They opened up with a spell bombardment from range, of course.

Demons and daemons came shrieking up behind them, Summoned in earlier and commanded to inflict Ye Awful Harm upon us. Twisted energies spat at us: profane killing strength, hate lightning, aqua sanguia, bonechill, hellrime, balefire, dirgewails, necroic and negative life-sucking power, and poisons not of this realm.

We weren’t worried about the undead. When the Obelisk here blew, all the buried undead went with it. I guess they should have been told to get involved a bit sooner, then they might have afforded us a few minutes of distraction.

The magic came in, and the magic vanished. The Helices of the Void Brothers tore them apart. Briggs burned his away to naught. They hit my expanded Null and just vanished, water into a lake, gone without a ripple.

The Summoned demons came in and were fricasseed. They were big, strong brawny sorts, every one of them over twelve feet tall, and hung like mammoths... probably the fathers of some of the hag princesses, and lovers of the Exemplar, Crysihdrala.

Alas, oversized genitalia was not an indicator of transcendendent combat ability, and these big virile powerhouses lasted literally seconds. The opening magic barrages meant nothing, they came swooping in and Briggs and I brought in the Stillflight once again. They came down very heavily, and all of us went out to meet them very quickly... save Hazé.

Hazé sent an eight-fold Sharding Ray of Force at one of the Umbral Hags who wasn’t where she looked to be, spearing the Hag, and dumping a whole lot of cell-rupturing Radiant Force into her. Coruscating rainbows tore her apart, and residual vivic energies converged and blew her into white ash in about one heartbeat.

As the outraged Hags focused on her, she smiled and glided up behind Briggs. The incoming volley of obliteration-prone dark magic burned away before it could reach her.

Horned vulture-demon and all eight of its appendages parted ways; tentacled toad-demon was opened up to get some Light and air; four-armed white bull-demon was butchered so fast even I was surprised. He’d cloven a bit too closely to actual cow musculature or something.

The only Balor in the crew chose Briggs. Its burning whip and Dire Axe never made it to him. It hit the ground, and Endure crunched into it with bone-breaking force, the thing’s chest just sort of caved in. As it attempted to parry, the Hammer came drumming in a second time and his flaming-skulled head just exploded.

The draconic worm-fellow close by saw this, and had the sense to panic just before the Balor cooked off in unholy final death throes turned hungry-vivic-mm-mmm-Feed-The-Land. Draco-worm staggered out of the explosion, just in time to catch Endure coming in one more time and ending his pain... well, no, his soul and essence burned nicely too, as his physical form was destroyed. No heading back home to brood vengeance on seven generations of descendants when vivus is involved, nope, nope. Go feed that expanding hole in the sky, you.

The Windarrow had also picked off some gargoyle-esque sort with rat-tat-tat spirals of incoming Helix wind-shots. I noted that the Brothers needed to bone up on their ranged attacks more, as the rest of the fighting came down to melee.

While that was going on, of course, they were ignoring all the magic being sent their way... or maybe actively destroying it, I didn’t know. To help matters along, I contributed a withering salvo of Baneshardings and Spikes, which turned the neighboring combats from potential three-hit affairs into two-hits, and meant the demons in range got shredded really, really fast, Brothers bouncing from one to the next and Cutting Life in swirls of multi-hued Helices.

Really, it didn’t take that long.

Then, before the Hags could properly panic, probably overly confident of their own combat skills, the lads jumped.

Yeah, I really, really wanted that Heavy Gravity modifier. Five of the lads went up and up and out, and the now landbound Hags could only watch them do so. Well, they watched and threw spells at them in midair, which had the same effect as just watching, trailing those lovely swirls of Helices... and then surfing down the air smoothly, while Shardings streaked down, albeit bereft of Helices, to slice and dice.

They landed behind the Hags, moving with great speed to cut off any line of retreat, while the other six of us smoothly advanced to the front, moving faster than all but the main Hag could move at.

I, of course, pretty much only had eyes on the Exemplar. While I wasn’t able to out-bounce the lads, I was still faster afoot then they were.

One of the Lesser Exemplar half-Fiends was in the way. Alu-Hag? Whatever, all the perverted exaggeration of sexual features of a shellycoat, plus spikes, horns, tail, and her weeping sores dripped slime.

She seemed to think she was hot stuff. She had a lot of magic up to protect her, raised her armor, and of course had those Exemplar Lite gifts.

Whoops, nope, not those.

She took a full frontal volley, was only able to evade about a third of them, and her Damage Reduction was completely good for nothing. She had increased her size, buffed her strength, speed, and toughness, accentuated her natural armor, had force shields and armor up –

Quaver ripped through her magical buffs, destroying all of them in one hit. She shrank back down, muscles fell, speed dropped... she lost it all in flying splinters of shattered mana, stunned at the sudden and total loss... and the line that had nearly bisected her from left hip to opposite shoulder. Red Health Qi sprayed, the wound healed... as I’d expected, she had some. Otherwise, just going by base Stats, she would have been dead on the triple-damage Spirited Charge.

She wanted to retreat, but that wasn’t happening, I was way faster than her, and all she could do is lash out, clawing to get at me... and being unable to read what I was going to do, and her Luck not meaning crap to me, she met empty air twice, and as she was lunging to take a bite at my face, I executed a full attack kata, a Flurry of Blows.

On Speed, since I wasn’t worried about not getting through her protection.

Katas exist to help a person execute a move automatically. Full kata execution at speed is more of a think about it/done kind of thing, and Seven Ripping Dragons is a very high-end kata, given the speed demands to execute it.

Health Qi bloomed like a red-black rose. She could see my arms moving, but couldn’t keep up with them. Cuts exploded over her torso, legs, arms, and throat, spraying Health Qi everywhere, while at the same time Spikes and Bolts continued to drive into her at point-blank range.

Stand came up under her chin. She was eight feet tall, and the impact stretched her out to her full height as Exemplar Lite met adamantine backed by working 50 Might and had its way, like getting hit by a 100-mph steel girder to the jaw.

Quaver and Tremble dipped and cut with impossible speed and precision, worked by ki and Essence, way more than strength motivating them... oh, and +X space-cutting in full effect as I ripped into her with everything, tyvm Bane of Legends.

She bought off the stun from Stand, screamed at the unending misery of the point-blank Spikes and Bolts pumping into her, less than a third as effective as my Swords, but still hurting, and she tried to retreat.

There was no way that was happening. I couldn’t execute a massive Kata like that while moving, but I had no problems getting to her flank and back, and when she tried to charge past me, landing three blows on her knee, numbing it and sending her sprawling, unable to get away.

I came down from above, heels like drills, both blades like plunging spears, and Wayfair decided to pump some poison into her and see if it stuck. It probably wouldn’t have, except it was working off MY Constitution bonus, and a Save DC of 35 or so had about a 50% of landing.

Let me tell you, judging by the amount of Health Qi she vomited out of her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, fighting off that much blood-burning Wisdom or Level drain is a big hit to the old Health Qi. Of course, taking multiple Death From Aboves isn’t exactly fun, either.

The Hags were realizing that the only way they were going to win was to gang up on the Brothers, or try to run while one of their Sisters held them off. The problem was that the whole plaza was a freaking mess, they couldn’t fly, their pets couldn’t fly, they couldn’t Summon anything, and they couldn’t teleport... and they’d just seen four Brothers jump a hundred paces through the air, meaning they had no chance of outrunning or outmaneuvering them.

Tremble transferred a claw injury from Mountainhammer to me, it was gone in seconds as my target tried to get up, shrieking in fear, hate, and anger, trying to lash at me as I skated around her in Seven Circling Dragons, hitting her at all levels and –

Oh, there it was. Real blood, a real injury. Swish, gone, burning away in vivus...

Her black and orange eyes got really wide as they met mine, all backlit black and white, my face cut in half so Wayfair could smirk at her. All five Tails aligned on her face, while I sheared off the one arm in the way that might be able to block, and then robe-cut her while all the Spikes discharged at once into her face, along with Sparky’s beams of banelight.

Her head exploded en vivus, her body divided into two diagonally as it ignited. I rolled forwards, and a blurring claw ripped through the stones beneath me as the Hag Empress missed.

I got to fight me an Exemplar Hag!

----------

...They can’t ignore the pain of Health Qi. Just cut them.

...They want to grab you and rip you apart, chew on you. Close Quarters Fighting punishes them for trying.

...They might be stronger than you, but not by much. On the other hand, you will be much Mightier than them. Let them know; toss them around a bit. Pick on something bigger than you.

...Lots of Health Qi means you have lots of time to use all sorts of moves on them, learn their fighting style, and punish them. Things with lots of Health Qi don’t have the AB to match.

...You are faster than they are, and there’s nothing they can do about it without magic... and hey, look who rips apart magic like gossamer?

...No one-hit kills. No death attacks. You are not in a hurry. You will outlast them. Survive, and kill them.

...Your Helices don’t multiply on a crit. Crits happen, don’t hunt for them. Just hit them as much as you can. Your Helices kill now, not your Weapon. Give them the chances to do so...

Brother Firesword couldn’t keep the smile off his face. The thumping music blaring a heart-swelling power anthem in his head didn’t hurt at all, of course.

Technically, Health Qi meant he could stab them in the head, they could ignore it, and try to grapple him and rip him apart.

In practice, getting a foot of steel through your eyes and brain tended to interrupt everything, even if the wound was instantly healed.

Learning to Cut Life had meant a radical adjustment in his fighting style. As Sama had said, it was no longer about how good a swordsman he was. It was about being able to deliver the Helices to his target, and letting them kill.

Oh, a one-shot kill could still be done, could still be useful... but not against Legendary Creatures, who had sucked in enough power to get Health Qi active and could simply spend that power to counter any instant-kills, turning them into mere weapon attacks burning off more of the fake red stuff.

Still, proper placement of his Weapons magnified the damage, accelerated the pace of killing... it just wasn’t as important now as actually hitting in the first place was.

The swirls of his Helices made Weep and Bitter Tears just rainbow flaming blurs of motion, weaponizing his Void and shearing massive quantities of this Lesser Exemplar Hag Witch’s Health Qi away, even as she tried to rip at him with clawed hands that could encircle his head, and harder than steel nails the size of daggers.

He could actually tell how much of the stuff she had left, and even when she was joined by one of her demonic sisters, he simply maneuvered with precise steps and flowing footwork to keep the newcomer on the wrong side, faster than either of them, and far more experienced in real combat.

And looking much better at it, too, as that overwhelmingly charming succubus riding Sama was happy to point out to him.

Tears, his Thorn-blade, inserted here and there, but mostly just parried away the more dangerous claw attacks, the Philosopher’s Might glowing on his arms meaning he was fully capable of matching their strength, and the play of heavyfoot and lightfoot resisting their greater mass or avoiding it, as needed. He cut and poked anywhere there were openings, and given her overlong arms, that meant she would have lost her hands very quickly, continually ripping along them and venting Health Qi, which he then channeled right back into her to even more devastating effect.

Weep was shedding bloody tears of Health Qi along the edge and tip of the Rose-blade, a sad rain being shed for all the souls this Hag had killed, and its waste of a life.

++++++++

Glossary: Hate Lightning, Bonechill, Balefire, Aqua Sanguia, and Dirgewail are necroic versions of Lightning, Cold, Fire, Acid, and Thunder, respectively.