Brother Firesword bent, he twisted, he slid this way, then that, all the while his Blades danced and cut, punishing them with every move. He was in easy range of a swing of their arms almost half the time, but never quite in the right position to get shredded easily. It was a fight of inches, where Luck and Insight had no way to play, only skill, reflexes, coordination, and awareness.

And magic. Couldn’t ignore the +X.

These Hags still had a bonus to hit of at least +25 (gah, so infectious how Sama looked at things), even after he’d ripped all their buffs apart. They were stupid and weren’t using magic Weapons to increase their attacks, nor did they show signs of enchanting their claws. Truly cocksure, overconfident in the buffs their Templates gave them.

As the Exemplars were finding out, Templates were no substitute for proper Levels and good Gear.

Picking up the Crystal Dragon and being able to use it with Night Rose and Fire Dancer also meant picking up all the Lesser Dragon Styles for Way Mastery, yet more Karma Sinks. But the Damage Reduction and Natural Armor were incredibly useful, allowing him to simply ignore annoyances, give him something to build up towards reducing the tiny nicks and bruises that added up over a long fight, allowing him the staying power that Brothers had never been known to have.

His Intellect was sitting at a prim 32, four thought paths, giving him time to contemplate and analyze even while he was fighting for his life. His Dexterity was now a 44, meaning he moved more like a ghost than a person. Just those two Stats getting to the levels they should have been at all along meant a +28 bonus to his AC, which in real world terms translated into miss after miss after miss.

Analyzing calmly, every movement precise and measured, drawing them into this pose or position or stance, creating an opening while he moved just out of range of their motion, guiding their attacks as much as avoiding them, staying ahead of them through sheer analytic power, not some ability to see the future.

It was still frustrating them to all get out. They swirled through a dance, trying to catch up with him and his vicious, condescending grace, and he cut them without pause.

There was Sama over there, giving the Grandmother Hag the business. That fight was incredibly vicious, both combatants moving with inhuman speed and power, the Hag trying to ignore the hacking and hewing swords which could not truly damage her, and finding it impossible with the sheer amount of punishment being dished out. Health Qi didn’t neutralize damage, it insta-healed it, so there was still a moment of pain and interruption. Trying to bull through it was possible... but not with the level of punishment she was receiving.

She was incredibly fast, but Sama was matching her step for step, having no trouble keeping up with her feet, and her Swords were moving even faster than the Hag’s claws.

And, of course, a constant barrage of missile fire was planting itself into the Empress’ face, too, making things even worse.

Sama was, she was... painting a Rune?

Health Qi was floating in space, rippling along the edge of the cuts Sama was making. The wounds layered like petals, rippling, floating, as the two combatants slid this way and that, forming a circle as they moved through the clouds of blood-red Qi...

It was a Blood Rose!

Three slashing strokes slicked in the final petals, leaking power into a Rune wrought in mid-air, heavy with primal power stolen from the Hag. Sama couldn’t use Chi, but she had backdoored the technique by literally Painting using the Health Qi of her opponent.

Because Painting was a Skill that fed her Sagedom of Swords...

The multi-petaled, gently rippling Blood Rose ignited with a fwoosh, gone in a blink, and yet something changed in the air around it.

For the next six seconds, all the fates were against the Hag, and every hit would be a crit.

A pull on the surrounding mana turned his eyes, where Hazé had stepped away from Briggs, who had been batting around two bigger Hags like they were hapless drunks. Around her arms were Rune Circles of stacked metamagicked Shards.

He smiled despite himself. The Empress Hag, who happened to be facing the wrong way, and was frozen for a tiny second as the Blood Rose ignited, turned her head around.

The coruscating, shining Shardrays hammered in, boosted past her spell resistance, laden with holy power... and automatic criticals for triple damage, too. Because Hazé had naturally invested in Improved Critical for Ray attacks...

Health Qi vented in a burning cone of life preservation that sprayed out fifty feet past the Hag. One mass of coruscant Rays drove into her head, the second into her throat, snuffing her scream before she could give voice to it.

Then Sama executed Seven Ripping Dragons again, with every hit a x4 crit.

He didn’t know when the Health Qi of the Empress faded, but it didn’t matter. When the seventh stroke cut through her, she was totally done for.

All five Tails lashed forward, impaled her body parts, while Sama plucked away the head. As the limbs and torso ignited, they were pressed against Sama’s Marks and sucked in and away, digesting the full and complete energy of the Exemplar Hag.

Which, Brother Firesword mused, was probably going to be pretty impressive. The head in her hand Sama just slung on her belt as the flesh and skin burned away. Vivus would make sure her spirit couldn’t be interrogated anyways, so there was only prepping it for a really strong Baneskull...

----

The remains of the Hag Empress burned away in under ten seconds, while the surviving Hags shrieked in fear.

Briggs took that moment to Hammer one like batting a ball, and the shocked Lesser Exemplar half-Fiend shellycoat found herself flying nearly sixty feet through the air, hitting the ground with a roll and a tumble, and was back to her feet as if her center of balance was around her ankles.

She slowly turned around and looked down at Sama, who was smiling up at her.

The Spikes hit the Hag’s face before she could scream, and then Quaver and Tremble were all over her.

Brother Firesword smiled, and inserted Weep into the throat of his primary foe, while Bitter Tears drove into her ear. She froze in place as brain and brain stem were ravaged by Helices and banefire, and he smoothly spun away from her sister leaping at him with both claws, withdrawing Weep and running a two-foot cut up her left arm and gash across the back of her right hand as he did so.

Brother Lightscepter was playing the drummer with a Pseudonatural Hag, and had taken a couple ripping blows from her in passing. Tremble reached out and stole away the injury. They flashed into existence across Sama’s slender chest, and seconds of screaming Hag later, had been eaten away, even before Lightscepter could invoke his own Healing Edge.

Sama was looking out for all of them, and it meant they didn’t have to focus on healing. The Brothers took it to heart. Arsenals reconfigured...

-----

Health Qi could neutralize a lot of circumstances. It could break grapples, rupture manacles, even throw off rocks and boulders if it meant saving the person who had it. It was like Soak on steroids, and was even Regenerated or Fast Healed. Totally unfair broken lame-ass ability for Legendary boss-level monstrous foes.

If they couldn’t go up any further, they went sideways large.

Yet, it couldn’t overcome simple pushes and strength advantages.

The Hag in front of him had reverted to her Pseudo form, sprouting overly long spiked tentacles from her shoulder blades and navel. Given how she had eyeballs, cilia, random organs, and loss of skin all over as her natural form was exposed, complete with a skeletal structure that should just fall over, it complemented things nicely.

Endure at +X didn’t really care that this thing had a bloodline that extended from Beyond Creation. He smashed her off her feet, and then began to pound her as this misshapen thing hit the ground and tried to get itself back up.

Down. Up. Down. Up.

He gave her no chance to get up, no chance to move. If she wanted to strike him, let her reality-ripping try to get past his Source and +V Warded Skinplate and DR 30/-.

Endure came down, and he began to treat her as something to refine, something to pound the unreal out of.

She began to bounce, hitting the ground, rising in the air to greet the Hammer coming down again with incredible speed. She writhed as her torso was reduced to pulp by blows nearing two hundred points of damage, like a boulder crashing down on her chest again and again, hammering her unnatural existence with raw reality. Her Health Qi immediately healed the wound and shook off the stunning impact, just in time for the Hammer to come down again brutally fast, its beat a drum as fast as a pounding heartbeat that kept crashing down into her.

Thunder of the Mountain’s Heart, Storm/Crystal Feat. Single target, every hit expands the Crit Range by 1, missing or getting a crit resets it back to start. Big weapons held in two hands only.

There was no way he could miss her. Every hit sent a shockwave of energy through her, snapping out her tentacles, making her warped limbs spasm, and before she could complete any movement, Endure was coming down again.

Then he drew his long knife Nurse, softly ripped it through an extended tentacle, and turned away.

Touch the Falling Stone. Give up a crit, so the next blow is instead a crit.

Hazé’s Shardray slammed into her with the finely refined blood of Reality, Force without mass, Radiance without source, and all the high Holiness you could shake a psalm at. It drilled right into somewhere, and the crit blew through the Hag as he stepped away, hurling Endure as he did so. The Hag behind him screamed something from beyond the Veil... and donated the sum total of her existential energy to the Land forever, praise be to Lady Sylune.

Minus the skull. Aberrant/Monstrous Humanoid combined Baneskulls were useful!

A Hag trying to tag-team Brother Ancientaxe went stumbling away as the pounding Warhammer caromed off her skull... and then into the head of her sister right next to her, before thumping its way back to his hand.

He was already halfway to them, and picking up speed. Hazé didn’t need to hide behind him anymore... the Hags were now trying to hide from her!

------

There were a couple who tried to run. The Wolf actually decided to try his luck on a couple of the half-Fiends, and was definitely strong enough to hold them at bay long enough for one of us to get up there and start the bash-down. It would have taken him forever to get through the Health Qi, however.

Of course, once they no longer outnumbered us, it was all over for them. While the Brothers were very pragmatic about the killing, they also wanted to see if they could wear down a foe that before they would have ignored or avoided. So, once we got rid of the double-team Hags, we generally left them to finish killing at least one each.

No, no, getting all the Karma certainly had nothing to do with it...

The place was already a chaotic mess, and wiping the Hags, thwarting their various soul-escaping tactics via vivus soul-eating mmm-mmm the Land says you be tasty, and turning their elites into mad butchers killing their soldiers, had only made things worse for them.

The rupturing ley lines had chewed canyons hundreds of miles long right through the Zone, further dividing things up. This massive city-state was heading into full-blown civil war as the power grabbers woke up and started to make their bids, shroom-fed dreams of empire dancing in their heads.

We sat back and enjoyed the minor Glory Award... bringing down an empire was something of an accomplishment, but they’d just install another Hag tomorrow, and doubtless there were other Hag-daughters on the way here to vie over the throne. We hadn’t really wiped the place, just cut the head off a snake. Lots more snakes for the hole...

It was time to go... after looting the Hags and taking a quick spin through the ruins of the Palace and the dead. Holy Mithar, was there a lot of minor magic and gemstones to make off with. The rewards of doing Good Work...