“Don’t resist, and there should be no pain.” She arched a flawless eyebrow at me, and simply let me press her hand against my Charisma Mark.

There was a flash of light behind my back as the Seals there below my Phoenix Cloak lit up. Wayfair’s black and silver form began to discorporate and stream into the Mark, which fed into the Seals on my back.

It was very quick, took less than two seconds. The people standing around were all surprised. One breath there, the next she was gone.

Now, the mechanical side of it was a little busy.

Her spirit got shunted over into the section of my head reserved for odious things that tried to Possess me. Normally I could simply Seal this section off, but I left it open so communication was open-ended.

She had also flowed in through the Charisma Mark where I had my Lilithi imprint. Being the opportunistic person I was, I realigned it to harmonize with her, noting the interesting changes to the imprint as I did.

Hmm, she was born from a mortal, and advanced into succubus? No wonder she looked like a dark elf, she used to be an alu’ri, born from a drow mother... and a succubus mother. Hah!...

Of course, that meant she was Harmonized with my Mark, which meant no difficulties at all accessing Markspace as long as she wasn’t totally Sealed. To wit, she popped up inside my head, now literally on the inside, instead of connected, looking around in interest.

-Your Seal is powerful. I should be able to confer upon you a good portion of my abilities, although Casting is naturally impossible, given your Null. What would you like?- she /offered me.

I smiled slightly, still speaking aloud so those around could know nothing was wrong, although most were also watching through their Doors. “First, let’s give you full sensory access.” I touched her, and she watched my mental self fracture into four to her eyes, representing my four thought streams. She was impressed, despite herself.

-You are much stronger than you appear,- she /murmured approvingly, as I shook my head and flexed in place for her. -Though somewhat lacking...- she /teased.

“Annis hagchild don’t have them,” I replied, with such a neutral and reflexive air the topic went no further, instantly relegated to horrid banality, not to be touched for fear of being passé. “You can either ride in comfort, or get involved. What would you like to do?”

-Oh, get involved,- she /replied, such that every male there started to drool despite themselves.

“Good enough. Empower your True Sight, and follow me in pouring your Soul Essence into my Manticore Belt.”

My Mask of Clarity flared at the harmonic power of Wayfair’s natural True Seeing coming into effect on my eyes. Through the eyes and reactions of those around, I could see that the Curse was instantly chased off the left side of my face, flowing down basically to the side of my chest out of sight to avoid overlapping with my Tats and being overwritten. That half of my face now looked like hers, and even my hair was washed silver to match... and yeah, there was a silver horn curling around the ear there, too...

My Tail dropped down from where I held the metal Seal in my hair, adhered to the Belt, and two streams of Soul Essence surged through it, one electrum, one green with a hint of gold. The metallic, serpentine length of my Tail popped up, Sparky materialized and immediately made himself at home... and four more pseudo-metallic, stingered tails of ectoplasm, slender and lively, popped up beside him, two on each side.

Layers of magic slid up around them, harmonizing into Fall, gathering around the bulge Sparky was in, and the three spikes hovering around him, and onto the tips of the Four Tails.

“You should be able to shoot from the four tails, just like Sparky. I’d give you access to the Arakne Arms instead, but I’m a much better combatant than you are, so that would be foolish. You should be roughly as accurate as I or Sparky am with the Tails, so no problems there. Don’t attack in close-combat with them; the magic they are synched to with Fall is for ranged combat, and they will be ineffectual in melee.”

-But I can still grab and snatch, yes?- she /asked, and one of the Tails snaked out and plucked Endure from Briggs’ hands, snapping out an improbable distance to do so. Briggs politely let it go, and Endure didn’t burn her/me for doing so. -Oh, quite heavy,- she /purred, and Briggs just opened his hand for her to toss it back to him.

“If you can grant more, I’ll take your Unearthly Grace and the effective racial boost to Charisma.”

She tilted her head, looked down at the Mark, and made a mental wave.

Part of her Power drove into that Mark, which visibly flared with silver light.

+20 racial bonus to Charisma, activate!

My soul seemed to ignite with power, belief, emotions, confidence, faith in myself. In the mindscape, my image flared like a sun, suddenly burning brighter than Wayfair herself, who blinked in shock, just like everyone else.

Faint silver stars were swirling, fading in and out around me, the acknowledgement by Reality that, wow, it really, really liked me now, and did I have any favors to request of it? Oh, right, Unearthly Grace!

Deflection bonus to Armor Class equal to Charisma bonus. Effective current Charisma, 50. Deflection bonus, +20.

Stuff might well think I was intangible, they’d never get near me.

Ignoring the gawking looks all around as my new Presence swamped everyone, I pointed at the nigh-intangible boundary in front of us. “Let’s see what’s past this...”

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

What, we finally reached Zone 20?!...

“Oh-“ and several dozen unprintable words in two dozen languages followed. They were highly complementary of one another, and the people all around swallowed their own curses and just nodded along. I did a fine job of expressing their sentiments.

Another fracking sea of mushrooms. But this one had gardeners...

They were floating above all the stands of puffballs, toadstools, mushrooms, caps, buttons, stalks, cilia, lichen, moss, tendrils and roots. The smallest of them was fifty feet in diameter, with tentacles trailing down from them at least that distance.

The biggest of them that I could see, which wasn’t that far because of all the spores in the air creating a haze, was at least four times that size.

There were fungoid flyers too, beasts without heads and fleshy wings, without the strength or aerodynamics to fly, still swooping around, looking like they were inhaling clouds of spores in the air. At least four different species, and some of the small ones were victims of the big ones.

They’d be victims of the ground-based mushrooms, too. One little fellow, only ten feet long or so, went swooping into a light plume of spores coming out of a bell-shaped mushroom... which opened up and blew a sticky wad of tendrils fifty feet into the air, totally covering the hapless flier in goo and ooze... and retracted almost as quickly, swallowing the flier up and closing down, as if nothing had happened.

“Hey, nice place. Mu Spores everywhere,” Briggs murmured, his face impassive. “Those are like, tons of Karma. Like Greater demons.”

Eyes twitched all around. We did have a rather unique take on elder abominations...

“Yeah, but they’ll annihilate any of the troops who get close. That reach is nothing to scoff at, and that spore attack shreds anything if they get it off,” Errant said from on back of the regal and somewhat bigger Darkbolt, who had also profited immensely by a year of unbridled combat. He was no longer a member of the Stormcrest Crown, as he was fully as large as the alpha griffon there, who would not tolerate the competition. So, Darkbolt was effectively Crowned for the griffons ridden by the other Heavenbound, which wasn’t bad, as all those griffons were tough as nails, too.

Softies need not apply for Heavenbound mount status, after all.

“Oh, that means I won’t have to share?” I blinked, and there was a quiet mumble of laughter behind me. Mammoth elder abomination... it still was impossibly heavy, and couldn’t fly naturally. King Gravity did not like such disobedient rapscallions, and I was one of King Gravity’s favorite enforcers.

Errant stirred. “I don’t think I can get a One Strike big enough to finish it,” he admitted reluctantly. “What’s the play?”

“Close-Quarters Fighting and Combat Reflexes, of course. The things are covered in molds, yeah, but also tentacles. It will reflexively try to grapple you with pseudopods if you try to hit it, and guess what that leads to?”

Eyes lit up all around. “Sunder and Cleaving chains,” Briggs smiled, the shadow of a ki-axe around Endure.

Brother Ancientaxe spun Zeitgeist slowly. “I can’t bring it down so easily, but I can definitely do a Cleave Run,” he smiled harshly.

“What’s the damage required?” Verd piped up behind us.

“Fifty minimum,” I judged, and she made an unkind face. The One Step Mastery she was working on was extraordinary on the charge or set against a charge, but didn’t contribute much to a Cleave run.

Errant worked his fingers. “I can do that. We’ll have to do at least triple that on the charge, then at least ten AoO, using Supreme Cleave to keep in motion and get in range of more tentacles for the autonomic reflex hit. If so, it should be dead before it realizes it is killing itself. Is there anyone else here who can do that?”

The Amazon, Trella, enthusiastically raised her hand. She was up there as one of the best archers and lancers we had, but she was also a non-Caster Melee... and had the highest Power of anyone here, including the dragons... and Elder Arg! She could wield a Ladyglaive with some real enthusiasm, and had put serious props into mass combat Feats. Being able to take out a Mu Spore would be a massive Karmic influx for her.

“Works for me,” I smiled, looking at the big floating bundles of Karma out there. “Trella, we’ll keep you to the little ones for now...”

-----------

Hah, still Zone 20...

The mechanics of what we wanted to do were pretty simple.

One, Interdict the damn thing. That removed any attempt to teleport away, and brought it down from the sky. Given its size and weight, that did some nice crushing damage, bound up its tentacles a bit underneath it, and got it into a very unfamiliar situation.

Two, run up on the damn thing, looking to carve open its yard-deep hide and let the Banefire guide all that magical damage to wherever it could do the most harm.

There would be explosions of cold and poison spores from the parasitic molds growing on it. That was fine, Vajras exist for a reason, and we were moving too fast to be inundated.

CQF, Close-Quarters Fighting. One of those incredibly situational Feats that was absolutely useless, until it wasn’t, and then it was godly.

Any time someone grappled you, they triggered an Attack of Opportunity, even if they normally wouldn’t. If you hit and did damage, ostensibly to the limb or appendage attacking you, you added the damage you did to your attempt to resist the grapple.

In reality, you chopped at whatever was trying to bind you up, weakening its ability to grab you, so stuff was literally throwing itself at your blade as it tried to wrap around you.

The number of AoO’s a person got was nominally exactly one... unless you had the Combat Reflexes Feat and Mastery, which added +Dex bonus and +Mastery level to your number of AoO’s, respectively.

The reflexive defense of the Mu Spore was just that, a reflex, and didn’t take AoO uses. Even though it was so huge, it could lash out with every one of the thousands of tendril-pseudopod-tentacles on it without even thinking about it.

And that was how the Mu Spores died.