The snipers got to find out about the odiousness of the Deflect Arrows Feat-line.

This was one of the basic ki-based missile-dodging abilities. Yes, you could use the ability without ki, and it worked against pretty much anything from the speed of an arrow or slower.

But, with ki, you could dodge literally anything... as long as you weren’t flat-footed and didn’t know it was coming.

Welcome to Scouts and their preternatural awareness, and Uncanny Dodge, so you aren’t flat-footed to anything without at least four more Ranks in Stealth than you have, and the ability to Sneak Attack. Oh, and Way of Shadow raises that number offensively and defensively by +1 each time you take it.

So, trying to snipe us meant you had to have 17 Ranks in Stealth for the girls, and 20 for me.

From that point, you get into the combinations of Arrow Shield, Return Missile, and Ray Shield, as well as Gems of Missile Warding.

The last brought everything together, because it also gave you the ability to dodge ranged attacks 1/round, with no differentiation between rocks, arrows, or bullets. Arrow Shield let you auto-deflect a ranged attack with your shield, instead of using your hand, synergizing further as a Profound Weapon. Ray Shield meant ranged touch attacks couldn’t bypass your Shield, and so could be deflected.

Return Missile sent them all back at the shooters.

Four master snipers a thousand yards away in multiple locations shot within a millisecond of one another, each targeting one of us with matter-implosion rounds that would reduce us to just spurts of bloodspray rather violently.

The Gems bent the flight paths of the incoming missiles down to our Shields, which weren’t obvious, but were humming with a load of psi, ki, Soul, and magical power.

Super-lethal ammunition pinged off our Bucklers and went right back in the direction it came from.

In four different locations, spurts of blood jetted high into the air as incompressible water was released from super-compacted matter, and the master snipers and their toys became crimson spatters in three windowed rooms and a rooftop.

We all smiled in unison, and didn’t even break stride.

This trick only worked once every six seconds, but it was the perfect tool for dealing with one-shot-kill snipers...

We normally didn’t actively wield our Shields in melee combat, because their effect was just too steep and noticeable.

We all had Greater Shield Focus, for +2 to the base +1 of a Shield. +3 AC.

All our Shields were Psychic, the girls rated to +3, mine to +4. +6/7 AC.

They were all Greater Soulbound, 4 Essence for +4 to AC. +10/11 AC.

They were all Defiant to a specific type of foe, currently Elvar, +2 AC, +2 DR/- and Saves. +12/+13 AC.

And naturally, all our Shields were Heavy Profound Weapons. Layered with Ki and charged with soulclaw power, they were 4-24 damage Weapons when bashing, such damage capable of manifesting as blunt, slashing, or piercing, as per Versatile UA with a Profound Weapon.

Bashing made them a size Larger, so 6-36 damage... the kind of impact that would slaughter a cow with one hit, before any other modifiers.

But, oh, they had the Psychic modifier for Weapons, too, to +3/4. And Bane to Elvar, +2, and Enmity/Evil, +2, and Greater Soulbound Weapons, another 4 Essence for +4, totaling +11/+12 to hit and damage.

And Defender, allowing us to convert all that bonus to hit and damage to +AC... which we constantly did for ranged attacks, since we weren’t fighting in melee with them.

The Gem of Missile Warding gave us another +5 AC against ranged attacks, and hooked into the Defender power synergistically.

So, the girls were +28 against all ranged attacks directed at us, and I was +30, with an auto-deflect and return to sender once every six seconds.

This was tacked onto our Dex bonus to AC of at least +15, a Wisdom bonus to AC of the same level, and Nymph’s Grace giving us Charisma to AC Deflection bonus based on level, so +5 for them, +6 for me, so long as we weren’t wearing armor or restrictive clothing, i.e. looking good. Oh, and the +7 Dodge bonus for Armor Mastery and Elusive Soul pumped up.

They were trying to hit an AC of 52 in a universe where hitting stuff in the 20-30 range was considered pretty exceptional. Tacking on our Shields put us in the range of 80, effectively rendering us unhittable without some absolutely monstrous assistance on the side of our foes.

Then they still had to get past DR 33/-, 43/Holy Silver, because the Force Armor from our Bracers stacked with a whole lot of Natural Armor for additional DR on top of our Crystal Shield Technique, and that lovely Lilithi DR stacked on top of that. Nog flowmetal skin for fun and crackers!

The weapons of the future were murderously powerful, enabling low-Level folks to fight monstrously powerful opponents, glass cannons in the truest sense... but they still weren’t equipped to deal with high-Level Ranthas and the stacking defenses we were employing.

Even if they were drow.

------

Playing with spatial dimensions was never a good thing for the long-term, but towering arrogance in their own weird science meant the drow kept at it for the Heart of Blood. In truth, it was better than a pocket dimension, at least, and since it was continually being reinforced by the lives and souls of the hapless dead, the Heart itself was actually pretty strong structurally.

However, there was a lot of death here, and it called out to the Warp like a very loud siren song. There were many, many layers of Interdiction harmonized to the outside space here, and still there were occasional Warp manifestations, demons ripping through into the heart of such excitement to add to the thrill and danger for the crowd. With a little sabotage and timing, such excursions could actually get rather big in size, and a major incursion might even break the Wards of the Heart and spill out into the city proper, where they’d be run off into the slums to engage in mutual slaughter with the lowlifes there until they all died, while the nobles and wealthy watched and applauded the show.

That there would be Warp incursions during a Grand Celebration was basically a given, and much anticipated. That demons wouldn’t abide by the arena rules and would probably use Warp Sorcery, psychic attacks, and ranged combat was simple spicy entertainment for the crowd.

We could only be prepared for it, and it wasn’t exactly something we were worried about. The Portal would be suppressed as rapidly as possible, or the demons would start breaking through the Barrier protecting the seats and threaten the spectators, who wouldn’t approve of it and would make such disapproval known to the management.

------

The tunnels were dark, which was irrelevant, and smelled of the circulatory fluids of a lot of different beings, some sapient, some not. There was a huge psychic aura of bloodlust and fear, which the drow were breathing in like a drug, which it probably was to some of them.

We had been assigned to a fighting group consisting of aliens who had come here willingly, mercenaries and soldiers down on their luck with nothing else to do, other up and coming eager new fools, and an assortment of others condemned to fight here and if they lived whatever minor offense they’d given to whoever had put them here would be forgiven.

Given the numbers out there, the odds of any one of them surviving the scrum about to come was .01% or less. They really thought highly of themselves here.

We were the only breshkt in the mix, although not the only women. Of course, the women were usually bladewitches who’d been kicked out of their covens for failure or increasing instability, or some mercs who looked like those at the bottom of a big pit of despair.

Celestia calmly led the way, and these hardened gladiators and duelists, butchers, and murderers, got the hell out of her way and ours as we strode towards the way out.

The position of honor was leading this group, however scummy it was, up out of the pits. There looked to be some hulking cybered urgobs and a crew of drow mercs facing off over it, and nobody else seemed to be in the mood to contest them for the position.

We came up behind the urgob as the fighters of all the races shifted back, sensing a good show coming; reached up, grabbed, and yanked.

Four urgobs went sailing back past us, nearly a thousand pounds of oversized goblin, hefty power armor, and mechanical upgrades, crashing into the wall hard and almost clocking a few of the idiots who didn’t get out of the way in time. The biggest of them whirled around, got caught by the elbow, and Jensa and Keva grabbed his legs and heaved him into the middle of his buddies expressionlessly as he yowled.

All four of us straightened up and glared at the drow mercs in the sleek black armor, who tensed up as we met their eyes.

“Fuck off or draw weapons,” Celestia hissed, and their purple skins mottled with unhealthy pale shades.

“You think you can just come in here and take the lead position?” challenged the leader of the mercs, trying really hard not to grimace and show his fear.

“We will take this lead position if we have to butcher every single creature in this room,” Celestia replied without batting an eye. “Draw and die, or yield.”

There was absolutely no way what she had just said was not going to happen. She was cold as ice, cold as steel, cold as the void. Trying to face down someone like her was like trying to spit into a hurricane of ill will.

They didn’t look happy, but they also had absolutely no wish to fight the all-black breshkt with the glowing blue eyes, for some odd reason.

There was a bellow from the big yellow-furred goblin in his clunker suit as he noisily got back to his feet.

Jensa and I lazily looked backwards as he flexed his big ol’ power claws and was about to fire them up. “Oh, you want to do this with weapons?” I asked, and green fire the exact hue of goblin blood came up around our hands, forming into arcing claws extending four inches past our fingers.

Whatever nonsense the brute was going to say died in his throat. He looked at the banefires attuned to his race, and even if he didn’t know what they were, images of burning blood of his people and subtle images of slaughter were calling to him that those were not something he wanted to deal with right now.

His growls to his companions were low. Sure, he hated us, felt humiliated, and wanted to kill us. But he didn’t think he could do it now, and so it wasn’t the time. There would always be time in the arena.

The thunder began above, a combination of the footsteps and voice of the people, and the rise of the subsonics designed to stir bloodlust.

Our swords dropped into our hands together, and began to Sing.

All heads turned at the somehow ominous, yet calm interplay of notes, cancelling out the influence from above, and defusing tensions threatening to erupt into violence in the room. Any conversation died away as the killers here listened to the Swords making music, and said nothing.