The Power of Ten

Fifteen years after Shroudbreak...

Paco Vilyo looked around himself with a rictus grin as he picked himself up from the crater of his impact.

He was shaken, damaged, and he was surrounded by a blasted, barren, and broken landscape where nothing lived... or rather, everything was dead, including himself.

But the pain, the insinuations, and the gloomfire were all gone.

He was free of his Gloompact, finally.

It had been a pretty good ambush. He had been rebuilding the farmland and lives of the village he had come from so long ago, protecting them with terrible lethality from those who tried to prey on them and make them grow drug crops, burning maize and beans and giving the people nothing to turn to but them.

Dead men made for excellent vivic fertilizer. Their belongings made nice seed capital. Their associates made superb target practice.

He had killed them, speaking to them in the language they understood, tracking them remorselessly, and in the end they had broken and fled... but not before word had gotten out of what was protecting that insignificant little village and its people.

They’d waited years, but they had come. Daemons, their idiot servants, with new Pacts and eager eyes sick for the power and status promised them.

It had been a good attack, well thought out, with numbers and powerful creatures and coordination.

He was pretty sure he’d gotten just about all of them before he died, and his Pact took him Down.

That was where he was now, the Realm of the Dead. Dead sky, dead land, dead souls who only had one another to prey upon... and he was fresh blood, scarred by the Pact released with his death, with no real power of his own...

He only smiled more broadly as the first slinking soul that had also earned a trip down here, and had grown by slaying others like itself, came stalking up through the shadows that moved as if alive across this sunless land, seeing ready prey.

He was still injured in this after-life state, but he was not weak. Oh, no. Heavenbound Hall had made sure that he was trained up, and his Pact was just a resource for him, it built upon what he already was.

The Tats upon his soul ignited, even as harsh emerald fire came up around his hands. With rather more speed than a fresh weak soul reeling from the pain of Pacts removed should have, he charged into the fight with this bottom-feeding slinking killer...

-------

The daemons circled around him warily, having learned harsh lessons about his emerald fists.

He had not died a Good person. It didn’t bother him, having made peace with the fact that he just wasn’t that kind of man. He could be cruel and harsh, and was unrepentant of the fact. He discriminated and had his prejudices... but he knew them, and could suppress them if it was useful, but they were all part of him.

But he had not died that sickening purple of corruption and decay, and he was proud of himself for that, if nothing else.

Were it not for his Pact, he would not be here at all now, but that was fine. He had made a decision for power when he was young and rash, and it had led to much death and blood, aye, taken his chance at having children of his own... but it had given him some very good years, there at the end.

If he was to dissolve into nothing here, his soul torn apart as a meal to daemons, that was also fine.

But he had prepared himself for this fight, and he knew how to fight this ilk. Oh, yes, he did. His soul was a weapon made to kill Fiends and the Undead, and these Evilborn murderers and killers had found that out, much to their sorrow.

He could feel the gloomfire whispering to him again, pleased at his performance; this Realm was offering him its power, a change in form and status, a chance to gain what so few of the souls that plummeted from the aether were ever able to.

A Daemonic form, with his memories and persona intact! With the power of a daemonic body, survival here would indeed become much easier, at the cost of becoming an aspect of Death, a minion of the endless methods of decay and dissolution.

His hands still glowed emerald around the glowing Tats on the back of them, more dangerous than any mundane weapon, as so many of these would-be hunters had found out.

But his time was done. He had killed a great number of them, leaving them and their essences to die and be absorbed by the Glooms, taking nothing from them but the balance and serenity of the ki from them meeting their proper doom to keep himself healed and whole.

Now, these aspects of starvation, drowning, suicide, addiction, murder, slaughter, grief, hunger, and other methods of dying and death were gathered around him, including several strong enough to be tough fights all by themselves, as he’d found out when others of their kind had come for him... or he’d come for them.

He’d been hunted and hunted, and he’d been run to ground now.

When the lone wolf couldn’t bring down the tiger, it went looking for the pack. That they’d all be instantly be ready to kill one another after he died was a given, but for now, they had a common goal.

The emerald light of his hands reflected in their purple-black eyes, defying them, mocking them and all that they were.

“Warlock,” whispered a somnadaemon, an aspect of death by dissolution in dreams, of running from the world so desperately that one died from wasting in their denial of it. “You cannot escape now, unless you care to take up the power of Gloom.” She sounded wickedly satisfied when the soulfires on his hands did not change in the slightest. “Your conviction will not save you now!”

“I think you are wrong.”

They were starting to close in when his raspy voice drifted to them, and the daemons paused despite themselves. They were all hunters, and his lack of fear made them wary, even if they thought it just bravado. But they were emovores, and felt nothing below his contempt for them, and it truly irked them on every level.

The amusement in his words was something different this time.

“That is its Name, after all.”

Conviction materialized, ruby Runes glittered on the barrel, and emerald light burned with the white and black-yellow upon it as he called to it from life to death, and his Named .45 Magnum Gritworks Warlock Special came to him.

Callable wasn’t limited to just the same world with a Spiritbound Warlock’s Weapon!

Assassination attempt, study your target for three rounds and catch them flat-footed. Master of Assassination/5, study up to five targets! Ruby Enchantment, add Enhancement bonus of Weapon to Assassination Save DC!

Conviction burped silently, alchemical ammunition going off here, and he almost laughed as he felt the magic of its clip surge at full strength.

When the Shroud broke, Abundant Ammunition would only restore one shot of alchemical ammunition a cycle... very slow in combat, but still a big money-saver overall. Here, in this place of death, a Weapon Enchantment that brought more death naturally worked much better!

The little Sound Bubble about the muzzle reduced the noise of the bullets to that of a buzzing insect. The daemons only saw the flash of something in his hand, and then the five strongest of them froze. They slowly collapsed in disbelief at the holes in very specific places in their anatomies, vivus and banefire finding all the happy spots to devour them.

He had studied Fiends long and hard, to fight them in life and in death, just for times like this.

Master of the Grim Hunt: add Favored Enemy bonus to Assassination Save DC!

There was a silent hiss as Responsibility materialized in his off hand, and the same fires bloomed around it, promising death by the Dagger of a Warlock who was also a Master Assassin.

Gloomfire burst up from the ground, scattered the vivus, and went to work on the daemons before those around could leap upon their superiors and devour them, and so steal the fruits of his work for themselves.

The smart ones wanted the others to charge him while they evaded fire, so they ducked for cover, sending a rain of spells at him, but he was already moving, and the Dagger in his hand was glowing wide with hard emerald light about it, ready to reap some more. Conviction flashed from Ruby to Courageous, and his +5 Morale Bonus to kill Fiends rose to +9 as the Healing Edge effect swirled over his injuries and began to heal him rapidly.

He was a Penitent Warlock of Heavenbound Hall, and he hadn’t taken the step to follow the Lady to fight the Shroud because he had believed his path took him home, to make up for the things he’d done, and to protect his people the way he knew how.

His Weapons had been fed the deaths of undead, Cultivators, Fiends, and in the end fellow humans who acted no better than any of those monsters. His Weapons were monsters, too, when in his hand, and no other. Their only use was killing, and so they killed...

His clip refilled faster than he could empty it, and he smiled and smiled as he pulled the trigger... with great conviction!

------

Okay, this was finally it, except...

He laughed again, low and rasping. The numbers of daemons in all directions were too high, he’d pissed off the more powerful ones... but that just gave him tons of targets. They realized invisibility and hiding in the shadows wasn’t helping them when he casually began to pick off the sneaky ones with headshots, until finally they couldn’t take it anymore and started converging regardless of how he killed them.

Some saw the Mark light up on his chest, among the many injuries bleeding clear green spiritual blood, but they didn’t know what it meant.

They found out when the hooves landed on either side of him, and monstrous wings came down like great living razor blades. The pinions whipped out in a circle, slashing and tearing in the same motion, and the glorious Pure Wrath of Heaven, Storm, Fire, and Earth raged out to blow the daemons apart even as they were hurled back and away.

A serpentine tail came down, plucked him up, and lifted him up behind their head. He flipped Responsibility into its wrist-sheath and grabbed onto one arcing horn burning with fire and lightning calmly.

Burning words wafted through the air in front of him, and he smiled grimly despite himself as he read them.

I told you I would see you here.

“You do indeed keep your word, Master Fred!” Paco chuckled, and then whooped despite himself as they suddenly launched skywards, massive wings snapping out and beating to send them screaming towards the shadows that were the sky with great speed.

-This is a trap for us,- the /voices of Legion pulsed through his Mark as contact was re-established, severed by death and now returned at the tiniest prick of the lethal tip of her tail. He looked up, and could see the sky seemed to be roiling, congealing... and he belatedly realized it looked like massive clawed hands closing together to block off the sky, trying to snare them here.

Fire roared behind them, the dead and listless wind howled about them, and the Light of Heaven lifted them up on the Wings of Angels, celestial power flaring Runes of Glory in dark draconic wings as they shot towards the center of the sky like a launched rocket, the display of Light and power drawing hateful stares of envy and jealousy for endless miles in all directions.

He laughed as the great claws of power closed in, and he knew it would be close... but not close enough, as Legion drew Idiot and swept it through the air in front of them, shearing through some phantasmal force that was trying to impede them. Gloom split open to a lighter, clearer space beyond, and they were gone into the Astral realm beyond as the trap slammed the Rift closed behind them.

Paco rode on the back of a titanic dark angel towards whatever his new fate and afterlife would be, Conviction and Responsibility riding with him. He listened to the echoes of something very powerful and angry ringing through the void behind them as it was thwarted...

Perhaps especially in the afterlife, there were those who would need the services of a killer who had found things he believed in...