblins, and even inserting knives in delicate places in power-armored urgobs.

Alas, they didn’t have Arsenal-bearing Weapons capable of accessing Revitalizing Strikes, nor were they Sustained, or with Con Stats of 50+.

As a result, they got tired, slowed down, and the numbers of luck and fate caught up to them.

Skillwise, no goblin could possibly shoot them. The combination of dex scores, dodge bonuses, and deflection from psychic goodies made them basically untouchable by most goblins, and the amount of ‘hits’ that would have to land were basically rather inhuman, given the amount of energies running through their slender bodies.

Sheer volume of fire coming in from all directions was a different thing, however.

My Damage Reduction was floating on 26/Holy Silver, 13/- absolute, before my Nog Armor. Random hits couldn’t hurt me at all, and they could drop all the flames on me they wanted to, I was long since immune to them.

Madame and her two assistants weren’t so lucky.

Witch #1 died by mines, as the goblin carrying them leapt right at her and pulled six cords at once. She was fast, but that much shrapnel to the face did for her rather violently, and got a lot of admiring cheers from the surrounding gobbos.

Witch#2 eventually got tired, slow, and when the urgob came out of stealth with his power claws all a-sizzling, didn’t get out of the way in time. A few psychic defenses flared as she was smashed fifty feet through the air, and a half-dozen other gobbers opened up on her in midair. She didn’t quite reach the ground before two rockets found her and blew her into bloodspray and ash.

I waited for Madame to chew her way through the ambushers, laying down a field of covering fire two hundred meters in radius while slowly spinning atop a wall, popping gobbers like beer bottles filled with nasty green stuff. The higobs and urgobs who’d pulled off the ambush died in mysterious ways as she spun past them, and all their armor didn’t seem to help at all.

“I see you have run me out of witnesses to our duel,” she said calmly, and I smiled winningly.

“Watching gobbos blow apart arrogant Badewitches is kind of fun, too,” I winked at her, and she just snorted in disbelief at my casual attitude.

“What is the purpose behind your mass slaughter of the creatures?” she sniffed, as she ran through a line of gobs, and they all fell down behind her. Even her hair was fully capable of taking them down, lined as it was with weighted monofilaments and stuff.

“Morale tanking, command line disruption, drawing attention to myself, following lines of command, battlefield experience, akashic dread stamping, endurance testing, lightfoot practice, weapon testing and modification, courting death, dance rehearsals, generating new song material, examination of goblin psyches under pressure, stanza creation, fate-testing, luck-spitting, equipment destruction, technological observation and evaluation, style analysis...” I replied in a long breath as I bounced and continued an unending array of slaughter in all directions.

The goblins were definitely not wanting to be in this area. Unhappily for them, they couldn’t flee faster than I could run after them.

“Song material?” she asked, instantly seizing upon the only important point.

Tremble, oh oooo oh, Tremble, she comes...

I watch the shift she made as she heard the song, even if it was in Goblin. It was gentle and carried with terrible clarity through this battlefield of explosions, flames, screams, and whizzing hard light, too.

As for the goblins, I watched their skin definitely pale a few shades as the dirge swept past them.

Didja see her arrive, Gak-tooth?

No I did’n.

That’s cause everyone died who did.

Der brains jez popped and dey iz dead!

How many did she kill?

Dat number’s still growing

It’s still growing...

She’s here, she’s here, akkkK!

Tremble, oh oooo oh, Tremble, she comes...

Wow didja see dat beast explode?

Da light just reached out

And boomdead it got.

Da light, dat cursed light,

Can barely see it sweeping past

Pulsing, no burns, only curse

Da eye is pon us, see it see it

It’s comin dis way akkkK!

Tremble, oh oooo oh, Tremble, she comes...

Dat gold, it cut dat ur right in two!

Don’t talk, she might see!

Don’t look, she might hear!

Don’t fart, she might feel!

Don’t move, she might smell!

Da fire, it took her,

An she did’n burn at all!

Purp and whites and blood akkkK!

Tremble, oh oooo oh, Tremble, she comes...

She waz spinning

Or! She wuz dancing, ya git,

Ya seen it, da pretty lights

Goin’ in allz directions

Gobs dying and popping t’see

No chances to scream

Only to diez

I heard all Argiz’ army-akkkK!

Tremble, oh oooo oh, Tremble, she comes...

---

Madame Lolith listened very carefully, and at the same time she watched the fear spreading, as stanza after stanza, some stolen from their own coms, from conversations I’d heard as I leapt past, just to synch it more closely to their own Akasha, rippled out, and the faces of the goblins, ALL the goblins, changed and blanched and grimaced... and trembled...