AA hit the side of the cliff with a running vertical, and Briggs and I zipped right into his wake and did the same, momentum redirected with physics-ignoring aplomb. No full Interdiction meant we could wiggle our noses at King Gravity, too... we just had to keep the dimensions strong, not Da King, as we ran.

The roars of frustration behind us shook the stones, and a lot of hissing black liquid was spewed in our general direction, to a complete lack of effect. The Disks turned vertical, but the riders were perfectly aware of their Retention ability, and remained glued to the Disks, personal gravity switching with them, heading right up the side of the cliff after me, more than a few making rude noises at the reptiles following us.

Oh, and the barrage of One More Arrows didn’t stop, no need to conserve ammunition. The beasts trying to corral us certainly appreciated the fact.

They’d herded us nicely, tried to ambush us from below several times, but in the end, we moved too fast and knew they were coming. They’d sent us into this harbor here, cliffs a couple hundred feet tall around, crowded with seabirds, and thought they had us trapped.

Yeah, running up the cliff had certainly annoyed them.

It also meant we had a quicker way to the far side of the island than they did... except for this antediluvian Shrine to some nasty shit in front of us, and an Obelisk looming above the trees there. What do you know?

No doubt there was something big and horrible there, and the sky grew rapidly and unnaturally dark as we loped unerringly across the island towards it, our fliers swooping down to join us grimly...

-------------------

Endure came down on the dark altar, and it exploded into dark shards and rubble in all directions. Vivic flames blasted everywhere as they fed on the unholy energies instilled into the thing, and then Briggs expressed his displeasure at the event by punting the rest of it over the edge of the cliff beyond.

Various aggrieved roars spread out from the dracosaurs below, and Briggs spit in their general direction.

A lot of the company was down, shredded by tentacle-waving dinosaurs of impossible strength and speed for their size, physiologies completely warped in horrid and unnatural ways, obviously products of other planes, and horrifically strong.

Our poor lads had to delay them while Briggs, AA, and I cut them down, using shield walls as best they could and digging in with heavyfoot to restrict their movements. It was really hard for the troops to even make contact with them, and if they did, the wounds healed very quickly unless they had a Blooding Weapon.

Tremble was zipping everywhere, doling out the healing. She’d saved at least twenty people from death in this fight, and we were still going to use up the White Staff and all the spells of the clerics we had with us to bring the rest back... and then again come Renewal.

AA was making sure nothing of the creatures survived, Briggs was grinding stuff to dust, and I was inspecting everyone for contagions... and finding some, much to my displeasure. That meant more magic from the Paladins and Priests to burn the unnatural stuff away...

The Obelisk was down there in the water, shattered on the many rocks and not making anyone happy. Briggs had been very enthusiastic when he was bashing it over...

----------

Estemar flopped down next to Briggs, who was now seated on the moldering stone in front of the former altar dais. He had pried the stones beneath the altar up with the help of the dwarves, and the loot hoarded below was being passed out to those who would be burning it up. It was a king’s ransom, centuries of offerings, and in eight hours, it would all be dust and mist.

“So... that was a Legendary Template, the Pseudonatural?” the prince asked, his expression wan. He’d used up all his disease-curing on others... and all his basic healing for himself and the dragon he rode.

One! One of the unnatural things had nearly killed a Valor Dragon over twice its size. The blow to the egos of the dragons at how they would have been thrashed without their riders and healers keeping them alive had them sulking yet.

“Yeah.” Briggs' pale violet eyes were flat and unhappy. Killing the unnatural raptors, things Summoned in from Outside Creation, had caused more injuries than when they’d chewed their way through hundreds of Jotuns. Without him, AA, Errant, and Sama here, this whole troop, probably the most elite band of soldiers that had ever existed on this world, would have been wiped.

“Please tell me why they were so dangerous,” Estemar breathed out, his hands clasped before him.

“The crux of it comes down to advanced Insight bonuses,” Briggs told him grimly. “In short, they are looking ahead through time to see what you are doing, so they know where to strike, how to strike, how to dodge, exactly as if they knew where and how you were going to move. The rest is just an unnatural anatomy tougher than anything real should be.”

“Insight bonuses, looking through time.” Estemar looked over Briggs. “I notice you were not that injured...”

“No, I wasn’t, nor the other three of us. Insight bonuses do not work on us.”

“Oh?” Estemar’s eyes widened. He considered his words. “If Sir Errant can do this, it’s not a Forsaken effect... Diamond Vajra?” he asked quickly.

Briggs nodded. “It’s a powerful Feat working off the Vajra. There are two versions of it, both related to the Great Alignments. The first, and most infamous, is Beyond Good and Evil. The second, which we are using, is Beyond Law and Chaos.

“The first makes you immune to holy and unholy magical effects, and Divine power, basically denying the gods and the judgement of the Alignments as having any relevance. For instance, you wouldn’t be able to Smite someone Beyond Good and Evil.”

Estemar pursed his lips, eyes narrowed. “That sounds quite powerful...”

“It is, but you can only take the Feat if you’re of the Grey.” His holo flicked up with the nine-point graph of the Alignments, streaked across the middle horizontal layer. “Supposedly there’s an Epic version which allows someone strong enough to transcend Alignments and be immune to all Alignment-based effects, but that’s for Eternals.

“Beyond Law and Chaos means severing yourself from Fate and Luck. In other words, you’re a sentient being and claiming control of your own destiny from the uncaring forces of predestination and chance. The net effect is immunity to most Curses, karmic backlash, prophecy... and Insight and Luck bonuses used against you.”

“Subtle, but powerful in its own way,” Estemar reasoned, thinking that over. “So, the effects of what you do cannot be predicted in prophecy?”

“Correct. We can really muck up Fate, and it doesn’t matter how lucky someone is, we don’t care.” Briggs half-smiled. “Which is why these things died to us so fast. They couldn’t see what we were going to do, or how and when to hit us back. Just meat on the plate, hard-hitting but not that bad to deal with.”

Estemar heaved a sigh. “Is there a defense for us against such ‘insight’ effects?”

“Yes.” The young Paladin immediately brightened. “It’s a psionic Feat, but I’m pretty sure you can replicate it with Soul Magic. It’s called Unstable Mind. It basically wraps you inside a field of aggravated probability. Someone trying to use Insight against you basically ends up seeing all futures instead of just the best one, effectively giving them no information at all via probability overload.”

“Master Briggs, I think that everyone who experienced combat here should love to shut down such a hideously powerful advantage that such entities have,” Estemar told him.

Briggs grunted agreement. “Sama will broadcast the details to everyone. Something like this isn’t something we want to see again, either.” He saw her golden hair flicker nearby in acknowledgement.

“You look like you want to go hit something again, sir,” Estemar noted.

Briggs turned around, got up, and walked over to the edge of the cliff overlooking the rocky waters down below, now swarming with dozens of large scaled bodies moaning around their fallen Obelisk, who all started to scream and roar at him when they saw his figure there far above them.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, and his knuckles cracked like breaking rocks as Errant strolled over next to him, looking down. “Yeah, I do want to go hit somethings.”

“You know, I never do like being chased,” Sir Errant also mused aloud. Behind them, Estemar found himself smiling softly, and sighing. Brutal, sustainable power. He was not there, not yet...

A little distance away, both Ancientaxe and Sama also smiled at the same time.

---------------

AA removed the head of a plesiosaur with a massive arc of Zeitgeist, Briggs brought Endure down onto the skull of a dragon turtle and shattered it, and Quaver opened up a gash in a mosasaur a dozen feet long and two feet deep as they swept by. Wrath and arrows made for burning hatracks, and the group swept ashore, finally off of the lake.

They hadn’t been followed from the island. The amount of blood they’d harvested from the drac-bloods that hadn’t wised up and finally run away had made a lot of Healing Potions, many of which were condensed down into Cure Wands and passed out to the group for further healing reserves. That whole harbor had been stained a very dark red... until it was all set to vivus, and then it became unnaturally clear, contrasting nicely with the dark waters surrounding the island.

The blood, hearts, and basic fundamentallums of the dracs were nice acid resistance power comps, too. It wasn’t like they didn’t have a whole lot of blood to contribute, so nice they were so big...

-----------

Not-A-Zone 13...

Massive fists beat on chest, a roar of challenge to buttress it all. The great silverback letting out the challenge also happened to be twenty feet tall on all fours.

The rain forest was alive with apes, some like gorillas, some like chimps, and some like baboons. They were on all sides of us, sending up a screeching, shrieking, yowling racket that was really rather ear-splitting.

Of course, it all amounted to ‘go away!’ ‘we kill!’ ‘our land!’ ‘fightfight!’ ‘youbad!’

Nobody was really all that perturbed. The Elevator Music to Heaven was on the job, and the first volley of things they threw at us magically went right back and bopped the throwers on the head. So did the second, and they didn’t try the third.

I walked out from the orderly ranks of those standing on Disks, the unnaturalness of the show just one of the things that was spooking all these apes. Of course, all the metal and bright shiny colors didn’t hurt, and the fact we hadn’t attacked anyone until now certainly didn’t hurt.

Buuuut... these fellows had no demonic or unworldly aura. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t even an Obelisk in this territory. It wasn’t so much a Zone defined by an Obelisk as a no-Zone where the Hags didn’t dare to put one up.

“You know,” I said, my voice ringing with ki, and cute little whiskers on my cheeks and black on by dose, “there are better ways to greet travelers through your lands that mean you no harm.”

The cacophony of sounds cut off like a knife. They had all heard me, and more pointedly, understood me perfectly. Now they were looking at me in confusion, then one another, and then they all lit up with hoots and howls, naturally all of them questions and challenges and curses and what-not.

“I believe your elder wishes to speak.”

Once again, the hooting all cut off like a knife. The massive silverback, with protruding tusks a gorilla didn’t normally have, huffed like a steam vent going forward, his eyes fixed on me suspiciously, but he was confident and powerful, looming up right in front of me, and looking down from his naturally superior position.

He also gave the hairy eyeball to Fido and Shirley standing there, tongues lolling and freezing/burning drool dripping down with corresponding hisses. They were obviously magical animals, but they didn’t seem at all upset or wary of him at all.

He was about to say something when I stepped up with one foot, mist congealed, and I walked up in mid-air in front of him, making his eyes go wide as I stepped up in the air to right before his face.

+++++++++++++++

Author’s Notes:

Zone 12 – Pseudonatural is a very powerful, epic-level template that can turn routine creatures into Mythos horrors from beyond space and time. Basically the second most powerful stock template you can slap on something you want to kick ass with.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/pseudonaturalCreature.htm