"So, watcha think, Trem?" I asked him, as I woke up depressurized and certain I knew how a waffle iron at work felt.
"Until you can run on air and have an unpredictable movement path, we're hosed in that fight," Tremble said with a sigh. "That means waiting until Nine, right?"
"Oh, heck no. That's like eighty-some deaths away at this point, with all those /4's and Levels I have to take. Do you really want to wait that long to take the next step?"
"Well, no, not really, but how can we fight them?"
I sat down cross-legged easily and naturally. "Remember that we only went out into the back yard to see what was out there. Now we know. We don't really have to go out that way, in that order, do we?"
"No, we don't, so we're going to… hit the knights before they gather?"
"They might come from nowhere, but I will lay you ten-to-one odds that all those horses are indeed in the stables when we leave the house. I didn't see a barracks, it might be on the other side of the stables, or behind a wall with a gate. But there's no reason we have to fight the horses and the knights, too. Logically speaking, those horses should be in their stables inside that big barn, not all gathered up in a fighting unit, and the terrain in there is much, much to our advantage.
"The knights may come racing in as reinforcements once their mounts start to die, but until then, we're going to kill them without having to worry about twelve-foot swords coming in to cut us apart. And if they burn the place down and fill it with smoke, all the better for us!"
"So… if we'd have stayed in the front yard, they were probably our next encounter there, too…"
"Or if we stayed in the house, they would have come charging in on foot, most likely. We now know they are an encounter group, and we can set the stage for them. We just don't want to meet them on horseback.
"By turning the mounts into their own encounter, we upset the set actions of the Curse and can reduce the danger they pose with the knights."
"So, we set the stables on fire while we go in there and slaughter them." Tremble's nod was all audible, but he liked it. "Of course, we don't know the layout in there yet, but that should end up on our side, right?"
"Well, they are nightmares, so they can tread on air." I smiled despite myself. "We could, of course, try something even crazier first."
"They can walk on air?" Tremble repeated thoughtfully. "But can't you… ooohhh…" He thought about that. "Let's hit the stables first. I'm sure you'll have to Interdict them anyways, we won't be able to kill them all in there, right?"
"Truth, and whittling down their numbers should be a thing." I held up a golden ring I'd nabbed off a giant finger, and Tremble slewed into Firephasing. "Also, we need a fast attack plan on that Alchemical Golem. I think he should be the last thing we kill in the house, so we don't have to worry about things coming in so fast to help it out. I need some of that glassware and raw materials. We're just going to have to miniaturize, and renew our nabbing of comps every day we run." I already had an assortment of tools and glassware that we had bundled up tightly into his Hilt Chamber, making sure it stayed with us from death to death. It meant I didn't have a lot of room for loot, but that was a given, so I didn't care. Most of what I was looting was jewelry, anyways.
I only had a cubic foot of room to work with, so by Mithar, I was going to work with it!
---------
Being the cheeky sort that I was, I decided that a nice way to introduce myself to the forty or so cauchemar was to drop a big burning tree on them, so that's what I did.
Sir Exploding Walnut Hurler tree was completely on fire when I hacked through a significant portion of his trunk and roots, and it fell over onto that big stable that housed all them horses.
Instant whinnies of alarm as I came crashing through the windows on the second floor, followed by a whole lot of burning tree slamming down through and scattering branches, debris, and a lot of hot stuff everywhere in a very flammable situation. I mean, cauchemar ate flesh and souls, not straw, but there was still straw and hay everywhere, it was all made out of wood, and what-ho, let's add some Sama to the chaos as fire and smoke spread everywhere.
The cauchemar weren't going to be penned in, of course, they were fully sentient and capable of reacting to the situation. So, they started kicking out the doors to their stalls and running around as giant stable boys panicked and didn't know what was going on… and I killed them in blurs of motion.
The screams of the dying were kind of blending into the screams of excitement and irritation, and of course things were none-too-clear with a burning tree in there, all that smoke, and a lot of bodies zooming around trying to get out of there.
I used charges, of course, slamming into great skulls and planting Tremble, or opening up massive gashes in their throats to spew out smoking black blood. They didn't really appreciate my attention, of course, but they died in alarm so fast they didn't know what was going on. Tremble assured me they were screaming telepathically, and naturally that carried much more clearly than their screams.
Four of them came running around a corner, and I chopped off their right front legs as they did so, sending them hurtling screaming into a pile of maimed meat.
The giants were much easier targets, naturally, as I bounced around off stalls and cut throats in passing. I moved in and out of sight, maximizing my size and stealth advantage in the confusing conflagration, and even if some rapidly made their way outside… they didn't have tack or harness on, which was burning up inside the massive inferno.
I was a little surprised when the first salamanders manifested, spinning up out of a pile of cauchemar dung that was burning with some very unnatural hues. Flaming humanoid tops, giant serpent bottoms, made of fire, on fire, spears and bows ready to have some fun.
I don't know why the Curse bothered. I wasn't bothered by the flames, either, and even Olympian average salamanders weren't a threat. Now, the two bosses that popped up could be dangerous, assuming this was an open lava field where they could withdraw as needed and the spear guy could protect the bow guy.
Unfortunately for them, this was a burning stable with limited fire lanes and restricted lines of sight, and I was happy to come at them from all the angles. Bow guy died really fast, and spear guy followed him about ten seconds later as I got inside his guard and opened him up while batting aside his spear, much to his disbelief.
Eventually, I had to cease excitingly adding a fiery elemental foe to my Courtier of Death, and head outside to meet and greet the confused and angry cauchemar… and their riders, who looked to have come through a gate on the side wall of the estate that I was sure had not been there during my combat with the front lawn… but whatever.
The knights weren't completely armored as they should have been, something I was sure would be corrected as the Curse figured some way to spread the alarm to them, but they all had weapons. Unfortunately, they didn't have anyone to focus on, and instead were all massively diverted by the fire.
And me, I had a ranged attack.
I went up to the second floor of the burning building and started sniping at them. The Banestars were showy and easy to track, and naturally they were quite pissed at me shooting them from out of their range. Of course, my own range with the Stars was rather short, and they easily retreated out of range and all… which gave me plenty of room to jump out and run away, and knights and mounts all charging after me as I headed over to the main house and Dragon Walked the wall all the way up to the roof, out of their range again.
Of course, cauchemar could walk on air, and even without their saddles, the knights could ride them bareback, as long as they didn't intend to fight seriously there.
Now, the main mansion was three stories tall, with an attic and steep roof (snow coming!). That's 'giant' stories, so, thirty-some feet a floor. When I hit the roof, I was definitely way up in the air. They weren't climbing up to me. Sure, they could go charging into the building and make their way up to me, but climbing was not something that was going to happen in that heavy armor, and why climb or run when their horses could just shuffle them up top for an epic rooftop battle against little old me?
Which they decided to do, much to my delight. To make sure they got the maximum height possible, I zipped along to the anchoring viewing towers, and was fully two hundred feet above the surrounding ground when I made it up to the top.
Up came the knights, those who still had cauchemar, and the horses looked pissed as they paced and circled around me, trying to get some altitude and line up for a good charge at me.
And that's when I put my foot down.
My Null swept out, and their fancy little air-walking went away as Mr. Gravity decided that his domain included Dream when it was trying to emulate reality, and all those agitated horses and knights flying through the air trailing smoke and fire and whatnot… all fell screaming from the sky.
They were big, they were heavy, and so they fell much faster and harder then, say, a human. Not aerodynamic in the slightest, either.
We're talking 40d6 damage to the schnozz, and if they were stupid enough to remain mounted, one would crush the other, depending on how they hit, for additional damage.
Oh, and I'd been paying attention. The two rocs had been diving in as well, and suddenly they weren't magical birds flying around, they were magical gliders without a propulsion system comparing x^2 surface area vs x^3 mass increase by size. With very loud shrieks and calls that basically meant "What's going on?!?" They came down in a hard glide they couldn't really stop without tearing off their wings, and to my impressed delight, smashed into the front and back of the mansion respectively, tearing open the walls and getting stuck on the inside, stunned and half-impaled on timbers and stuff.
I saw no reason whatsoever not to take advantage of that to come down on the head of the first one, split its skull, then jump off, run through the building, and before the second one could really shake free of its collision and work its way out, Dragon Walk up around the walls to its head and cut it off in one pass.
Yep, working on Feathered in Courtier…
Of course, an average of~140 damage wasn't actually enough to kill any of them, although it looked like a few actually landed badly and skewed the top end of the curve. Actually, supernatural toughness and all, they mostly didn't even break any bones, since the ground doesn't crit, although if one landed on the other, well, that was all she wrote.
Also, they were scattered all over the place now. I wasn't going to jump into the back yard and pop the dogs, so back into the torn-up mess that was the front yard, and to the fight!
They were reeling, wounded and with a lot of damage on the pile, and my Banestars were more than happy to cut in and finish the jobs, stabbing into temples, slicing across throats, punching into eyeballs, or driving into chests one by one, as I darted from one to the next on extremely fast charge attacks that inevitably ended in a toppling giant or writhing and falling disguised uber-nightmare.
Of course, the knights who hadn't been flying did their best to try and protect their fellows, but they couldn't keep up with me, and I kept pestering them with Banestars if I couldn't reach my targets easily… and certainly wasn't adverse to charging one of them and literally getting inside his face to shoot one and get rid of him.
Giants shouted war cries, nightmares neighed and screamed, but they couldn't run, they were part of the Curse and they were there to kill me, not act like actual living beings.
I ducked, dodged, and weaved around the wreckage, moving into and out of their sight, and while they could think quickly, it didn't mean they could react so quickly to my movements. I hamstrung them, groin-cut them, and was happy to slice the throat of one in passing and end in the eyeball of another. I was jumping around like an anime fool, my only major regret that I was still most vulnerable in mid-air because I couldn't change direction, and I had to be very careful to not allow them to hit me in suspension.
I mostly accomplished this by running along the chests of the giants to get to my targets, before falling back and away as their buddies closed in.
The giants were very realistic, as far as they could be. I'm sure they were brave and courageous, and simply were finding it hard to believe just how fast and hard something a sixth their size was hitting them. I gave them no explanations but the blade, as I knew what they were.
Giants from the back yard eventually came around to the front, their mounts coming with them, adding to the fight. They didn't get remounted, but that was fine. The incensed cauchemar followed me fiercely into the burning inferno of the barn, burning unnaturally fast and fiercely.
In the raging flames and extremely bad lines of sight, I hunted them down and killed them in passing, dodging clawed hooves and sharp bites. Stalls were splintered, support beams shattered, timbers came down, and nightmares seven yards at the shoulder went tumbling and crashing down very heavily indeed, the vivic burn of their deaths accelerated by the flames.
---
I walked out of the fires a few minutes later, stopping just outside the flames themselves, while the dozen or so remaining knights gawked at me.
It was a 10d6 inferno behind me, they weren't going into that, but the radiant heat wouldn't do anything to them with their universal DR.
Tremble was humming ominously, and I met all their eyes and smiled cheerfully.
"Well?" I asked in Jotun, and the nearest ones charged forwards to attack me as a group.
I shifted sideways faster than they could move, avoiding my target's frantic swing at me, forward, under and past him, and he cried out as his hamstring went and his knee folded. I reversed direction, ran up his spine faster than he could roll away, severed it at the base of his skull, and bounced forward as the next one swung at me. I twisted just enough to kick off his sword in midair, and came right into his face before he could reflexively bring his gauntlet back to block.
Tremble drove hilt-deep into his eye, a Banestar fired off to liquify his brain, and I rode him down to the ground as he overbalanced back, the desperate lunge of Three going high, and I kicked off again to the amazement of number Four, landing on his chest, taking two steps up his breastplate as his hand crashed heavily into his chest behind me, and hacked through his throat just before I grabbed his nose and swung around behind him.
Five's thrust was meant to spit me, and instead drove into the face of his friend as I wrenched and twisted, and he finished the job for me. As he gawked, I stabbed from twenty feet away and he screamed as the Banestar landed in his dark eye.
I jumped away and down, between the knights trying to encircle me, and back out into the ripped-up lawn. I flipped and skated backwards, sending Banestars slashing and piercing up at them as they pounded after me, heavier then elephants, trying to catch up to me and spit me on those twelve-foot swords.
Three fell, clutching at his throat, where a garden-hose of bright red was flying forth. Five had an ear cut off, his cheek laid open, and then a Star drove through his throat and into his spine. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
I did the splits and dropped below the fallen knight statue, now in three parts and with the horse's front legs missing. The pursuing giants variously ran into it to bowl it over or separated around it. Six was groin-cut as he vaulted it, screaming as he hit the ground and spurting blood from the huge artery located there. Seven managed to stop himself, which only earned him a screaming fall backwards as I leapt into his face, twisting past the sword he threw up, and he got an eyeful of death, too.
Physics, momentum. For all their strength, it still took them longer to turn around then it took me, even if Dream was very forgiving of this point.
I glided backwards, swaying back and forth, as the remaining five of them stopped and stared, breathing hard as they watched me. Tremble's dirge was clearly unnerving them, as were the death-throes of their comrades.
Ah, realism in dreams.
"Brave Knights of the Rose," I winked at them, shifting forward, and they stepped back urgently, blades raised on the defense. I smiled, as that just opened up their legs to me, which I had no problems reaching. "Your duty is about to end!"
"Tremble, she comes!" my Sword droned out in crystalline pure notes, right on cue.
========
The last Damned Dog whined and went silent as Tremble drove into the base of his skull, and the Banestar liquified his brains. He fell onto the remains of an animated statue, and I kicked them both for good measure.
"Huh. Wow, okay, that was really impressive," Tremble admitted, as the last thrust sent a wave of rejuvenating stamina-juice through me to restore my endurance. Swinging a Sword around with superhuman strength is very stressful, even with my soul giving me all the energy I needed.
Battle Vigor ran its course, restoring some of the Soak I'd lost against the dogs. I wasn't at full Soak, but it was remarkably high considering just how much killing I'd done today.
"Thanks." I took some deep breaths as I looked downslope. "So, what surprises do you think are down there?"
"More river stuff? A boat coming in?"
I sniffed carefully. "It's not pure river water, I can smell salt. It might be an estuary, or the mouth of a river on the ocean." I couldn't see anything on the other side of the river, it was lost in misty glitters of the river itself. "A ship is certainly possible, but there's no river defenses. This might be in a canal area, part of a larger complex? Not sure why it wouldn't have breakwalls and stuff, or maybe they are below line of sight."
"Shall we go down and see?"
"We shall."
"Why did you keep the tongue of the giant toad?"
"Bowstring. I'm going to start assembling Fall."
"Oh! How?" Tremble was very curious about this.
"My Artificer level is Four. My Warsmith Level is going to be Three. Artificers can enchant items as if they were two Levels higher. That means I can enchant glass into glassteel with the right Runework, which will make the components of an autobow. I can store the comps inside you, and get the materials from the lab inside. It'll be day by day, but I think I can have it ready in a week."
"The stone from that commander's sword was big enough? Good show!" I'd been looking for an E5-worthy rock for a long time, now.
"It is. Ah. Hmm. Look at that."
A ship had appeared out of nowhere, and was moving with unnaturally sure speed towards the dock. I blinked, and it was suddenly there. Another blink, and men were pouring off it, and moving up the hill.
"Well, let's not be bluntly obvious about the numbers game, shall we?" I smiled, shaking my head. I turned and ran up the side of the mansion, to the big hole the roc had made and the sailors and marines coming up from below amazingly hadn't seemed to notice yet. Probably not in an active area, or something.
I was going to recover what things I needed to render this super strong and elastic toad's tongue down into an alchemically-reinforced string for an autobow, and soon, soon I was going to have me a proper ranged weapon I could ply from a distance. My maximum possible range on my Banestars was fifty paces with Tremble in Ranged format, and I definitely needed a whole lot more.